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This paper examines the degrees of cooperation and conflict between the Socialist countries from January 1962 until the end of August 1968. The study is an experiment in the analysis of international interaction events. The sources of data are rather exceptional news media: the relevant editorials of five Finnish newspapers and the Chronology of Current History. However, the method is not a content analysis but an event analysis. The concept of actional distance is used to measure and combine (both explicitly and implicitly) cooperation and conflict. Actional distance between A and B includes both direct interaction between them and the behavior of A and B toward some object X. The distances among the Socialist countries are described in regard to the Sino-Soviet conflict. The bloc is found to be divided into two subgroups with the exception of five countries which do not belong to either of them. The theory tested is the Simmel/Coser cohesion hypothesis, which is strongly supported by the results. The results are compared with two content analysis studies and one transaction flow study; the comparison confirms the validity of the results of this paper. The validity problem is also discussed.

This paper examines the degrees of cooperation and conflict between the Socialist countries from January 1962 until the end of August 1968. The study is an experiment in the analysis of international interaction events. The sources of data are rather exceptional news media: the relevant editorials of five Finnish newspapers and the Chronology of Current History. However, the method is not a content analysis but an event analysis. The concept of actional distance is used to measure and combine (both explicitly and implicitly) cooperation and conflict. Actional distance between A and B includes both direct interaction between them and the behavior of A and B toward some object X. The distances among the Socialist countries are described in regard to the Sino-Soviet conflict. The bloc is found to be divided into two subgroups with the exception of five countries which do not belong to either of them. The theory tested is the Simmel/Coser cohesion hypothesis, which is strongly supported by the results. The results are compared with two content analysis studies and one transac tion flow study; the comparison confirms the validity of the results of this paper. The validity problem is also discussed.

Geopolitical writing has been more extensive in Finland than in any other Nordic country in recent years. This rejoinder article is a contextualized reading of the development of Finnish geopolitics within both Finnish Human Geography and International Relations academia. It seeks to diversify an argument propounded by Ola Tunander, who scrutinized recent developments in Nordic geopolitical scholarship. Tunander gave some interesting evidence of how a few critical scholars practising geopolitics were able to have a direct impact on political events in Europe in the 1990s and how they challenged the 'US victory school' characterized by realist geopolitics. This rejoinder article suggests that the rise of Finnish geopolitics in the 1990s had surprisingly little to do with its policy relevance to region-building or otherwise shaping the political landscape in the European North. The rise of Finnish geopolitics should rather be regarded as an academic process that was inspired by the advances made in Anglo-American critical political geography. While interdisciplinary geopolitical scholarship made a promising start in Finland in the 1990s, recent developments give less reason for optimism. Some challenges for future geopolitical scholarship are also discussed.

Distinctive due to explicit and systematically developed links between international relations (IR) and related disciplines, this book addresses global and regional interactions and the complex policy problems that often characterise this agenda. Such enhanced communication is crucial for improving the capacity of IR to engage with concrete issues that today are of high policy relevance for international organisations, states, diplomats, mediators and humankind in general. Whilst the authors do not reject the present IR, they offer a wider research agenda with new directions intended not only for those IR scholars who are unsatisfied with the analytical power of the current discipline, but also for those working on 'international', 'foreign', 'global' or 'interregional' issues in other disciplines and fields of research. In this instance they pay particular attention to linking up with peace research, international political economy (IPE) and cultural political economy (CPE), sociology, political geography, development studies, linguistics, cultural studies, environmental studies and energy research, gender studies, and traditions of area studies

"Presenting International Studies as a wide, plural and inherently interdisciplinary field of research, this book shows its links with philosophy, peace research, history, geography, globalization studies, international political economy, political psychology, sociology and social theory, linguistics, strategic or war studies and anthropology"--

Distinctive due to explicit and systematically developed links between international relations (IR) and related disciplines, this book addresses global and regional interactions and the complex policy problems that often characterise this agenda. In this instance they pay particular attention to linking up with peace research, international political economy (IPE) and cultural political economy (CPE), sociology, political geography, development studies, linguistics, cultural studies, environmental studies and energy research, gender studies, and traditions of area studies.

Introduces a thematic journal issue devoted to a critical geopolitics of Northern Europe (particularly the Baltic Sea area), with the intent of taking the region as a central unit of analysis to reveal rich regional geopolitical patterns. Focus is on the idea of the "new European North," an emergent post-Cold War constellation of cooperation & relations, & the concomitant rise of the "Northern" marker & accompanying identity politics. The European North's institutional character took shape under the European Union's Northern Dimension initiative, which is detailed from positive & critical points of view, a taste of the kinds of angles taken by the issue's contributions, which are briefly presented. 4 Figures. J. Zendejas