Publications
Introduksjon: Nordiske svar på geopolitiske utfordringer
(Available in Norwegian only): Denne artikkelen introduserer et temanummer om hvordan de fem nordiske landene – Danmark, Finland, Island, Norge og Sverige – fremstiller og responderer på geopolitiske utfordringer i sine omgivelser. Nordens strategiske beliggenhet – i Europas nordlige utkant, med grense mot Russland på den ene siden og store havområder på den andre – gjør at endringer i sikkerhetspolitikken og i maktbalansen mellom stormaktene er av umiddelbar relevans. Artiklene drøfter hovedtrekk ved de nordiske landenes nåværende utenrikspolitikk, hver for seg, men til dels også sammen, sett i lys både av historiske linjer og nåværende geopolitiske rammebetingelser. Med særlig vekt på de enkelte lands relasjoner til stormaktene USA, Russland, EU og Kina, og til sikkerhetsinstitusjonene FN og NATO, fremhever bidragene noen særtrekk ved den hjemlige utenrikspolitiske debatten i de enkelte land, og kartlegger hvilke ressurser og virkemidler det enkelte land typisk velger å ta i bruk i møte med ulike utfordringer.
Inside Russia’s Imperial Relations: The Social Constitution of Putin-Kadyrov Patronage
This article analyses how Moscow has extended its rule over Chechnia since the beginning of this century. Within the larger understanding of this rule as imperial in form, the current distinct contractual relation between the Russian center and Chechnia is substantiated as one based on kinship. I argue that the Putin-Kadyrov relationship is a generic case of patronage but highlight the local imprint that such relations acquire by tracing how Chechen kinship practices inform this case.
Colonized Children: Chechnya in Russia
This chapter explores how kinship relations have functioned as a source of social power in Chechnya and, since the end of the second post-soviet Chechen war, constituted a bond between Moscow and Grozny that allowed Russian governance over Chechnya.
Conclusion: Military rapid response—from institutional investment to ad hoc solutions
The track record of military rapid response mechanisms, troops on standby, ready to be deployed to a crisis within a short time frame by intergovernmental organizations, remains disappointing. Yet, many of the obstacles to multinational actors launching a rapid and effective military response in times of crisis are largely similar. This book is the first comprehensive and comparative contribution to explore and identify the key factors that hamper and enable the development and deployment of multinational rapid response mechanisms. Examining lessons from deployments by the AU, the EU, NATO, and the UN in the Central African Republic, Mali, Somalia and counter-piracy in the Horn of Africa, the contributors focus upon the following questions: Was there a rapid response to the crises? By whom? If not, what were the major obstacles to rapid response? Did inter-organizational competition hinder responsiveness? Or did cooperation facilitate responsiveness? Bringing together leading scholars working in this area offers a unique opportunity to analyze and develop lessons for policy-makers and for theorists of inter-organizational relations. This work will be of interest to scholars and students of peacebuilding, peacekeeping, legitimacy and international relations.
Tangled up in glue: Multilateral crisis responses in Mali
The track record of military rapid response mechanisms, troops on standby, ready to be deployed to a crisis within a short time frame by intergovernmental organizations, remains disappointing. Yet, many of the obstacles to multinational actors launching a rapid and effective military response in times of crisis are largely similar. This book is the first comprehensive and comparative contribution to explore and identify the key factors that hamper and enable the development and deployment of multinational rapid response mechanisms. Examining lessons from deployments by the AU, the EU, NATO, and the UN in the Central African Republic, Mali, Somalia and counter-piracy in the Horn of Africa, the contributors focus upon the following questions: Was there a rapid response to the crises? By whom? If not, what were the major obstacles to rapid response? Did inter-organizational competition hinder responsiveness? Or did cooperation facilitate responsiveness? Bringing together leading scholars working in this area offers a unique opportunity to analyze and develop lessons for policy-makers and for theorists of inter-organizational relations. This work will be of interest to scholars and students of peacebuilding, peacekeeping, legitimacy and international relations.
Introduction: Rapid response mechanisms—strengthening defense cooperation and saving strangers?
