Anders Wivel

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Verified

Anders verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• PhD
• Professor at University of Copenhagen

International organizations play an important, if imperfect, role in world politics, solving collective action problems in security, economic, environmental, and global health among others. While many believe that international organisations have formed critical pillars of global governance, sceptics contend that they reflect the power politics of...

US decline and retrenchment is increasing the importance of regional dynamics across the international system. Over the past decade, International Relations scholars have described and conceptualized this development variously as ‘de-centred globalism’, a ‘multi-order world’, a ‘multiplex world’ or a multicultural ‘no one's world’, but the links be...

A series of crises has challenged the EU in the 2010s and 2020s, but has at the same time illustrated the resilience of the EU governance model. This model is characterized by soft balancing and is conditioned upon a division of labour, with NATO—and ultimately the United States—taking care of hard security and military balancing. The EU’s success...

This chapter provides a critical overview of realist approaches to foreign policy analysis (FPA) and discusses how one of these approaches, neoclassical realism, may be reconceptualized as a template for multi-factor and multi-level analysis benefitting from recent advances in FPA. Realists emphasize the importance of structural and systemic factor...

When and how do party politics matter in junior allies’ decisions to engage in multinational military operations? Developing a new role theory model of party politics and multinational military operations, we put forward a two-level argument. First, we argue that the rationale for military action is defined in a contest between political parties wi...

This chapter argues that realism offers important insights for the study of small states. By looking into four iconic realist works, we show that the popular view that small states defy realist expectations because these states can ‘punch above their weight’ is mistaken. Realists do not dismiss the ability of lesser powers to overachieve under cert...

Artiklen undersøger konsekvenserne af krigen i Ukraine for USA’s engagement i den europæiske sikkerhedsorden. Den europæiske orden analyseres som tyngdepunktet i en USA-ledet liberal international orden og udviklingen i det transatlantiske forhold ses på den baggrund som en afgørende betingelse for udviklingen i den europæiske sikkerhedsorden. Arti...

The Scandinavian states’ pursuit of status in world politics is well documented. However, little is known about whether these endeavors have resulted in higher status for these states. In this article, we suggest that the Scandinavian countries represent a useful case to explore whether similar foreign policy profiles and common club membership equ...

The War in Ukraine signals a return to the sphere of influence politics and great powers’ use of military instruments against their weaker neighbors. The consequences for small states are negative. Although some small states will find new opportunities for hedging and brinkmanship, most small states will see their chances of shaping international a...

This book brings together a group of leading scholars on international relations to develop and apply the concept of polarity on past and present international relations and discuss its applicability and usefulness in the future. Despite a comprehensive debate on a global power shift, often discussed in terms of the decline of the United States, th...

This introductory chapter explains the aim of the volume and unpacks the shared assumptions and starting points before outlining the structure and content of the book. The chapter provides an overview of the polarity literature, and how it has evolved since the early Cold War. It summarizes the findings of the book and discusses their implications....

After three decades of US unipolarity, the international system may be on the brink of transformation. Although the combined capabilities of the United States remain stronger than those of any other state in the international system and the United States remains unrivalled in defence spending and research and development, the American superpower no...

With the rapid rise of China and the relative decline of the United States, the topic of power transition conflicts is back in popular and scholarly attention. The discipline of International Relations offers much on why violent power transition conflicts occur, yet very few substantive treatments exist on why and how peaceful changes happen in wor...

Grand Strategy is a state’s “theory of victory,” explaining how the state will utilize its diverse means to advance and achieve national ends. A clearly articulated, well-defined, and relatively stable grand strategy is supposed to allow the ship of state to steer a steady course through the roiling seas of global politics. However, the obstacles t...

With the rapid rise of China and the relative decline of the United States, the topic of power transition conflicts is back in popular and scholarly attention. The discipline of International Relations offers much on why violent power transition conflicts occur, yet very few substantive treatments exist on why and how peaceful changes happen in wor...

This chapter traces three different conceptions of peaceful change in Western Europe since 1945 and discusses their implications for understanding peaceful change in Western Europe today. The first is Hobbesian Western Europe. Corresponding to a largely realist understanding, Hobbesians view peaceful change in Western Europe as a by-product of bala...

Krigsudredningen om baggrunden for Danmarks militære engagement i Kosovo, Afghanistan og Irak 1998-2003 blev besluttet af Folketinget i 2016. Sammen med en forskergruppe arbejdede forfatterne på udredningen mellem 2017 og 2019. I artiklen forklarer de om de muligheder for indflydelse, som et udredningsarbejde giver. Det er bl.a. historien om udredn...

