Marianne Riddervold
Marianne Riddervold is a research professor (part time) in NUPI’s Research Group on Security and Defence. She is also professor in political scien...
EUNPACK Executive Summary of the Final Report & Selected Policy Recommendations. A conflict-sensitive unpacking of the eu comprehensive approach to...
Since adopting a ‘comprehensive approach’ to crisis management in 2013, the EU has spent considerable time and energy on streamlining its approach and improving internal coordination. New and protracted crises, from the conflict in Ukraine to the rise of Daesh in Syria and Iraq, and the refugee situation in North Africa and the Sahel, have made the improvement of external crisis-response capacities a top priority. But the implementation of the EU’s policies on the ground has received less scholarly and policy attention than the EU’s actorness and institutional capacity-building, and studies of implementation have often been guided primarily by a theoretical or normative agenda. The main objective of the EUNPACK project has been to unpack EU crisis response mechanisms and provide new insights how they are being received and perceived on the ground by both local beneficiaries and other external stakeholders. By introducing a bottom–up perspective combined with an institutional approach, the project has tried to break with the dominant line of scholarship on EU crisis response that has tended to view only one side of the equation, namely the EU itself. Thus, the project has been attentive to the local level in target countries as well as to the EU level and the connections between them. The research has been conducted through an inductive and systematic empirical research combining competencies from two research traditions that so far has had little interaction, namely peace and conflict studies and EU studies. A key finding in our research is that while the EU has been increasingly concerned with horizontal lessons learnt, it needs to improve vertical lessons learnt to better understand the local dynamics and thus provide more appropriate responses.
The Arctic Council and US domestic policymaking
One widely recognized achievement of the Arctic Council and its various working groups has been the production of collectively generated assessments on Arctic problems. Assessment reports such as the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) provide an important baseline of shared knowledge for making collective circumpolar policy recommendations. But how does the knowledge produced through Arctic Council working groups figure into the policymaking of the Arctic states? This is an important question for understanding Arctic politics and the relationship between national decisionmaking and international relations more generally. Much of what the Arctic Council produces is in the form of recommendations, declarations of intent, and commitments to "best practices" in areas of shared interest and activity. While in recent years the Council has produced three binding agreements covering specific functional areas—search and rescue (2011), oil pollution preparedness and response (2013),and science cooperation (2017)—much ongoing Arctic collaborative work falls outside of these areas. This policy brief explores how science/policy outputs of and discussions at the Arctic Council fit into the Arctic political discourse of the USA, with an emphasis on key actors within the executive branch: the White House, the Department of the Interior, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Digital sovereignty and autonomy (GAIA)
NUPI in collaboration with Simula Research Lab will map global data flows and their impact on national autonomy and sovereignty....
Farlige forbindelser?
Den påståtte koblingen mellom franske høyrenasjonalister og Kreml er overdrevet. Men de felles interessene er der.
Assessing the EU’s Toolbox in Handling Internal and External Challenges
In recent years, the EU has faced several major challenges. Experts meet in Brussels for a roundtable discussion on what tools the Union has to solve these, and what role it can play in the time to come.
Norway’s cooperation with the EU – 4 ways ahead
Can Norway benefit from closer collaboration with the EU on foreign and security policy?
A Conceptual History of International Relations (CHOIR)
The purpose of CHOIR is to investigate taken-for-granted concepts of international relations....
Sheltering, security and small states: Nordic responses to a changing geopolitical context
How do Nordic states respond to current geopolitical changes in their neighborhood, and what are their options?
Jenny Nortvedt
Jenny Nortvedt was a Junior Research Fellow in the Research Group on Peace, Conflict and Development at NUPI.