Tuomas Forsberg

Certainly the territorial disputes within the former Soviet Union have become front page news recently. This collection of essays offers some historical perspective to contemporary events by providing an analysis of eight potential or actual border disputes stemming from Soviet expansion at the end of World War II, and a discussion of the regional identities of annexed border regions within Russia. Specific treatment is given to territorial disputes concerning: Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, Carpatho-Ukraine, Eastern Poland, East Prussia, Abrene, the East of Narva and Petserimaa, Karelia, and the Kurile Islands. Distributed by Ashgate. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Border Disputes at the Edge of the Former Soviet Empire

Contested Territory

Christer Pursiainen

This book focuses on foreign policy decision-making from the viewpoint of psychology. Psychology is always present in human decision-making, constituted by its structural determinants but also playing its own agency-level constitutive and causal roles, and therefore it should be taken into account in any analysis of foreign policy decisions. The book analyses a wide variety of prominent psychological approaches, such as bounded rationality, prospect theory, belief systems, cognitive biases, emotions, personality theories and trust to the study of foreign policy, identifying their achievements and added value as well as their limitations from a comparative perspective. Understanding how leaders in world politics act requires us to consider recent advances in neuroscience, psychology and behavioral economics. As a whole, the book aims at better integrating various psychological theories into the study of international relations and foreign policy analysis, as partial explanations themselves but also as facets of more comprehensive theories. It also discusses practical lessons that the psychological approaches offer since ignoring psychology can be costly: decision-makers need to be able reflect on their own decision-making process as well as the perspectives of the others. Paying attention to the psychological factors in international relations is necessary for better understanding the microfoundations upon which such agency is based.

The Psychology of Foreign Policy

Sirke Mäkinen

This book focuses on Russia’s cultural statecraft in dealing with a number of institutional cultural domains such as education, museums and monuments, high arts and sport. It analyses to what extent Russia’s cultural activities abroad have been used for foreign policy purposes, and perceived as having a political dimension. Building on the concept of cultural statecraft, the authors present a broad and nuanced view of how Russia sees the role of culture in its external relations, how this shapes the image of Russia, and the ways in which this cultural statecraft is received by foreign audiences. The expert team of contributors consider: what choices are made in fostering this agenda; how Russian state authorities see the purpose and limits of various cultural instruments; to what extent can the authorities shape these instruments; what fields have received more attention and become more politicized and what fields have remained more autonomous. The methodological research design of the book as a whole is a comparative case study comparing the nature of Russian cultural statecraft across time, target countries and diverse cultural fields. It will be of interest to scholars and students of Russian foreign policy and external relations and those working on the role of culture in world politics.

Tuomas Forsberg

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