Publications
Norway and the European Economic Area: Good Deal or Just an EU Rule-Taker?
'After more than 20 years in the European Economic Area (EEA), it may look as if this remains the solution for Norway – part of the EU's single market but not an actual EU member state. There is no great political push to change Norway's status for now but there are still debates on the political, economic and institutional pluses and minuses of being on the margins of the EU not at its heart,' author Ole Gunnar Austvik writes in this op-ed.
ICT, growth and happiness
This paper reviews two strands of literature. The first is on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and growth. The increasing role of ICTs came together with stagnating growth rates in many countries. This has been denoted the Solow paradox. During the dot-com era from the mid-1990s, many believed that the paradox was solved. Growth rates increased and the internet became pervasive. The great recession has been followed by lower growth in Europe and in the United States and a return of the Solow paradox. Evidence indicates that the share of internet users in a population had a positive effect of growth in the 1990s, but that this effect vanished for developed countries after 2000. The second strand of literature is a heterogeneous research tradition that relates ICT not to income and growth, but to human well-being. That literature indicates positive (as well as some negative) effects of ICT and the internet on people’s happiness. Some new evidence indicate that the share of internet users in populations in a panel of countries is positively related to average happiness.
Tøffe kår for samarbeid
I slutten av denne uka møter USAs president Donald Trump Russlands president Vladimir Putin for første gang. Møtet skal skje på sidelinjen av G20-møtet i Hamburg, hvor statsledere for verdens ledende økonomier skal diskutere blant annet klimaendringer, frihandel og kamp mot terrorisme. Både Trump og Putin ser på Syria, Nord-Korea, Iran og antiterror som felt for mulig konstruktivt samarbeid. Fra russisk side er det signalisert at de ønsker å snakke om Syria. Det hersker imidlertid stor usikkerhet i både Washington og Moskva rundt hva Trump vil velge å ta opp under møtet med Putin.
Knowledge Management and Police Peacekeepers: Experiences and Recommendations.
While over 90 countries contribute police personnel to international peace operations, only a handful systematically interview returned police and attempt to gather insights and information on their mission experiences. This report explores a selection of police-contributing countries (PCCs), examining their mechanisms for deploying police officers to international missions, and then, on return from international missions, for collecting information on their experiences. From this overview, we identify good practices as well as gaps in knowledge generation, and offer some recommendations for improving the collection, management and application of mission-relevant police knowledge. Establishing coherent systems for gathering insights from on-the-ground experiences of police officers deployed to peace operations is valuable for building and sharing awareness of what works and what does not work in international police deployments. Such feedback should be used by PCCs to inform and tailor police pre-deployment training programmes, support mechanisms for deployed officers, and post-deployment reintegration practices. The insights of police officers who have served in peace operations can also be applied to enrich what is known about the complex tasks international police are commonly asked to perform, such as supporting the reform and restructuring of host-state police and law-enforcement institutions, and the challenges of undertaking such tasks in specific mission and country contexts.
Russia's turn to the East: The Ministry for the Development of the Far East, and the domestic dimension
Russia’s recently proclaimed turn toward Asia is fuelled by expectations of reaping benefits from integrating with the fast-growing markets of Northeast Asia. However, such a geoeconomic reorientation requires a viable springboard in the Russian Far East. For all the talk about Asia–Pacific markets, a key component of the Asian pivot is Russia’s own Far Eastern region, an underdeveloped, crisis-ridden backwater that currently constitutes a ‘double periphery’ – in relation to Moscow, and to the Asia–Pacific (Kuhrt 2012).