Beslutningstagere benytter ofte eksperter som rådgivere forud for store politiske reformer, når forhandlinger er gået i hårdknude, og når gældende praksis skal evalueres. Eksempelvis blev Velfærdskommissionen oprettet for at forberede befolkningen og komme med forslag til reformer inden for velfærdsområdet, Lærerkommissionen blev nedsat for at løse...

The European migration crisis was a crisis for small states in Europe in the sense that it disrupted the order upon which the European small states had increasingly based their policies and influence for more than 60 years. Among the most serious challenges were the renationalization of European politics, the return of geopolitics and disagreements...

The chapter aims to discuss what is meant by a ‘small state’ and outline a set of coping strategies that small states can use to address their vulnerabilities. It maps the conceptual and theoretical landscape evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of definitions of small states and discusses the strategic menu of small states in crises. The author...

Charismatic leadership is an integral yet understudied aspect of foreign policy in liberal democratic states. Combining insights from recent developments on charismatic leadership in organization and management studies with literature on foreign policy, we construct a novel theoretical framework for understanding how foreign policy leaders exercise...

With the rapid rise of China and the relative decline of the United States, the topic of power transition conflicts is back in popular and scholarly attention. The discipline of International Relations offers much on why violent power transition conflicts occur, yet very few substantive treatments exist on why and how peaceful changes happen in wor...

This chapter provides a systematic discussion of the origins, development and influence of structural realism in Europe. It identifies the characteristics of European structural realism and discusses how European structural realist thought has spilled back into the discipline of international relations. European realists have influenced the realist...

The rise of “the rest,” especially China, has triggered an inevitable transformation of the so-called liberal international order. Rising powers have started to both challenge and push for the reform of existing multilateral institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and to create new ones, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investm...

Danish foreign policy is characterized by a strong and diversified military engagement. From 1990 to 2018, Danish political decision-makers committed Danish troops to 76 military operations in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa compared to 13 operations during the Cold War from 1945 to 1989. In the essay, we argue that Denmark’s military acti...

The aim of this essay is to discuss and assess the effects of the 2020 COVID -19 pandemic on small state diplomacy. The essay identifies the characteristics of successful small state crisis diplomacy and unpacks the implications for small state diplomacy in general. Small states crave stability and predictability and seek shelter from international...

Danmark har i årene siden den kolde krigs afslutning udviklet sig til at være en permanent krigsførende nation. Den militære aktivisme er karakteriseret ved meget forskellige typer af engagementer, både hvad angår antallet af udsendte og deres mandat, indlejring i forskellige internationale organisationer og koalitioner, og udsendelser til forskell...

This chapter provides an overview of research on small state politics and discusses the dilemmas, challenges and opportunities of small states. The chapter discusses definitions of small states focusing on small states as non-great powers, as defined by the material capabilities and as political constructs. Baldacchino and Wivel present a pragmatic...

The post-1945 international order increased national security, prosperity and influence for small states in Europe. Today, small European states are challenged by changes in the transatlantic relationship, a new balance of power between Europe's great powers, and a more fluent and complex institutional order in Europe. While sharing these challenge...

As part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this essay examines the role of institutional soft balancing in bringing forth peaceful change in international relations. Soft balancing is understood as attempts at restraining a threatening power through institutional delegitimization, as opposed to hard balancing, which...

Denmark's relationship with the European Union (EU) takes its point of departure in the Danish self-perception of being a minor power with a superior societal model. This calls for both adaptation to the power realities of the European political space and resistance against infringements of the Danish societal model, occasionally supplemented by at...

This book moves scholarly debates beyond the old question of whether or not international institutions matter in order to examine how they matter, even in a world of power politics. Power politics and international institutions are often studied as two separate domains, but this is in need of rethinking because today most states strategically use i...

From 1990 to 2018, Danish policy-makers committed Danish troops to 76 military operations in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia spanning from small observer missions to the wars following from the break-up of Yugoslavia and the war in Afghanistan. This article zooms in on the decision-making processes leading up to the Danish policy-makers' d...

This article asks why Denmark and Estonia have eagerly attempted to ‘punch above their weight’ in the transatlantic relationship since the end of the Cold War and shows how they differ in their strategies to do so. Using neoclassical realism as a theoretical point of departure, the article explains how a combination of changing constraints in the s...

An analysis of the decision-making process leading up to the Danish military engagement in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo. The analysis is an independent inquiry commissioned by a majority in the Danish parliament.

This chapter presents an overview of Denmark's military engagement 1945-2018.

This volume analyzes the decision-making process leading up to the Danish decisions to engage militarily in Kosovo and Afghanistan.

This volume analyzes the decision-making process leading up to the Danish decision to engage militarily in Iraq. It also presents an analysis of the publicly state arguments for participating in Kosovo, Afganistan and Iraq as well as an overview of Danish miliary engagement 1945-2018 and an analysis of the juridicial limits for engaging Denmark in...

