Halvard Leira

Ekspertkilde eller politiker? : medias bidrag til underskudd på utenrikspolitisk debatt

Norway and the BRICS (I): An Overview of Emerging Power Cooperation

Norway and the BRICS (II): The Current State of Play

Norway and the BRICS (IV): Challenges and Opportunities

Undermining Hegemony? Building a Framework for Goods Substitution

The logics that we have outlined may, indeed, be applicable to a wide array of international actors and organizations that are aspiring to play public goods substitution roles. Likewise, they are applicable to a number of actors seeking alternative access to public goods. For example, supply and demand factors may help explain both the growing pains and potential power of the BRICS and recast debates about the role of alternative lenders in the developing world. Ultimately, our project is an appeal to think more precisely about the components of hegemonic order and the more hidden mechanisms that may contribute to its transformation or, in certain cases, enduring resilience.

The formative years: Norway as an obsessive status-seeker

This chapter shows how status concerns were central to how Norway related to the wider world during the formative nineteenth century: status and identity were inextricably intertwined. It argues that Norwegian politics throughout the nineteenth century were deeply concerned with status and status seeking. When Norwegians started discussing foreign politics and foreign policy, it was in terms of peace, prosperity and status, with the people closely linked to all these phenomena. The many active NGOs as well as the constant references to duties and a Norwegian mission indicate that this explanation must be taken seriously. Even though the resources spent internally in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have been modest, the sheer mass of public attention paid to peace issues has probably made it harder to discuss other matters in Norwegian foreign policy. Various Norwegian politicians have noted that peace activism has given them better access to great-power decision-makers.

International Relations Pluralism and History—Embracing Amateurism to Strengthen the Profession

This article approaches the possibility of achieving pluralist International Relations research through engagements with history/History. There are serious sociological and disciplinary challenges to achieving pluralism, most importantly related to the need to make a mark and a career in one specific discipline and the constant diversification of disciplines. Even so, drawing on the literature of amateurism, understood as engaging in an activity for the love of it, it is argued here that a spirit of engaged amateurism in dealing with history offers an important opportunity for exploring commonalities and fostering pluralism both within the discipline and across disciplinary boundaries.