The track record of military rapid response mechanisms, troops on standby, ready to be deployed to a crisis within a short time frame by intergovernmental organizations, remains disappointing. Yet, many of the obstacles to multinational actors launching a rapid and effective military response in times of crisis are largely similar. This book is the first comprehensive and comparative contribution to explore and identify the key factors that hamper and enable the development and deployment of multinational rapid response mechanisms. Examining lessons from deployments by the AU, the EU, NATO, and the UN in the Central African Republic, Mali, Somalia and counter-piracy in the Horn of Africa, the contributors focus upon the following questions: Was there a rapid response to the crises? By whom? If not, what were the major obstacles to rapid response? Did inter-organizational competition hinder responsiveness? Or did cooperation facilitate responsiveness? Bringing together leading scholars working in this area offers a unique opportunity to analyze and develop lessons for policy-makers and for theorists of inter-organizational relations. This work will be of interest to scholars and students of peacebuilding, peacekeeping, legitimacy and international relations.
Multinational Rapid Response Mechanisms: From Institutional Proliferation to Institutional Exploitation
The track record of military rapid response mechanisms, troops on standby, ready to be deployed to a crisis within a short time frame by intergovernmental organizations, remains disappointing. Yet, many of the obstacles to multinational actors launching a rapid and effective military response in times of crisis are largely similar. This book is the first comprehensive and comparative contribution to explore and identify the key factors that hamper and enable the development and deployment of multinational rapid response mechanisms. Examining lessons from deployments by the AU, the EU, NATO, and the UN in the Central African Republic, Mali, Somalia and counter-piracy in the Horn of Africa, the contributors focus upon the following questions: Was there a rapid response to the crises? By whom? If not, what were the major obstacles to rapid response? Did inter-organizational competition hinder responsiveness? Or did cooperation facilitate responsiveness? Bringing together leading scholars working in this area offers a unique opportunity to analyze and develop lessons for policy-makers and for theorists of inter-organizational relations. This work will be of interest to scholars and students of peacebuilding, peacekeeping, legitimacy and international relations.
Trade barriers or trade facilitators? The heterogeneous impact of food standards in international trade
Recent research shows that the effect of food standards can be heterogeneous across sectors or countries: they sometimes act as barriers to trade, but in other cases may lead to increased trade. Hege Medin presents empirical evidence on Norwegian seafood exports showing that foreign food standards, measured by sanitary and phytosanitary notifications to the WTO, generally have a negative impact on total exports, the number of exporters and their average exports. However, for fresh seafood, there is a positive counteracting effect. Medin presents a theoretical explanation for this, suggesting that food standards reduce consumer uncertainty about quality and safety and therefore increase demand.
Norway and Russia in the Arctic: New Cold War Contamination?
The standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine has already obstructed cooperation across a range of issues. Could it also affect state interaction between Norway and Russia in the Arctic—an area and a relationship long characterized by a culture of compromise and/or cooperation? Here we start from the theoretical premise that states are not pre-constituted political entities, but are constantly in the making. How Russia views its own role and how it views other actors in the Arctic changes over time, calling for differing approaches. That holds true for Norway as well. To clarify the premises for interaction between Russia and Norway in the Arctic, we scrutinize changes in official discourse on Self and Other in the Arctic on both sides in the period 2012 to 2016, to establish what kind of policy mode—“realist,” “institutionalist,” or “diplomatic management”—has underlain the two countries’ official discourse in that period. Has Norway continued to pursue “balancing” policies undertaken in the realist mode with those in the diplomatic management mode? Which modes have characterized Russia’s approach toward Norway? Finding that realist-mode policies increasingly dominate on both sides, in the conclusion we discuss how the changing mode of the one state affects that of the other, and why a New Cold War is now spreading to the Arctic.
Forum: In the beginning there was no word (For It): Terms, concepts, and early sovereignty
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the concept sovereignty for international relations (IR). And yet, understanding the historical emergence of sovereignty in international relations has long been curtailed by the all-encompassing myth of the Peace of Westphalia. While criticism of this myth has opened space for further historical inquiry in recent years, it has also raised important questions of historical interpretation and methodology relevant to IR, as applying our current conceptual framework to distant historical cases is far from unproblematic. Central among these questions is the when, what, and how of sovereignty: from when can we use “sovereignty” to analyze international politics and for which polities? Can sovereignty be used when the actors themselves did not have recourse to the terminology? And what about polities that do not have recourse to the term at all? What are the theoretical implications of applying the concept of sovereignty to early polities? From different theoretical and methodological perspectives, the contributions in this forum shed light on these questions of sovereignty and how to treat the concept analytically when applied to a period or place when/where the term did not exist as such. In doing so, this forum makes the case for a sensitivity to the historical dimension of our arguments about sovereignty—and, by extension, international relations past and present—as this holds the key to the types of claims we can make about the polities of the world and their relations.