Dominating Friends? Norway and the Atlantic Hegemons

In this project, I aim to explore how Norwegian foreign policy is and has been shaped by British and US hegemony, through a bottom-up focus, and with emphasis on how abstract hegemony is turned into specific practice. Whereas traditional accounts of hegem ony focus on the brute power of the hegemon, or assume that common values enables hegemony, there has been relatively little focus on how hegemony functions when there is no physical coercion involved and when all states involved take the order for grante d, seeing it as natural and beneficial. I thus ask how such hegemony comes about, and how it is perpetuated. The theoretical aim of this project, therefore, is to contribute to filling the void between power and knowledge, by discussing explicitly how pow er and knowledge interlock and influence one another - or the functioning of what I shall label an ideational hegemony - between states that share friendly relations. From this theoretical view of hegemony a certain empirical implication follows, namely t hat hegemonic power implies the transfer of particular ideas or worldviews from a powerful state to a weaker, and that the subsequent practices derived from these ideas in turn authenticate and reinforce the position of the hegemonic power. The first empi rical part of the project thus deals with the roots of Norwegian foreign policy knowledge, detailing the establishment of a foreign policy discourse in Norway ca.1890-1905. The later parts detail how ideas about being in the world are turned into practice ; how world views and practices are normalised, by looking specifically at the training of those responsible for projecting such ideas to the outside world, such as diplomats, politicians, bureaucrats and academics. The project will provide important ins ights into how hegemony can operate without the use of brute force. It will increase awareness about practices that are taken for given, and question how foreign policy can best be conceptualised.