The post-Cold War world allows space for less powerful states to develop influential roles in responding to specific international problems. Norway has focused on the persistent issue of violent ethno-political conflict. This book explains why Norway chose its peace policy and demonstrates what is has been able to achieve.

A fascinating inside look at what it takes to bring irreconcilable foes to the conference table and the pressures of brokering peace in an ethnically riven society at war with itself

For a long time, the Nordic countries have been a region of peace, with the ability to resolve conflicts peacefully among themselves, and a region for peace, actively promoting peace globally. Although efforts to actively brand the Nordic region are ongoing, the Nordic Peace brand is an area with untapped potential. The Nordics have rich traditions for working together on peace and conflict resolution. These joint efforts have grown organically and informally from like-mindedness, letting the common Nordic culture and ways of working foster integration among them where relevant. The people working in the Nordic countries on Nordic cooperation and peace recognize the potential of strengthening the Nordic Peace brand. One area of special potential is increasing focus on the shared Nordic priorities of prevention and the women, peace and security agenda as part of the Nordic Peace brand.

Since 1814 Sweden has avoided involvement in armed conflicts and carried out policies of non-alignment in peacetime and neutrality during war. Even though the Swedish government often describes Sweden as a ‘nation of peace’, in 2004 the 200-year anniversary of that peace passed by with barely any attention. Despite its extraordinary longevity, research about the Swedish experience of enduring peace is underdeveloped. 200 Years of Peace places this long period of peace in broader academic and public discussions surrounding claimed Swedish exceptionality as it is represented in the nation’s social policies, expansive welfare state, eugenics, gender equality programs, and peace.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the use of peace agreements from a legal perspective. It describes and evaluates the development of contemporary peace processes and the peace agreements that emerge. The book sets out what is in essence an anatomy of peace agreement practice and interrogates its relationship to law. At its heart the book grapples with the role of law in ending violent conflict and the broader questions this raises for the relationship of law to social change. Law potentially plays two key roles with respect to peace agreements: first, to the extent that peace agreements themselves form legal documents, law plays a role in the 'enforcement' or implementation of the peace agreement; second, international law has a relationship to peace agreement negotiation and content, in its regulatory guise. International Law regulates self-determination, transitional justice, and the role of third parties. The book documants and analyses these two roles of law. In doing so, the book reveals a complex dynamic relationship between the peace agreement as a legal document and the role of international law in which international law and concepts of domestic constitutionalism are being re-shaped. The practice of negotiating peace agreements is argued to be producing a new law of the peacemaker-or lex pacificatoria that connects developments in international law with new forms of domestic constitutional law in a set of hybrid relationships. This law of the peacemaker potentially forms part of a broader 'law of peace' that moves beyond the traditional concept of law of peace as merely 'the rest of international law' once the laws of war are subtracted. The new lex pacificatoria stands as an account of the way in which international law shapes and is shaped by peace agreements. The book proposes an ambivalent response to 'this new law' which connects to contemporary debates about the force of international law and its appropriate relationship with domestic constitutonalism.

In 1999 the EU decided to develop its own military capacities for crisis management. This book brings together a group of experts to examine the consequences of this decision on Nordic policy establishments, as well as to shed new light on the defence and security issues that matter for Europe as a whole.