Publications
Funding flows for climate change research on Africa: Where do they come from and where do they go?
Africa has only contributed a small fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions yet faces disproportionate risks from climate change. This imbalance is one of many inequities associated with climate change and raises questions concerning the origin, distribution and thematic prioritization of funding for climate-change research on Africa. This article analyses a database comprising USD 1.51 trillion of research grants from 521 organizations around the world and covering all fields of research from 1990 to 2020. At most 3.8% of global funding for climate-change research is spent on African topics – a figure incommensurate with Africa’s share of the world population and vulnerability to climate change. Moreover, institutions based in Europe and North America received 78% of funding for climate research on Africa, while African institutions received only 14.5%. Research on climate mitigation received only 17% of the funding while climate impacts and adaptation each received around 40%. Except for Egypt and Nigeria, funding supported research on former British colonies more than other African countries. The findings highlight the need to prioritise research on a broader set of climate-change issues in Africa and to increase funding for Africa-based researchers in order to strengthen African ownership of research informing African responses to climate change.
Vietnam's solar and wind power success: Policy implications for the other ASEAN countries
This study analyzes the factors that have facilitated Vietnam's recent rapid solar and wind power expansion and draws policy insights for other member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). A policy-mix analysis focusing on targets, incentive instruments, enabling regulations, and policy implementation is carried out, informed by semi-structured interviews with 20 Vietnamese experts during the period January–March 2021. A comparative analysis between Vietnam and the other ASEAN countries provides policy insights. Generous feed-in tariffs are found to have been a key driver, with income tax and land lease payment exemptions also being important. The main barriers include a high level of policy uncertainty and an underprepared transmission grid. Vietnam's case indicates that a strong price signal and a supportive investment environment can pave the way for rapid solar and wind power uptake. Another key lesson is that early preparation of transmission systems for solar and wind electricity is needed to maximize the potential for expanding the use of these technologies.
Ali Hosseini Khamenei: Routinizing Revolution in Iran
This chapter analyzes how Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei consolidated his rule and the political consequences of his survival strategy. The author argues that Iran’s long-serving leader capitalized on the institutional and ideological legacies of his predecessor, Ayatollah Khomeini, as well as on the high potential for repression in revolutionary regimes. Khamenei has invested in nonelected and parallel revolutionary bodies, maintained strong emphasis on the Islamic Revolution’s ideology and recruited a new generation of followers to the ruling coalition. This essay outlines the tensions arising from Khamenei’s reliance on the organizational structures, aims, and elite selection mechanisms of the revolution and the wish of the Iranian population to change the political course of this important Middle Eastern country.
Surveillance Technology at the Fair: Proliferation of Cyber Capabilities in International Arms Markets
State cyber capabilities are increasingly abiding by the “pay-to-play” model—both US/NATO allies and adversaries can purchase interception and intrusion technologies from private firms for intelligence and surveillance purposes. NSO Group has repeatedly made headlines in 2021 for targeting government entities in cyberspace, but there are many more companies selling similar products that are just as detrimental. These vendors are increasingly looking to foreign governments to hawk their wares, and policymakers have yet to sufficiently recognize or respond to this emerging problem. Any cyber capabilities sold to foreign governments carry a risk: these capabilities could be used against individuals and organizations in allied countries, or even in one’s home country. Because much of this industry operates in the shadows, research into the industry in aggregate is rare. This paper analyzes active providers of interception/intrusion capabilities within the international surveillance market, cataloguing firms that have attended both ISSWorld (i.e., the Wiretapper’s Ball) and international arms fairs over the last twenty years.1 This dataset mostly focuses on Western firms and includes little on Chinese firms, due to historical under-attendance of Chinese firms at ISSWorld. However, the overarching nature of this work will help policymakers better understand the market at large, as well as the primary arms fairs at which these players operate. This paper identifies companies explicitly marketing interception/intrusion technology at arms fairs, and answers a series of questions, including: what companies are marketing interception/intrusion capabilities outside their headquartered region; which arms fairs and countries host a majority of these firms; and what companies market interception/intrusion capabilities to US and NATO adversaries? The resulting dataset shows that there are multiple firms headquartered in Europe and the Middle