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Photo of Annika Bergman Rosamond. Taken by Annika. Photo.

Annika Bergman Rosamond

Associate Professor | Senior Lecturer

Photo of Annika Bergman Rosamond. Taken by Annika. Photo.

Swedish Feminist Foreign Policy in the Making : Ethics, Politics, and Gender

Author

  • Karin Aggestam
  • Annika Bergman-Rosamond

Summary, in English

In 2015, the world's first self-defined feminist government was formed in Sweden with the explicit ambition of pursuing a feminist foreign policy. This essay seeks to unpack and highlight some of the substance and plausible future directions of a feminist foreign policy. The overarching ambition is three-fold: (1) to probe the normative contents of feminist foreign policy in theory and in practice; (2) to identify a number of potential challenges and ethical dilemmas that are detrimental to gender-sensitive global politics; and (3) to advance a research agenda that can deepen the normative and ethical notions of a feminist foreign policy. Sweden's feminist foreign policy is still in the making. Its conduct is mostly incremental and focused on international agenda setting and normative entrepreneurship, which is guided by an ethically informed framework of cosmopolitanism and human rights. Yet, this essay argues that this reorientation is distinct for two reasons: First, by adopting the F-word it elevates politics from a broadly consensual orientation of gender mainstreaming towards more controversial politics, which explicitly seeks to renegotiate and challenge power hierarchies and gendered institutions that hitherto defined global institutions and foreign and security policies. Second, it contains a normative reorientation of foreign policy, which is guided by an ethically informed framework based on broad cosmopolitan norms of global justice and peace. The article concludes by advancing a research agenda that draws upon feminist IR theory and enhances the ethical and transformative contents of the English School by making it more gender-sensitive and appropriate for the study of feminist foreign policy.

Department/s

  • Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies (CMES)
  • MECW: The Middle East in the Contemporary World
  • Department of Political Science

Publishing year

2016

Language

English

Pages

323-334

Publication/Series

Ethics and International Affairs

Volume

30

Issue

3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Topic

  • Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalization Studies)

Status

Published

Project

  • Rethinking Peace Diplomacy and Foreign Policy

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0892-6794