Publications

Power, Principles and Procedures : Reinterpreting French foreign policy towards the USA (2001-2003)

French foreign policy towards the US is often understood as particularly confrontational and based on traditional power politics, or a wish to re-establish “la grandeur de la France”. This article aims at investigating the validity of this widely held view. It further seeks to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the French positions by studying the arguments used by the French political leadership and the implications of the Iraq conflict for bilateral cooperation at lower levels. This study questions the common assumption of IR theory that national identities and/or interests are fixed and independent of structural factors such as international norms and values. It also questions the value of focusing exclusively on diplomatic or “top-level” bilateral relations, without looking at “low-level” or practical bilateral cooperation and/or conflicts.

Indigenous to Indigenous Cooperation : Review of the Saami Council Projects in Africa

The Norwegian section of the Saami Council has been cooperating with two indigenous organizations in Africa since 2002: the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Africa, based in Tanzania, and the First People of the Kalahari, in Botswana. The report evaluates this cooperation. It concludes that both organizations are potentially very relevant, but that for different reasons, the full potential has not been reached. Recommendations for how to strengthen the work are given.

Norway's Fredskorpset Youth Program : Study of selected exchange projects

The Fredskorpset Youth program is a North-South exchange program facilitating the exchange of young people between partner organizations or institutions of Norway and countries of the South. The present study was commissioned in order to assess the degree to which stated goals of the exchanges were realized. Four exchanges were selected to be studied: between a Norwegian and Kenyan student organization (AIESEC); between a Norwegian missionary organization (NMS) and its counterpart church in Madagascar (FLM); between local Red Cross organizations in Norway and Uganda; and between a Norwegian (VUC) and two Malawian teacher training institutions (CC, LTTC). Objectives of the programs included acquiring new knowledge, attitudes and commitment at the level of individual participants, organizational strengthening and development of international contacts at the institutional level, and dissemination of information. As goals were mostly quite loosely formulated, it was difficult to assess the degree to which they were realized with any precision. Findings varied between the exchanges, but in general individual objectives were reached to some extent, while results might have been even stronger with more systematic attention to them. Institutional goals were achieved in most of the cases. In terms of information dissemination, this could be strengthened in most of the exchange programs.

EUs forslag til nytt tjenestedirektiv : Samfunns- og næringsøkonomiske konsekvenser for Norge

Norsk petro-power og terrorisme: Brennbart og brukbart redskap i norsk sikkerhetspolitikk?

Rapporten analyserer følgende sikkerhetspolitiske utfordringer: 1) Norges sikkerhetspolitiske marginalisering utenfor EU og innenfor et fragmentert NATO. 2) Olje- og gassproduksjon og leveransene til Europa er en viktig enkeltstående faktor som kan gjøre Norge mer sikkerhetspolitisk relevant. Av potensielle terrormål skiller olje- og gassinstallasjoner seg ut fordi anslag ikke kun vil skade Norge, men også kan skade kjøperland. 3) På den ene siden er bekjempelse av terror og sabotasje en sikkerhetsutfordring for Norge, og på den andre siden en mulighet til å påvirke EUs forsvars- og sikkerhetspolitikk og revitalisere NATO.

North-South Trade and Wages with Complete Specialisation : Modifying the Stolper-Samuelson Relationship

From the Stolper-Samuelson Theorem, it is expected that North-South trade reduces the real wage of unskilled labour in the North. This paper questions the underlying assumption that trading countries are diversified, and examines theoretically the trade-wage link when the South is completely specialised. While it remains true that trade with the South negatively affects wages in the North, it is no longer the case that the poorer the trade partner is, the more harmful is trade for Northern wages. The negative wage impact is largest when the South has an intermediate capital-labour ratio, since it is then a more efficient producer. This also gives the largest aggregate welfare gains from trade in the North. The specialised South also gains from trade, and these gains are relatively larger, the more extreme is its factor composition. But even if the poorest countries gain from trade, capital accumulation may be more important for their welfare.

The Challenge of Poor Governance and Corruption

The paper is the author’s so-called ‘Opponent paper « to Susan Rose- Ackerman’s proposals for good governance and anti-corruption poli-cies at the Copenhagen Consensus 2004 meeting 24–28 May. There the most promising anti-corruption policies had to compete with other best poli-cies at other fields such as fight against AIDS, malaria, hunger prevention, and so on. He argues that while corruption and governance problems are important and may prevent any other kind of policy to succeed, no really effective anti-corruption policy has so far been proposed, and if it was, we wouldn’t know that it did. Hence, it would be unreasonable to make a strong claim for anti-corruption projects against their competitors.

Crude Nukes on the Loose? : Preventing Nuclear Terrorism by Means of Optimum Nuclear Husbandry, Transparency, and Non-Intrusive Fissile Material Ve...

This thesis assesses the threat of nuclear terrorism and identifies strategies for diminishing the risk of such incidents. Never before have the material, the technology, the know-how, and, perhaps, the motivations needed to perform acts of nuclear terrorism been more exploitable. Building on eight research papers, the thesis sets out to answer three principal questions: 1) “Can terrorists possibly perform acts of terror by means of crude nuclear explosive devices based on highly enriched uranium? What are the main barriers to the production of crude nuclear explosives?” 2) “Is there an optimum way of protecting fissile material from falling into terrorist hands? What role – if any – do transparency and nonintrusive verification play in this regard?” 3) “Within legitimate security constraints, what kind of measures could be put in place to enhance the transparency and non-intrusive verification of stocks of sensitive fissile material?”

The Inferior Performance of State Owned Enterprises: Is it due to Ownership of Market Structure?

We analyze differences in performance between private companies (PCs) and state owned enterprises (SOEs), with an emphasis on the effects of market structure. We use a panel covering all registered companies during the 1990s in Norway, a country where SOEs play an important role in regular markets. Return on assets as well as costs measures are used as measures of performance in models that investigate markets where SOEs and PCs actually compete with each other. Although market shares and concentration affect performance, ownership identity still explains most of the inferior performance among SOEs.

Majority Rules and Incentives : International voting affects domestic policies

A "majority rule" defines the number of club-members that must approve a policy proposed to replace the status quo. Since the majority rule thus dictates the extent to which winners must compensate losers, it also determines the incentives to invest in order to become a winner of anticipated projects. If the required majority is large, the members invest too little because of a hold-up problem, if it is small, the members invest too much in order to become a member of the majority coalition. To balance these opposing forces, the majority rule should increase in the level of minority protection (or enforcement capacity) and the project’s value but decrease in the ex post heterogeneity. Strategic delegation turns out to be sincere exclusively under this majority rule. Externalities can be internalized by adjusting the rule. With heterogeneity in size or initial conditions, votes should be appropriately weighted or double majorities required. The analysis provides recommendations for Europe’s future constitution.