East that the authors assess, with high confidence, are marketing cyber interception/intrusion capabilities to US/NATO adversaries. They assume that companies offering interception/intrusion capabilities pose the greatest risk, both by bolstering oppressive regimes and by the proliferation of strategic capabilities.2 Many such firms congregate at Milipol France, Security & Policing UK, and other arms fairs in the UK, Germany, Singapore, Israel, and Qatar. The authors found that 75 percent of companies likely selling interception/intrusion technologies have marketed these capabilities to governments outside their home continent. Five irresponsible proliferators—BTT, Cellebrite, Micro Systemation AB, Verint, and Vastech—have marketed their capabilities to US/NATO adversaries in the last ten years.3 This paper categorizes these companies as potentially irresponsible proliferators because of their willingness to market outside their continents to nonallied governments of the United States and NATO—specifically, Russia and China.4 By marketing to these parties, these firms signal that they are willing to accept or ignore the risk that their products will bolster the capabilities of client governments that might wish to threaten US/NATO national security or harm marginalized populations. This is especially the case when the client government is a direct US or NATO adversary. This globalizing shift is important for two reasons. First, it indicates a widening pattern of proliferation of cyber capabilities across the globe. Second, many firms in the surveillance and offensive cyber capabilities markets have long argued for the legitimacy of their business model by pointing to the perceived legitimacy of their customers; yet, their marketing strategies contradict this argument. As the recent indictment of several former US intelligence personnel working for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) confirms, capabilities originally focusing on one target set may be expanded for other intelligence uses.5 When these firms begin to sell their wares to both NATO members and adversaries, it should provoke national security concerns for all customers. This paper profiles these important trends for their practical security impacts, and to enable further research into this topic. The authors suggest that the United States and NATO create know-your-customer (KYC) policies with companies operating in this space; work with arms fairs to limit irresponsible proliferators’ attendance at these events; tighten export-control loopholes; and name and shame both irresponsible vendors and customers. The authors encourage policymakers to focus their efforts to rein in companies that sell these capabilities directly to adversaries, or those willing to ignore the risk that their capabilities may be misused. The dataset presented below is open for use by others who might similarly seek to bring some measure of light to an industry that remains so insistently in the dark.
The potential and limits of EU crisis response
The aim of this chapter is to identify the potential and limits of the EU’s external crisis response. Rather than focusing on the character of the EU as a foreign policy actor, it concentrates on the EU toolbox or repertoire applied in EU missions and activities in various external crises and conflicts in the near and extended neighbourhood, and also how the Union’s activities are perceived by local stakeholders. A key question is whether there is a match or mismatch between EU intentions, the implementation, and the perceptions of local stakeholders. The analysis in this article draws on both a series of qualitative case studies and a quantitative analysis of a large number of EU documents and statements. This mixed method has enabled us to explore the EU’s crisis response repertoire systematically and from various angles.
Matt McDonald, Ecological Security: Climate Change and the Construction of Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021)
This is a book review of Matt McDonald's book titled "Ecological Security: Climate Change and the Construction of Security". This book provides a radical and unusually comprehensive normative framework–an ‘ecological security’ approach—for guiding efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change; one that McDonald argues, provides a morally superior approach to those currently employed within the climate-security policy agenda. Following Andrew Linklater’s (1998) classic description of Critical Theory, the book moves in three steps: (a) it conducts a sociological analysis of the dominant climate security discourses and their deficiencies, (b) lays out an ethical case for ecological security and (c) undertakes a praxeological analysis of the ‘immanent possibilities’ within existing institutions for advancing ecological security (p. 12). At each step, McDonald draws upon an eclectic array of critical scholarship—feminism, political ecology, green state theory, among others—and spends considerable space engaging in good faith with would-be sceptics. Indeed, McDonald’s book offers a tour de-forces and model for combining classic critique of the status quo with a positive normative vision and most unusually, a sustained analysis of how to practically bring it about. Book review of Matt McDonald, Ecological Security: Climate Change and the Construction of Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 240 pp., US$ 99, ISBN: 978-1-3165-1961-5 (Hardcover)
Assessing the Effectiveness of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) and The Office of the Special Adviser to the Secretary- Ge...
