NUPI’s Russia conference 2024: Wartime Russia – weak or strong?
Join us on 22 October for the annual Russia conference.
Multilateral China: crafting influence in and beyond the UN
Three new projects to NUPI
CANCELLED: The state of peace in Africa
Due to unforeseen events, this seminar is unfortunately cancelled.
Breakfast seminar: How to ensure democratic resilience in Europe?
NUPI invites you to take part in the discussion about how we can safeguard democracy in Europe.
Dorthea Gradek
Dorthea Gradek is a Visiting Research Fellow at the NUPI research group for Security and Defence (SECD), where she will take part in the Norway an...
Rebundling sovereignty over local nature in global governance (RESOLVING)
How does the global governance of nature transform the exercise of sovereign power?...
Consolidating peace? The inner struggles of Sudan’s transition agreement
The use of transitional agreements to resolve differences between the state and non-state armed actors across the African continent appears to be on the rise. However, many of these transitional agreements tend to be stagnant and fail to deal with grievances, causes of political unrest and conflict or to provide sustainable paths to democracy. Drawing on the civilian-led Transitional Government of Sudan from 11 April 2019 to 25 October 2021 (the length of the transitional agreement), and an original dataset, this article argues that the policies of the transitional government of Sudan, political rhetoric and the challenges of implementing transitional agreement policies did not align with political realities. This was primarily due to the inability of the Transitional Government of Sudan to dismantle existing power structures under previous regimes. We find that the Transitional Government of Sudan neglected to consider path dependencies of the previous regimes, which led to its being unable to provide the people of Sudan with strategies that could help to circumvent existing structures set up by past regimes. As a result, the efforts of the Transitional Government of Sudan acted as exacerbators of existing inner struggles. The article argues for the need for better technical support and provisions to support incoming transitional governments trying to emerge from autocracy or dictatorship to democracy during transitional periods.
Reimagining NATO after Crimea: Defender of the rule-based order and truth?
Russia’s annexation of Crimea and war on Ukraine has led to upheaval in NATO’s discourse and practice. Taking a step back from the security debate, this article contends that the very process of responding to Russian aggression has led to the reimagining of NATO’s identity. While NATO tends to present change as continuity, this article’s mixed methods analysis illuminates how a trio of new and ambitious self-representations have risen to prominence within NATO’s post-Crimea discourse. NATO has anointed itself defender of the international rules-based order and purveyor of truth and facts amidst a world of disinformation, while pushing a resilience policy agenda that expands its authority into new domestic domains. Problematizing these shifts, the article warns that NATO’s new narrative ignores its own role in the problems it seeks to solve and thus risks undermining NATO efforts to rally global support for Ukraine.
PODCAST: Making Gender Great Again?