Abstract
If you fly across the Atlantic on a clear day, you can look down and see the same phenomenon but on two different scales. From the medium-sized Norway to the slightly smaller and more powerful Britain to the vast snows of Canada and then the smaller but mightier United States of America. Size and power, although connected, cannot be equated nor can power and prosperity, or prestige prosperity, or prestige or autonomy. As the the founder of the German geopolitical school and father of the term ‘geopolitics’, Rudolf Kjellen has noted—power potential is not the determinant of which actors develop a will to greater power—what he calls ‘vilja till mera makt’.1 Kjellen focus on the intervening variables that make some actors punch above their weight and why other actors fail to achieve their potential, which is arguably the case with the EU. It is argued that EU displayed the behavioural patterns of a small power in the period 2003–2010.
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Toje, A. (2010). The Making of a Small Power. In: The European Union as a Small Power. Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230281813_8
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