This report assesses the extent to which the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) along with the Office of the Special Adviser to the Secretary- General on Cyprus (OSASG) – also called the mission of the Good Offices – is achieving its mandate enshrined in Resolution 164 of March 1964. In 2024, the UN Missions in Cyprus will celebrate the 60th anniversary of their presence in the country, and it seems timely to analyse their impact and effectiveness over the years. The EPON report looks for the first time at what the peacekeeping research community has called “legacy operations”, those born during the Cold War and still in place today. UNFICYP is the eighth peacekeeping mission created since 1948. The report looks also at the interaction between peacekeeping and peacemaking in the context of a frozen conflict, often referred to by researchers and scholars as the “Cyprus problem”. Cyprus is a unique case in international relations and peace operations. Its capital city is the only remaining divided capital in Europe and in the world. Cyprus is the only country in the world to have “Guarantors” with a right to intervene and station troops on a permanent basis. The report acknowledges the role of prevention of UNFICYP to the extent that the people in Cyprus tend to forget that no cease-fire agreement exists between the parties. Peacekeeping has been successful at creating a comfortable status quo that peacemaking has yet been unable to break down. In this context, the lack of will from the parties to engage in a meaningful political process has limited the UN’s effectiveness.
Editorial: The New Right’s internationalism
The editorial team welcomes you to the final issue of 2021. For this issue, convened by Minda Holm, one of New Perspectives’ Associate Editors, we have brought together a group of invited essays on the Internationalism of the New Right. As an object of analysis for political science and International Relations, the New Right refers to intellectual movements that have emerged since the 1980s, including Reaganite economic conservatives, theorists and philosophers like Alexandr Dugin and Alain de Benoist, and political movements that have swept to power across the globe, but with particular successes in Central and Eastern Europe. Globally these movement include actors as diverse as Bolsonaro in Brasil, Modi in India, and Putin in Russia, and in Central and Eastern Europe are exemplified by Fidesz in Hungary and Prawo I Sprawiedliwosc in Poland. So far, academic conversations have happened mostly in parallel, rather than with each other, drawing seemingly different conclusions as to both who we are speaking of, and what their global ideas entail – both for world politics, and IR as a field (see Abrahamsen et al., 2020; Azmanova and Dakwar, 2019; De Orellana and Michelsen, 2019; Drolet and Williams, 2018). In this special issue, we bring together some leading voices to reflect on the transnational and international relations between these movements.
Psykisk helse, terrorisme, ekstremisme og radikalisering
The possible connection between mental health, radicalisation, extremism, and involvement of terror has received a lot of attention as of late. But what do we really know about this connection? What are we unaware of, and how can challenges related to this be handled? This policy brief goes through these questions and gives the knowledge status in this domain a clean-up.
Ad Hoc Crisis Response and International Organisations (ADHOCISM)
International organisations (IOs) are created with the aim of solving collective action problems when a crisis arises. Yet, member states have repeatedly established ad hoc crisis responses in situations where IOs might be expected to play a central role. ADHOCISM asks what is the impact of ad hoc crisis responses on international organisations? In this way, ADHOCISM wants to contribute to filling this knowledge gap through a systematic study of ad hoc crisis responses in two policy domains: security and health. With this paired comparison, ADHOCISM wants to tap into a broader empirical governance phenomenon. Ad hoc crisis responses are here understood as loose groups of actors that agree to solve a particular crisis at a given time and location outside of an existing international organisation in the same policy domain. Ad hoc crisis reponses can, in the short-term, lead to more rapid and effective crisis responses among like-minded states, but if international organisations are no longer seen as the principal instruments to confront global challenges, the risk is also that the relevance of these international organisations will diminish, and similar trends may unfold in other domains.