| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Compared with bigger states, smaller states have fewer votes, less economic power, fewer administrative resources and less staff and experts. This leads to disadvantages in negotiations. Yet smaller states can concentrate their limited resources on issues of great importance and can-under certain conditions-punch above their weight. This is especially effective if small states use their ideational resources in applying different argumentative strategies. Each strategy is only effective under certain scope conditions. The vodka and the pesticides cases illustrate that active small states can punch above their weight if they make arguments that fit the nature of the issue and resonate well with prior beliefs of the addressees of the arguments. A regulatory issue that is technical in nature, such as the pesticides case, requires good scientific arguments. A political issue with prevalent distributive effects, such as the vodka case, calls for normative arguments to persuade neutral actors and the re-framing of the distributional elements into common-good questions to talk actors with opposing preferences into acceptance.
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