Collective Memory and National Role Conceptions
The Legacy of Violence on Foreign Policy in Austria and Greece During the Cold War
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 17810552 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marion Foster (Centre for European Policy Studies, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 5-5 |
| Publication date | 2026-03-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Central European Journal of International and Security Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1802-548X • E-ISSN: 1805-482X |
| Publisher | Metropolitan University Prague (PUBLISHER • CZ) |
| DOI | 10.51870/ovtz9270 |
| OpenAlex | W7133219021 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 77 |
This article investigates the influence of collective memories of violence on the foreign policies of small states, focusing on Austria and Greece as two ‘frontline states’ of the early Cold War in Europe. The article develops an analytical framework linking memory narratives to policy. Using qualitative discourse analysis, it shows how policy elites framed past violence either as heroic sacrifice or as national victimisation to conceptualise and legitimise diverging foreign policy strategies. The findings demonstrate that the selective remembrance of past violence shapes national role conceptions and strategic choices. They underscore memory’s role as a strategic resource for policy elites, offering new directions for scholarship on the ideational foundations of small state foreign policy
Cold war · Collective memory · Foreign policy · Narrative · Scholarship · Spanish Civil War · Victimisation · European history and politics · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration
From the Ashes of History
The Grand Strategies of Small States
Dangerous Memory and Alternate Knowledges (Communities of Resistance and Solidarity)
The Institutionalization and Deinstitutionalization of Rationality Criteria
Kleine Geschichte Griechenlands
Role Theory in International Relations
Time Maps
National Interests in International Society
Introduction. Memory and Identity
Remembering Relationality
Across Type, Time and Space
How Ideas and Institutions Shape the Politics of Public Policy
Memorials to Injustice
Ontological Security in International Relations
National Identities and International Relations
The Politics of Memory and the Poetics of History
Ideas and Foreign Policy
Role Theory, Narratives, and Interpretation
Greece
The Paradoxical Republic
Greece and the Cold War
World Ordering
Modern Greece
Trauma and the Memory of Politics
Contested Roles and Domestic Politics
Narrative, Ontological Security, and Foreign Policy Change
The Contested Selection of National Role Conceptions
Diplomacy with Memory
The Human Factor
The ‘Habsburg Dilemma’ Today
Genealogy of a category mistake
Warfare and the Sacralisation of Nations
Friends, There Are No Friends? An Intimate Reframing of the International
Introduction
Whereof we can speak, thereof we must not be silent
National History—National Imagery
Toward a New Theory of Institutional Change
What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge
Argument and Rhetoric in the Justification of Political Violence
Agonistic Democracy and the Politics of Memory
Ontological Security in World Politics
Ontological security as temporal security? The role of 'significant historical others' in world politics
Social Memory Studies
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |