This cross-national treatment of the foreign policies of Northern Europe—Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden—is organized by substantive policy areas rather than by country, thus allowing most-similar-case analyses of several dimensions of the countries' international relations. The authors make comparisons among the countries in each area of investigation and present details of security, international development, and neighborhood and foreign policy processes. They also describe and explain international and domestic forces that shape the region's external policies. The combination of sound, empirically based data and attention to broader international and theoretical interests allows relevant comparisons with other advanced industrial states.