Identity, Interest and Action: A Cultural Explanation of Sweden's Intervention in the Thirty Years War

Cambridge Cultural Social Studies

by Erik Ringmar

This book offers an original combination of cultural and narratological analysis with an empirical study of identity and political action. A powerful critique of rational choice theory, it also provides a solution to the historiographical puzzle of why Sweden intervened in The Thirty Years' War. Arguing that people act for reasons of identity, more fundamental than reasons of interest, Erik Ringmar shows the Swedish intervention to have been an attempt on behalf of Swedish leaders to gain recognition for themselves and their country.

252 pages, Hardcover

First published October 3, 1996

About the author

Erik Ringmar (林瑞谷) is a retired professor of political science.

Ringmar graduated with a PhD from the Department of Political Science, Yale University, in 1993. Between 1995 and 2007 he was senior lecturer in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics, United Kingdom, and between 2007 and 2013 he worked as a professor of political science in China, the last two years as Zhi Yuan Chair Professor of International Relations at Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, PRC. Between 2013 and 2019 he worked in the department of political science at Lund University, Sweden and then at Ibn Haldun University. Ringmar is a Fulbright Scholar.