Publications
The BRICS and Coexistence
The grouping consisting of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) was initially meant to be nothing more than clever investment jargon referring to the largest and most attractive emerging economies. However, these countries identified with the BRIC concept, and started to meet annually as a group in 2008. At their fourth summit in 2011, they added South Africa to become the BRICS. By then the BRICS had fully morphed from investment jargon to a name for a new economic and political grouping that had the potential to challenge the unipolar hegemony of the United States and its Western allies. This work analyses the extent to which the concept of coexistence explains the individual foreign policies of the BRICS countries. The editors define coexistence as a strategy that promotes the establishment of a rule-based system for co-managing the global order. It recognizes that different states may legitimately pursue their own political and economic interests, but they have to do so within the bounds of a rule-based international system that ensures the peaceful coexistence of states. The BRICS and Coexistence addresses the political dimension of the emergence and influence of the BRICS in the international system and will be of interest to students and scholars of Politics, Development and International Relations.
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.
Extending State Authority in Liberia The Gbarnga Justice and Security Hub / Marina Caparini
This report examines the establishment of the first regional justice and security hub near Gbarnga, Liberia. By building up law enforcement and justice capacities in the outlying regions, the hub represents a joint effort by the Government of Liberia and the UN Peacebuilding Fund to extend Liberian state authority. The context for this pilot initiative is that Liberian police and justice services have a weak presence outside the capital city of Monrovia and will increasingly bear sole responsibility for safety and security as the UN Mission in Liberia draws down its forces with a view to eventual withdrawal.
Role of South-South Cooperation and Emerging Powers in Peacemaking and Peacebuilding
Status and sovereign equality: Small states in multilateral settings
In this chapter, we explore Norwegian UN policy, arguing that it is a central arena for Norwegian efforts to be recognized by others. Our focus on Norwegian UN policy is not an end in itself, but a means to develop a more general argument about status seeking behaviour in a multilateral setting. We argue that status seeking in multilateral settings is distinct from status seeking in other settings, and that this stems from the norms of reciprocity and rulebased cooperation in such settings. Multilateral settings put a premium on behaviour that is in keeping with a commitment to the furtherance and expansion of the rules established by multilateral cooperation and organizations. Certain types of behaviour or role, rather than certain types of resources, can accord status. Norway has specialized in one distinct ‘role’: that of being a team-player, a facilitator – an actor that can be relied upon to take on the burden of doing things in which it has no identifiable direct stake or interest. A case in point is the UN request as to whether Norway could shoulder the responsibility for destroying Syria’s chemical weapons. We conclude the chapter by suggesting that the role developed in multilateral settings has so pervaded Norwegian diplomatic tradition that it is present in bilateral settings as well. We proceed as follows. We first elaborate briefly on the editors’ introduction and highlight how status seeking is reflected in the skills and diplomatic forms that are valued in different settings. We then briefly describe overall Norway’s UN policy, with a few examples of what a status-based reading of this policy can tell us about Norwegian foreign policy, and about multilateralism as a distinct arena for status seeking. Next, we present the specific manifestations of their distinctiveness of multilateral settings, and link this to Norwegian diplomats’ self-understandings and conceptions of what characterizes a good diplomat: the ability to be tapped into what is going on in an effort to present oneself with resources that can be put to good use on issues in which Norway may often not have any distinct or direct stakes. This tendency to stress the role as ‘helper’ is most pronounced in relation to issue-areas where the USA has vital interests, and is less so where less powerful states are concerned. Thus, power differentials play a central role also in multilateral settings, where it matters who is the demandeur for the tasks to be undertaken.