In contrast to more usual interest-based accounts, this analysis of the Scandinavian national debates about EU membership focuses on the conflict between different normative standpoints on the implications of membership for the future of the Scandinavian exceptional state. The debates shared a number of crucial features, notably the prominence of exceptionalist (i.e. progressivist and internationalist) critiques of the European project, but distinctive national setttings also produced significant variations. It is argued that normative analysis of the debates identifies some key issues concerning the future of Scandinavian exceptionalism and, more generally, questions overly exogenous accounts of foreign policy change in small states.
The end of the Cold War has seen Western internationalism migrate from the margins to the centre of International Relations theory and practice. As a consequence the modest ambitions of what we might now call ‘classical internationalism’ have come under challenge from more thoroughly cosmopolitan varieties from both the right and left of the mainstream Western political spectrum whose commonalities, moreover, are arguably becoming as prominent as their differences. This article attempts to recover the classical internationalist project and, more specifically, the understanding of statehood that underpins it. Some observations on the distinctions and tensions between varieties of contemporary internationalist and cosmopolitan thinking about international politics are followed by a critique of a pervasive scholarly disinterest in the varieties of Western internationalist states. These two exercises form the backdrop to advocacy of the idea of ‘the Good State’ as a response to dominant forms of contemporary Western cosmopolitanism and their critics.
Allen Brown was described -I suspect by Fin Crisp -as Nugget Coombs' Vicar-General. This is an insightful and appropriate ecclesial analogy. Allen's appointment as Vicar-General marked the beginning of a 16-year career as one of the key players at the centre of Commonwealth Government administration. This was a watershed time of change in the reach of federal government and the nature of its administrative arrangements. When Coombs was commissioned to create the Department of Post-War Reconstruction, he already knew Allen Brown as a staff member and colleague in the wartime Rationing Commission. He had evidence of Allen's strength as an administrator -just the man to get the machinery of Coombs' ad hoc enterprise up and running for the effective discharge of the varied and nationwide activities assigned to it. Nugget also knew that his Vicar-General could and would as necessary fill the directorgeneral's shoes. He knew Allen was a top-class policy thinker with remarkable vision and a sure sense of the department's specific mission -someone who could help identify and set in motion major initiatives and projects in the service of that mission.Brown did not meet all the canonical requirements for Vicar-General. He did not have the tonsure and he was not celibate -he had a wife, Hilda, and three children to whom he was devoted. But he was over 25 years of age (33 in fact) and was certainly commendable for the probity of his life, for his prudence, and for his knowledge of the law. He had an excellent academic pedigree: Caulfield Grammar, Wesley College, and Queen's College at the University of Melbourne, from where he gained a Master's degree in law. Better still, he had had the best part of a decade in the real world as a practising, successful and wellliked solicitor in country Victoria. In Post-War Reconstruction and the Prime Minister's Department, Allen Stanley Brown's staff knew him affectionately as ASB. Menzies came quite quickly to refer to him, also affectionately, as Bruno ('Where's Bruno?') or, less frequently, as 'le brun'. Menzies was fond of such tags: 'Black Jack' McEwen was 'le noir'.
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