Researching the Effectiveness of Peace Operations, Seminar Report, 31 May – 1 June, Oslo
The African Union (AU), European Union (EU), and United Nations (UN) are under increasing pressure to justify the effectiveness of the peace operations they deploy. Justifying this effectiveness requires precise assessments based on systematized and evidence-based data. Per now, however, this data is lacking, a gap the global research community could help address. On 31 May and 1 June 2017, the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) hosted a seminar that brought together thirty participants from the AU, UN, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as research institutes and think tanks from across the globe. The aim of the seminar was to share insights on how best to research the effectiveness of peace operations and to explore the establishment of a network that could seek to address this gap. The seminar discussed how to research and measure the effectiveness of peace operations. It looked at current definitions and conceptualizations of effectiveness, and it discussed the varying perceptions stakeholders have of the effectiveness of peace operations. The group also explored the options for establishing a network dedicated to research on the effectiveness of peace operations. The seminar agreed on the value of establishing such a network, with an aim to produce knowledge that is both academically valuable and relevant for policymakers. Hence, it considered different organizational modalities for a potential research network, with regards to governing principles, funding, and how researchers could undertake joint research projects. This report summarizes the key conclusions and recommendations from the seminar, and lists what the next steps may be for the establishment of a research network on the effectiveness of peace operations.
The import price index with trade barriers: theory and evidence
The standard economic import price index hinges on an assumption of free trade. Applying the index to situations with barriers to trade yields biased results compared to a true import price index. To circumvent this problem, it is common to use average prices, such as unit values, as an aggregator function. However, the use of average prices is not rooted in economic theory. In this paper, I generalise the economic import price index to allow for barriers to trade in the form of quantity constraints. To illustrate the theoretical framework, I use the case of imports of textiles to Norway from 1988 to 1997. I find that a standard economic import price index, such as the Laspeyres index, grossly overstates import costs and that this bias is significantly reduced by using unit values.
The governance of global wealth chains
This article offers a theoretical framework to explain how Global Wealth Chains (GWCs) are created, maintained, and governed. We draw upon different strands of literature, including scholarship in International Political Economy and Economic Geography on Global Value Chains, literature on finance and law in Institutional Economics, and work from Economic Sociology on network dynamics within markets. This scholarship assists us in highlighting three variables in how GWCs are articulated and change according to: (1) the complexity of transactions, (2) regulatory liability, and (3) innovation capacities among suppliers of products used in wealth chains. We then differentiate five types of GWC governance – Market, Modular, Relational, Captive, and Hierarchy – which range from simple ‘off shelf’ products shielded from regulators by advantageous international tax laws to highly complex and flexible innovative financial products produced by large financial institutions and corporations. This article highlights how GWCs intersect with value chains, and provides brief case examples of wealth chains and how they interact.
Fragile States as the New Development Agenda?
As Europe struggles with the repercussions of violent conflict in the Middle East, North Africa and the Sahel, including high numbers of refugees attempting to enter Europe, the issue of fragile states is pushed to the top of European policy agendas. There are calls to do more – military interventions in different forms, but also humanitarian and development assistance. European countries seek to refocus their development aid towards stabilisation efforts in fragile states that send refugees their way. This trend is unfolding all over Europe, including the Nordic countries. What then could be the basis for a new development agenda for fragile states. Senior Research Fellow Morten Bøås adresses this in new debate article.
Social Justice through Inclusion: The Consequences of Electoral Quotas in India
Across the world, governments design and implement policies with the explicit goal of promoting social justice. But can such institutions change entrenched social norms? And what effects should we expect from differently designed policies? Francesca R. Jensenius' Social Justice through Inclusion is an empirically rich study of one of the most extensive electoral quota systems in the world: the reserved seats for the Scheduled Castes (SCs, the former "untouchables") in India's legislative assemblies. Combining evidence from quantitative datasets from the period 1969-2012, archival work, and in-depth interviews with politicians, civil servants, and voters across India, the book explores the long-term effects of electoral quotas for the political elite and the general population. It shows that the quota system has played an important role in reducing caste-based discrimination, particularly at the elite level. Interestingly, this is not because the system has led to more group representation - SC politicians working specifically for SC interests - but because it has made possible the creation and empowerment of a new SC elite who have gradually become integrated into mainstream politics. This is a study of India, but the findings and discussions have broader implications. Policies such as quotas are usually supported with arguments about various assumed positive long-term consequences. The nuanced discussions in this book shed light on how electoral quotas for SCs have shaped the incentives for politicians, parties, and voters, and indicate the trade-offs inherent in how such policies of group inclusion are designed.