This article examines the content of concepts of neutrality articulated in elite and public discourses in the context of the development of the European Union’s (EU) Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). In parallel with security and defence policy developments in successive EU treaties, many argue that the meaning of neutrality has been re-conceptualized by elites in EU ‘neutral’ member states (specifically, Austria, Finland, Ireland and Sweden) to the point of irrelevance and inevitable demise. Others argue that the concept of ‘military’ neutrality, as it is termed by elites in Ireland, or ‘military non-alignment’, as it is termed by elites in Austria, Sweden and Finland, meaning non-membership of military alliances, is compatible with the CSDP in the Lisbon Treaty. An investigation of these paradoxical discursive claims as to the status of neutrality yields findings of a divergence in public ‘active’ and elite ‘military’ concepts of neutrality that embodies competing foreign policy agendas. These competing, value-laden, concepts reflect tensions between, on the one hand, the cultural influences of a domestic constituency holding strong national identities and role-conceptions informed by a postcolonial or anti-imperialist legacy and, on the other hand, elite socialization influences of ‘global actor’ and common defence-supported identity ambitions encountered at the EU level that can induce discursively subtle yet materially significant shifts in neutral state foreign policy. The article concludes with an analysis of the compatibility of both ‘military’ neutrality and the ‘active’ concept of neutrality with the CSDP in the Lisbon Treaty and draws conclusions on the future role of neutrality both inside and outside the EU framework.

A BSTRACT This article traces the evolution of attitudes and policies of Irish political parties towards Irish neutrality and the European Union Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) across four decades. The article provides conceptual snapshots of the position of parties' policies along two policy dimensions. The first dimension captures policies of limited 'military' neutrality and 'positive'/ 'active' neutrality. The second dimension captures minimalist EU foreign and security policy, defined as 'civilian' or 'soft' security policy, to a maximalist EU CFSP/ESDP 'hard security' policy amounting to a 'militarized' EU. The positioning starts with the campaign for Irish membership of the European Economic Community (EEC), focusing on the accession negotiations and the 1972 referendum campaign and finishes with an analysis of parties' positions on the Security and Defence Policy aspects of the Lisbon Treaty in 2008. Evidence shows the positions of the larger parties of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party shifted away from fundamental neutrality to embrace treaty-based progress towards a maximalist EUESDP. Over the same time period, the smaller parties of Sinn Féin and the Green Party were more consistent in their adherence to positive neutrality and in their opposition to the development of a maximalist EU ESDP. The forces of Europeanization have been evident in influencing evolving party discourses in Ireland. Much of this influence has been occasioned by the impact of participation in government on parties and the sporadic requirement to engage with referendum campaigns. The process of Europeanization has thus been subtle and muted and has interacted in intricate ways with domestic party agendas and objectives.

ABSTRACT. In a 2006 IPRS article, entitled Choosing to Go It Alone: Irish Neutrality in Theoretical and Comparative Perspective, Neal G. Jesse argues that Irish neutrality is best understood through a neoliberal rather than a neorealist IR theory framework. This article posits an alternative 'critical social constructivist' framework of understanding of Irish neutrality. The first part of the article considers the differences between neoliberalism and social constructivism and argues why critical social constructivism's emphasis on beliefs, identity and the agency of the public in foreign policy are key factors explaining Irish neutrality today. Using public opinion data, the second part of the paper tests whether national identity, independence, ethnocentrism, attitudes to Northern Ireland and efficacy are factors driving public support for Irish neutrality. The results show that public attitudes to Irish neutrality are structured along the dimensions of independence and identity, indicating empirical support for a critical social constructivist framework understanding of Irish neutrality.

This article approaches ‘neutrality’ as an essentially contested concept and traces its meaning and purpose over centuries-long historical timelines and situated political, societal and security contexts. It distinguishes neutrality from other concepts such as ‘neutralization’ ‘non-belligerency’, ‘non-alignment’, ‘military non-alignment’, ‘military neutrality’ and ‘non-allied’. The article explains the politics of defining neutrality in the current European political and legal landscape and in the context of shifting definitions and practices of war, peace, security and state sovereignty. This episteme-based analysis focuses on changes to neutrality in accordance with the rise and fall of particular empires and international actors over time, and changes to its status linked to the development and reification of particular meta-theoretically-based subfields of International Relations and Political Science, setting the background to this special issue of Cooperation and Conflict. A renewed emphasis on the normative aspects of neutrality (i.e. the role of domestic values, politics, preferences, history and mass publics in foreign policy formulation) is achieved by employing a range of perspectives, characterized by increased pluralism in levels of analysis and theoretical approaches. Through this pluralism, authors engage with (1) the strategic and normative drivers underpinning the norm of neutrality, (2) the potential for neutrals to serve as norm entrepreneurs in the field of peace promotion, (3) the tenuous legal status of elites’ quasi-neutral foreign policy constructions underpinned by tensions between discourses and practices and (4) the discursive strategies underpinning the move from neutral states’ traditional forms of neutrality to what is termed ‘post-neutrality’ in the current politico-legal context

A number of academics, journalists and political elites claim that Irish neutrality is a 'myth', and many also characterise public support for Irish neutrality as 'confused' and 'nonrational'. This 'unneutral' discourse in the academic literature and mainstream Irish media is based on an academic thesis, that of an Unneutral Ireland. The Unneutral thesis constructs a particular concept of neutrality in order to draw its conclusion that Ireland is 'unneutral'. Using a poststructuralist approach-a rarity in the discipline of International Relations (IR)-this paper deconstructs concepts of Irish neutrality using a framework of IR theories. The results show that the concept of neutrality put forward in the Unneutral Ireland thesis and the dominant discourses on Irish neutrality are based on a hegemonic IR theory, the theory of neorealism, rather than on seemingly 'objective' scientific research methods. The paper concludes that non-realist theories and approaches may provide a better understanding of Irish neutrality and of the dynamics of public support for Irish neutrality.