Social democracy and the postcolonial order

社会民主主义与后殖民秩序

• 批准号: 439625369
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Jan Eckel
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl für Neueste Geschichte und Zeitgeschichte
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/439625369?language=en
• 关键词: Social; democracy; postcolonial; order

Within a few years after 1969, seven social democratic parties assumed power in Europe, setting out to forge ambitious new programs for their countries’ foreign policies. For the first time since the Second World War, these countries now possessed a social democratic foreign policy that moreover broke with long-standing national traditions of navigating international affairs. On the one hand, the new departures in foreign policy responded to what policymakers saw as a rapidly changing global situation. Détente appeared to overcome the „Cold War,“ the growing „interdependence“ of world regions put new global problems on the agenda, the Bretton Woods system was about to dissolve and decolonization had produced numerous new states that established themselves as influential actors on the international stage. On the other hand, social democratic governments were determined to take advantage of this perceived moment of fluidity in order to shape the international system according to their visions. In their eyes, developing a forward-looking relationship with the global South represented one of the most significant tasks in this endeavor.This project examines how these governments created a new social democratic foreign policy during the 1970s and 1980s by means of confronting the problems of the emerging postcolonial order. It focuses on three particular governments and their policies in two important fields, studying the German, Dutch, and Swedish roles in the debates on the creation of a „New International Economic Order“ and their attitudes toward colonial or minority rule and liberation movements in Southern Africa. Resolving both issues was widely seen as essential for the future of both social democracy and international politics. The project will study how the ideas for a new social democratic foreign policy emerged, how governments put them into practice, and what results these new approaches yielded.The study proposed here will connect the history of social democracy and the history of what contemporaries termed the conflict between „North“ and „South.“ It strives to expand our knowledge on three levels: Firstly, the project highlights Social Democracy as a crucial actor in international affairs and, at the same time, foreign policy as an important field of Social Democratic action, combining two aspects that have received scant attention among historians. Secondly, the project contributes to exploring the transformation of the international order during the 1970s and 1980s. Thirdly, it seeks to nuance our understanding of these decades as the „beginning of our present“ by emphasizing contemporaries’ expectations of and attempts to bring about a more just and equal world order than the one that subsequently emerged.

在1969年之后的几年里，七个社会民主党在欧洲掌权，开始为他们国家的外交政策制定雄心勃勃的新计划。自第二次世界大战以来，这些国家第一次拥有了社会民主外交政策，而且打破了长期存在的驾驭国际事务的民族传统。一方面，外交政策的新转变是对政策制定者眼中迅速变化的全球形势的回应。缓和似乎克服了“冷战”，世界地区日益增长的“相互依存”将新的全球问题提上议事日程，布雷顿森林体系即将解体，非殖民化产生了许多新的国家，它们在国际舞台上确立了自己的影响力。另一方面，社会民主政府决心利用这一被认为具有流动性的时刻，根据它们的愿景塑造国际体系。在他们看来，发展与全球南方的前瞻性关系是这一努力中最重要的任务之一。这个项目考察了这些政府如何在20世纪70年代和80年代通过应对新出现的后殖民秩序的问题来创建新的社会民主外交政策。它聚焦于三个特定的政府及其在两个重要领域的政策，研究了德国、荷兰和瑞典在关于建立“国际经济新秩序”的辩论中所扮演的角色，以及他们对南部非洲殖民或少数统治和解放运动的态度。人们普遍认为，解决这两个问题对社会民主和国际政治的未来都至关重要。这个项目将研究新的社会民主外交政策的想法是如何产生的，各国政府如何将其付诸实践，以及这些新方法产生了什么结果。这里提出的研究将把社会民主的历史与当代人所称的“南北”冲突的历史联系起来。它努力在三个层面上扩大我们的知识：首先，该项目突出了社会民主在国际事务中的关键角色，同时将外交政策作为社会民主行动的一个重要领域，将历史学家很少关注的两个方面结合在一起。其次，该项目有助于探讨1970年代和1980年代国际秩序的转变。第三，它试图通过强调当代人对比随后出现的世界秩序更公正、更平等的世界秩序的期望和努力，来细微地区别我们对这几十年作为“我们现在的开始”的理解。