Territorial nationalism and Arctic geopolitics: Iceland as an Arctic coastal state
This paper explores the cultural and political significance of being acknowledged and recognized as an “Arctic coastal state”. Using Iceland as a case study, we consider how coastal state status had grown in significance as the Arctic Ocean has been re-imagined more as a polar Mediterranean and less as a frozen desert. By drawing on Michael Billig’s work on banal nationalism and popular geopolitics, the manner in which the ideas and practices associated with a “coastal state” are reproduced in elite and everyday contexts. However, we conclude by noting that thus far this appeal to Iceland as “coastal state” has gained greater traction within the Icelandic Foreign Ministry and Parliament, and it remains to be seen whether it will have a more popular resonance with Icelandic citizens. Whatever the future, it is a timely reminder that terms such as “coastal state” are caught up in national and even circumpolar identity projects.
'A Crisis of Affluence': the Politics of an Economic Breakdown in Iceland
This article deals with the collapse of the Icelandic banking system in 2008 and its impact on society, politics and foreign relations. It approaches the crisis from the perspectives of the politics of memory, transnational discourses on 'weak states' and the destabilisation of fixed foreign and security policy identities. It discusses how transitional justice has become a vehicle for addressing issues of responsibility and culpability for the crash. It also shows how Iceland, while facing a 'crisis of affluence', has coped with going through the experience of a 'Third World' country dependent on a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. These political, moralistic, legal and economic processes together with a protracted dispute with Britain and the Netherlands over the so-called Icesave issue have generated a nationalistic backlash against Iceland's EU membership bid, contributed to political and economic uncertainty and underscored a lack of strategic direction in foreign policy.
Do Arab public opinion support policies of regional powers in MENA? View from Tunisia
ABSTRACT The Arab Uprisings and subsequent events continue to transform policies of regional and major powers toward the Middle East and North Africa. These powers have shown different approaches toward the Uprisings, ranging from support for the status quo to endorsing regime changes. Their policies have also exerted a significant impact on the course of events. Despite this growing importance and implications of policies of regional powers on the Uprisings and the Syrian conflict, we still do not know much about how the public assesses these policies and to what extent domestic cleavages shape these assessments. Using a nationally representative original survey conducted in 2014 in Tunisia, this study examines the perceptions of the policies of France, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia towards the Uprisings and the Syrian conflict. It finds that French and Turkish policies about the Uprisings have garnered substantial support among citizens, whereas most citizens negatively assess the Saudi policies. On the other hand, the majority of Tunisians negatively assess all these countries’ policies toward the Syrian conflict. Another major finding suggests that political identity reflecting secular/religious cleavages shapes how citizens view the policies of these three countries toward both issues, but its effect is higher in assessing the Uprisings.