This chapter analyzes the publicly stated arguments for Denmark going to war in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Since the early Cold War Denmark has been part of a cluster of Nordic states characterized by their commitment to Scandinavian welfare state values at home and abroad. However, today Danish foreign policy is at the same time super-Nordic, un-Nordic and anti-Nordic. The role of Nordicness in Danish foreign policy has been largely overlooked in the l...

This chapter makes three contributions towards understanding Danish awkwardness. First, the chapter unpacks the characteristics of Danish awkwardness and explains how it has developed since the debate over whether or not to seek membership in the early 1970s. Second, the chapter discusses how Danish state identity, rooted in the context of deep soc...

Since the end of the Cold War, the active use of military force has become an integral part of Danish foreign policy. • The number of military operations with Danish participation has risen markedly and the institutional embeddedness and goals of these operations have been diversified. • Military engagement has increased access to US decision-maker...

This policy brief examines how the British decision to withdraw from the EU has influenced the political debates in and foreign policies of the five Nordic states – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. With the exception of Iceland, all these countries had a stated preference for Britain to remain in the EU – not least due to historical ti...

The European Union is typically perceived by its proponents as an avant-garde, anti–power politics polity capable of civilizing its own political space and its geopolitical neighborhood. For the past decade, this conventional European narrative has been challenged by a series of events and developments amounting to an allegedly existential crisis o...

A lack of capabilities is most often taken to imply a lack of influence. The foreign policy of the Seychelles provides a surprising case of successful small state diplomacy that counters this claim. With a population of less than 100,000 and a diplomatic service of 100 staff, Seychelles is recognized as a broker in international organizations and a...

The aim of this chapter is to unpack how Brexit influences small states in Europe. The main argument is that while all small states are negatively affected by the British decision to invoke Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon and thereby to effectuate the outcome of the British 2016-referendum on EU-membership to leave the European Union, some small...

This chapter discusses how to understand peaceful change from the perspective of classical realism, structural realism and neoclassical realism.

The Routledge Handbook of Scandinavian Politics is a comprehensive overview of Scandinavian politics provided by leading experts in the field and covering the polity, the politics and the policy of Scandinavia. Coherently structured with a multi-level thematic approach, it explains and details Scandinavian politics today through a series of cutting...

Scandinavia has become a symbol of advanced postmodern societies. This chapter identifies the shared characteristics of Scandinavian polities, politics and policies and discusses the rebranding of Scandinavia over the past decades.

This chapter summarizes the findings in The Routledge Handbook of Scandinavian Politics and discusses the current state of Scandinavian polities, politics and policies.

Den britiske beslutning om udmeldelse af EU har potentielt alvorlige konsekvenser for Danmark. Danmark og Storbritannien har historisk en nær samarbejdsrelation, og begge lande har haft en tilgang til den europæiske integrationsproces, hvor de har håndteret deres position i udkanten af Europa - geografisk og politisk - ved at fremhæve karakteristik...

Is Danish European policy activist? Danish European policy is surprisingly activist in the sense that it strategically, independently and boldly pursues the defense and promotion of Danish interests and values, even to the extent of defying the vision of Europe promoted by EU’s Franco-German engine. However, activism is typically formulated by Dani...

I hvilken grad og hvordan kan dansk europapolitik tolkes som aktivistisk? Dansk europapolitik er karakteriseret ved stor kontinuitet med en kombination af pragmatisk interessevaretagelse og forsøg på dagsordensættende indflydelsesmaksimering på udvalgte værdipolitiske områder. Samtidig er europapolitikken overraskende aktivistisk i betydningen en s...

This chapter compares the European policies of the Nordic countries. The authors identify the similarities and differences in Nordic approaches to the EU and argue that Nordic policies towards the EU can be explained in terms of pragmatic functionalism seeking to protect the welfare state.

The Nordic countries have long been renowned for their contribution to international peace and security. This contribution – occasionally viewed by both Nordic and non-Nordic policy-makers and academics as a particular model for facilitating peace and development in international affairs – is based on a combination of active contributions to peacef...

'Realism in Foreign Policy Analysis' traces how realist thinking on foreign policy has developed over the years and discusses the challenges and opportunities faced by various strands of realism when applied to foreign policy analysis. The article can be accessed here: http://politics.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acref...

Today, small European states regularly need to go out of area and out of tried and tested institutional settings to defend their security interests. How do small European states meet this challenge most effectively? This analysis suggests that small states can influence multilateral decisions on international security by combining norm entrepreneur...

