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The European Neutrals and NATO: Ambiguous Partnership

This article provides a comparative analysis of relations between the European neutral states – Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden, and Switzerland – and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The European neutrals have established broadly similar partnerships with NATO since the end of the Cold War, but significant variation in their relations with NATO can also be observed (the origins of which can be traced back to the Cold War and earlier). This pattern – continued non-membership of NATO, partnership with the alliance, and significant variation in terms of national relations with NATO – can be explained by a historical institutionalist perspective, combining path dependency and policy adaptation. This perspective also helps to explain why the relationship between the European neutrals is – and is likely to remain – an ambiguous partnership: policy adaptation at the elite level, implying close cooperation with NATO, sits alongside path dependency at the general public level where NATO is still viewed as representing ‘public bads’ such as power politics, militarism, and nuclear weapons. The deeply embedded domestic path dependency of neutrality suggests that even those states with the closest relations with NATO – Sweden and Finland – may never join the alliance. The article also argues that the neutral states' divergent patterns of engagement with NATO parallel those of NATO members with the alliance: more attention needs to be paid to the different ways in which both partners and members engage with NATO and the reasons for such differences.