New CADGAT Data Reviews on 261 Belt and Road (BRI) Projects in Central Asia
One of the main observations from the research is that nobody really knows what a BRI project is and what it is not.
"Contracting development: managerialism and consultants in intergovernmental organizations"
Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) are now managed with an eye to managerial trends associated with transnational professionals, a view that has ramifications for how IGOs govern their policies and processes. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with staff in IGOs, we trace how managerialism in IGOs is changing how staff perceive work practices. We find that IGOs increasingly rely on consultants to enact policy scripts and to evaluate program success. This signals a subtle yet significant shift from expertise and bureaucratic impartiality, grounded in particular types of knowledge, to skills and flexibility to meet client demands and advance best practice norms according to prevailing world cultural frames. This managerial trend in IGOs is partly driven by stakeholder dynamics but is primarily a normative change in who is seen as having the authority to make claims over professional best practices. Such managerialism is contracting the development policy space. This contraction is partly driven by consultants, who defer to their peers and to donors rather than IGO staff and concerned member states. This work also depletes institutional memory for IGO operations. We trace how IGO staff perceive managerial trends and changes in work practices.
The double proximity paradox in peacebuilding: implementation and perception of the EU rule of law mission in Kosovo
This contribution increases the understanding of the EU's role in post-conflict settings by exploring perceptions of EULEX by local rule of law experts. Drawing on critical peacebuilding and the decline of normative power Europe literatures, we develop an analytical framework, underlining the importance of the intention–implementation gap and the implementation–perception gap in understanding how EU missions are perceived. By comparing local expert narratives to those of EULEX judges, prosecutors, and legal officers, we contend that the core problem for the negative perception of the mission results from what we call the double proximity paradox in peacebuilding. The first paradox is one of implementation and transpires when an actor commits substantial resources to address structural problems in a post-conflict territory due to its centrality for its own interests, but fails to uphold its commitment as its immediate interests can only be achieved through agents who contribute to these problems. The second paradox relates to perception and transpires as high commitments raise expectations of structural impact. The visibility of the actor's investment makes any implementation failures more tangible. The actor is therefore, paradoxically, the most open to criticism in a territory where it is doing the most.
Hildegunn Kyvik Nordås
Hildegunn Kyvik Nordås was a Research Professor (part time) at NUPI until the summer of 2024. She worked on trade and trade policy issues, focusin...
Disengaging from violent extremism: The case of al-Shabaab in Somalia
Disengagement, rehabilitation and reintegration for members of violent extremist groups during ongoing conflict is a tricky matter. Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programmes are normally implemented after a peace agreement is in place. However, this does not apply to south central Somalia, as well as other conflict-ridden areas around the world today. Providing adequate security for those wanting to leave violent extremist groups is arguably a key element for success for programmes operating in such contexts. This article looks at some of the security challenges the Defector Rehabilitation Programme (DRP) for al-Shabaab members has encountered in south central Somalia. The lessons learnt presented in this article were mainly gathered through discussions and presentations made at a training held in Nairobi in November 2017 by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) for programme staff in the DRP. Interviews and conversations were also carried out with staff members and partners involved in different stages of the programme, and practitioners and stakeholders working to prevent or counter violent extremism in Somalia, during field trips to south central Somalia between 2013 and 2017
Election 2019: Empowering women, without women?
Japan’s government has put women’s empowerment high on its agenda – but women remain poorly represented in politics, and that shows few signs of changing, writes Wrenn Yennie Lindgren in this op-ed.
United Nations Stabilization Operations: Chapter Seven and a Half
The UN Security Council has in recent years included the term ‘stabilization’ in the name of the operations deployed to Haiti, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Central African Republic. But, are they stabilization operations? Although the concept has become increasingly popular in the UN context, it seems to denote everything from robust military action to early peacebuilding activities, and for this reason the UN high-level independent panel on peace operations in 2015 recommended to avoid the concept until it was further clarified. To contribute to this clarification, the article follows two main lines of inquiry—first it unpacks the different meanings of stabilization in UN peace operations by drawing upon the experiences of current UN stabilization missions such as MONUSCO in the DRC and MINUSMA in Mali. Based on this inquiry, it argues that what we are witnessing is cognitive slippage—where a broad range of unrelated activities are gathered under the same concept as a discursive tool to get financial and political support from Western partners. Second, the article ventures on to examine how the center of gravity of international interventions has moved on to a prevalence of ad-hoc coalitions undertaking counterterrorism operations, and what impact this has on UN peace operations, and in particular the understanding of stabilization in these. It argues that these missions could be termed Chapter seven and a half operations as they combine UN peace operations under Chapter VII mandates with the inclusion of regional ad hoc coalitions of the willing.
Lebanese Sunni Islamism: A Post-Election Review
This research note analyses the internal and external factors that led to Al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya‘s loss of its only parliamentary seat in 2018. Al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya is the Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Through this case, the author assesses the status of Lebanon’s Sunni community and the electoral fortunes of regional Muslim Brotherhood organizations more generally. The main external factors leading to Al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya’s electoral decline included the abandonment by the Future Movement, the law on proportional representation, potential regional involvement in the Lebanese elections and the rise of pro-Hezbollah Sunni MPs like those belonging to al-Ahbash. The internal challenges faced by Al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya, on the other hand, include its strategic dilemma on how to position itself in the sectarianized 'New Middle East' after the Arab uprisings, as well as its organizational structure and its inability to properly convince its supporters of the last-minute alliance with the Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM). This note also analyses the fate of Lebanon’s Salafis and their absence from the elections, a result of the security pressures they face following their political support of the Islamist armed opposition in neighboring Syria. Furthermore, the research note explores the trajectory of the Al Masharee’ Association known as Al-Ahbash which, by returning to parliament in 2018, presented a fatal blow to the electoral hopes of Lebanon’s Sunni Islamists.
Breakfast seminar: The EU in the Sahel – from good intentions to Europe first?
Researchers from some of the world's leading institutes have in a three-year project looked into which local impacts the EU crisis response has had in the areas where they have taken place, and how the EU can improve its response mechanisms.