This paper seeks to make three contributions to our understanding of small state foreign policy. First, the paper explains the foreign policy trajectory of one particular small state, Georgia, which has with limited success followed a foreign policy of inclusion into the West and its institutions. Second, the paper analyses how variations in stateh...

No abstract is available for this article.

Since the end of the Cold War, Danish foreign policy activism has been characterized by a tightening of the bond to the US and by a gradually increasing Danish willingness to participate in military interventions far from Denmark’s borders. On the surface such activism seems to stand in contrast to the superpower-skeptical Nordic activism of the Co...

Denne artikel diskuterer udviklingen i Danmarks politik overfor USA.

This book offers a coherent, original and systematic comparative analysis of the relationship between the Nordic countries and the European Union over the past two decades. It looks at the historical frame, institutions and policy areas, addressing both traditional EU areas such as agriculture and more nascent areas affecting the domestic and forei...

This book examines small states' security conceptually, theoretically and empirically.

This book offers an accessible, coherent and comprehensive analysis of the recent, contemporary and future challenges and possibilities facing Denmark in the European integration process. The book traces the formal as well as the informal ways of influence and adaptation in Denmark’s relations with the European Union. In doing so, it also offers...

This book explains what ‘small’ states are and explores their current security challenges, in general terms and through specific examples. It reflects the shift from traditional security definitions emphasizing defence and armaments, to new security concerns such as economic, societal and environmental security where institutional cooperation looms...

It is a common assertion that the Danish defeat at the hands of Prussia in 1864, which reduced the Danish territory by one third, " until recently haunted both foreign policy makers and the Danish public ". 2 In the conventional interpretation 1864 is regarded as the starting point for a small state reactive pragmatism, which was not replaced by fo...

This chapter explores the security challenges of two small post-Soviet states, the Republic of Moldova and Georgia. Located in the outskirts of Europe, Moldova and Georgia face some of the security challenges typically encountered by states outside the highly stable and institutionalized European security order, while at the same time aiming explic...

Formålet med dette temanummer om ’Diplomati under forandring?’ er med udgangspunkt i Danmark at identificere, analysere og diskutere aktuelle diplomatiske udviklinger. Temanummerets forfattere tager os på den baggrund med gennem en diskussion af diplomatiets generelle udviklingstræk og deres betydning for Danmark og den danske udenrigstjeneste, en...

Hvordan påvirker de indenrigspolitiske og internationale begrænsninger handlerummet for dansk diplomati, og hvordan har dette handlerum og dets konsekvenser varieret over tid? Med udgangspunkt i den observation, at diplomati udfoldes i et handlerum mellem indenrigspolitiske og internationale rammebetingelser, diskuterer artiklen udviklingen i ramme...

Global environmental and climate concerns have been central to Danish foreign policy activism since the end of the Cold War. is article chronicles the development of Danish international climate activism and ex- plores how and why it became central to Danish foreign policy. e article discusses the role of globalization, institutionalization and Eur...

Danish post‐Cold War security policy is typically portrayed as a transformation from an anti‐militaristic and multilateralist member of a Nordic bloc in international relations promoting international solidarity and global peace into an activist proponent of a liberal world order to be defended by military means when necessary. Focusing on Danish p...

De nordiske lande har i en årrække indtaget en særlig rolle i internationalt diplomati. På trods af deres status som småstater har de ofte indtaget markante positioner og opnået international indflydelse. Med udgangspunkt i den såkaldte smartstatstilgang til internationalt diplomati besvarer artiklen tre spørgsmål: Hvad karakteriserer de nordiske l...

This book presents a neoclassical realist model for explaining foreign policy-unpacking how and why geopolitics, global factors and domestic politics combine in decisions on war and peace. The authors apply the model to the actions of forty countries in relation to the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. Uniquely linking system, interstate (geopolitics), and...

How do small states maximize their influence in the European Union? This article argues that the traditional small state approach to European integration is being undermined by formal and informal developments in the EU. Small states must therefore change their traditional policy focused on binding the great powers to a smart state strategy utilizi...

A security dilemma is a situation where the actions taken by a state to increase its own security cause reactions from other states, which leads to a decrease rather than an increase in the state's security. Some scholars of international relations find that the security dilemma is the most important source of conflict in international relations. T...

Which factors determine the security strategies of microstates? Many microstates are either secluded island states or have very close political, economic and cultural ties to a larger neighbouring ‘protector state’. They have had, therefore, little use for more traditional alliance arrangements. However, the patterns of security cooperation between...

The effects of recent institutional change within the European Union on small states have often been overlooked. This book offers an accessible, coherent and informative analysis of contemporary and future foreign policy challenges facing small states in Europe. Leading experts analyze the experiences of a number of small states including the Net...

Hvordan påvirker globalisering dansk sikkerhedspolitik?