Researchers into globalisation have pointed out that the notion of power in international relations is undergoing a transformation.
Power no longer resides only in the court of superpowers or in the material and causal ability of states to make others do what they otherwise would not do, such as the power to convince others through the potential or actual use of military force. In the age of globality, power first and foremost alludes to one’s immaterial capacity to produce meanings of global problems and of one’s identity in relation to others. Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall call this
108 The playfulness is already reflected in the subheading of the report: Mission for Finland:
How Finland Will Demonstrate Its Strengths by Solving the World’s Most Wicked Problems.
Final Report of the Country Brand Delegation, 25 November 2010. Available at:
http://www.maabrandi.fi/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/TS_Report_EN.pdf.
kind of power ‘productive power’, which means the ‘socially diffuse production of subjectivity in systems of meaning and signification’.109
The modus operandi of productive power is to flexibly reframe and rearticulate advantageous understandings. In the Finnish case, its past mediation-related imageries are deep and rich enough to allow for re-discoveries and re-innovations of its mediation efforts and their overall policy context. The contemporary Finnish mediation models can produce new framings based on its traditional stances.
These include the ‘physician approach’, ‘privileged marginality’,
‘non-participant but engaging neutrality’, ‘bridge-building’,
‘connector between opposites’, and ‘example for others to follow’.
The re-cycling of these past heuristics may lead to national agency poised to innovate and to find serendipitous perspectives in possible conflict situations and, through successful mediation thereof, in Finland’s identity.
Thus, for Finland, the notion of productive power means Finland’s capacity to produce its subjectivity, namely its self-identity and global profile, for example by means of emphasising mediation in multilateral diplomacy with other countries and actors. By emphasising topics related to soft power rather than coercive military interventions, Finland is currently attempting to build its self-image as a peaceful and peace-loving nation. As part of that project, Finland aims to build global networks of information production around it, including non-governmental organisations, to disseminate and reproduce that message globally.
In Finnish policy, networking also serves another, more tangible, function. It provides a channel to establish contacts, to make oneself known internationally and to acquire expertise on mediation-related tasks, which all pave the way to incremental mediation activities.
Perhaps the most well-known example of such networking is the work history of the Finnish Nobel Peace Laureate Martti Ahtisaari.
Before his appointment as a high-level mediator in Kosovo, Indonesia and elsewhere, Ahtisaari had served as the UN Commissioner for Namibia and as the UN Under-Secretary General. As another example, Pekka Haavisto functioned in several high-level international posts, for instance as the Chairman of the Depleted Uranium
109 M Barnett and R Duvall, ‘Power in Global Governance’, in Power in Global Governance, M Barnett and R Duvall (eds), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, p. 3.
Assessment Team of the UNEP (UN Environment Programme) to Bosnia and Herzegovina, before taking up the post of the EU Special Representative for Sudan. At first sight, environmental protection seems to have very little to do with mediation, but global politics is so intertwined that successful networking and successful performance in one area can open the doors to various other sectors.
While famous Finnish mediators have utilised the UN system as a springboard or a catalyst for incremental mediation activities, Norway has successfully used the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to the same effect, which deserves a brief overview in this context. During the Cold War, Norway’s involvement in mediation was limited. In the late 1980s, Norway’s mediation capacities began to evolve and gained momentum in the 1990s. The Norwegian Ministry for Foreign Affairs established a separate unit to deal with peace and reconciliation in 2000.110 Currently, Finland and many other countries lack a separate unit or section to deal with mediation tasks.
Jan Egeland drew on his ICRC networks and the information that flowed from them in initiating numerous peace and reconciliation initiatives by Norway.111 Egeland became a renowned mediator in various peace processes worldwide, notably in relation to those of the Middle East and Guatemala. Networking was also integral to Egeland’s own working method in the field of peace mediation. As Iver Neumann points out, ‘To him, institutionalisation within the MFA would not be worth the candle’.112 Egeland preferred ad hoc mechanisms in his work on mediation, drew in Norwegians who had networks in the relevant areas, and refrained from the codification of the peace efforts within the foreign ministry. As a result, there was no formal institutionalisation of the mediation portfolio in the Norwegian foreign ministry at the time. Instead, mediation was premised on what Neumann calls ‘networked, multi-stakeholder diplomacy’ that utilised the mobility and speed of private actors and the stability provided by official actors, a combination that led to impressive results in two decades.
110 I B Neumann, ‘Peace and Reconciliation Efforts as Systems-Maintaining Diplomacy: The case of Norway’. International Journal, vol. 66, no. 3, 2011, pp. 563–579.
111 Neumann 2011.
112 Neumann 2011.
Both the Finnish and Norwegian experiences show that the embedding of national mediation structures and initiatives in multi-stakeholder networks is the most viable model for small states to conduct mediation. Drawing on lessons of what Egeland terms the ‘Norwegian model’, Finland could take the multi-stakeholder network approach as its modus operandi of mediation, in which the official institutions, for example a separate unit or sector of mediation within the foreign ministry, could be embedded. Active sharing of information and lessons learned between Nordic countries would be vital in enhancing the Nordic model and approach to mediation.