Krisa i dei engelsktalande regionane i Kamerun – ein forsømd konflikt
Guillaume Nseke diskuterer ein konflikt som, trass i fleire hundre omkomne og mange tusen internt fordrivne, ikkje har fått noko nemneverdig internasjonal merksemd.
Frida Bjørneseth
Frida Bjørneseth var doktorgradsstipendiat i Forskningsgruppen for global orden og diplomati.
Mali og Sahel – kunsten å finne balansen mellom tryggleik og utvikling
Ambassadør og tidlegare utanriksminister i Mali, Abdoulaye Diop, besøkjer NUPI for å diskutere balansen mellom tryggleik og utvikling i Mali og i Sahelregionen.
NY BOK: Taxing Africa: Coercion, Reform and Development
En ny bok om skattleging i Afrika skrevet av Mick Moore (ICTD), Wilson Prichard (ICTD) and Odd-Helge Fjeldstad (CMI).
Ethiopia: A Political Economy Analysis
This report provides an overview and analysis of some key issues pertaining to the political economy of Ethiopia in a historical perspective. The continuous rule of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) since 1991 has advanced a revolutionary democracy founded on the idea that the EPRDF itself should be the vanguard party both representing and leading the people. This form of central dirigisme has produced a developmental state with authoritarian features and opaque boundaries between the party and the state system. The strong and assertive party, having its clear vision of the developmental objectives and means, has produced a self-determined state apparatus that seldom yields to internal or international pressure. It has also produced impressive economic results over the last decade and a half, especially in the central and urban areas, and now aspires to become a middle-income country by 2025. Against this economic performance, there are critical concerns regarding democracy, human rights, uneven distribution and growing inequalities. The political space has gradually narrowed since the contentious 2005-elections, and there are currently no opposition parties with parliamentary representation. The invocation of a ten months state of emergency following the popular anti-government protests in 2015 and 2016, is just one expression of how human rights are being truncated, the lack of an open political space and the regime’s authoritarian features. Despite this, international actors maintain their relations to Ethiopia and continue to provide development assistance. This is partly due to the government’s performance in other domestic areas, but also a recognition of Ethiopia’s important regional role in providing stability in the Horn of Africa. The government has known to capitalize on the international actors’ need for a stable partner in the region, which has provided leeway for both its domestic and international affairs. It is thus unlikely that Ethiopia would be challenged by any other regional state or combination of states. Nor is it expected that any of its international partners would challenge Ethiopia, for instance by putting conditions pertaining to domestic political and human rights issues before the concern for regional stability. Any challenges to the regime and political stability are more likely to emerge from within – whether in the form of further popular political unrest, or disagreements within the EPRDF government or its coalition parties.
The New Politics of Development: Fragility, Taxation and State-building
Skattjakt-nettverket inviterer til ein to-dagerskonferanse om skatt og statsbygning i sårbare statar.
RAPPORT: Skatt og sårbare stater
TaxCapDev-nettverket har 9 anbefalinger for hvordan Norge kan bidra til utvikling av skattesystemer i sårbare stater.
Building tax systems in fragile states. Challenges, achievements and policy recommendations
This report systematises and analyses existing knowledge on taxation in fragile states. Efforts to support domestic revenue mobilisation in conflict situations require a different approach and other means than in the more stable developing countries. On that basis, the study discusses possible entry points for Norwegian support to domestic revenue mobilisation in ways that may contribute to strengthen state-building and improve government legitimacy. Complexity, limited experience and security concerns suggest that one should be cautious to adopt bilateral technical assistance programmes of the kind implemented in other developing countries. Instead, the study argues in favour of engagement via multilateral institutions, including multi-donor trust funds and other forms of pooled resources. The report recommends nine entry points for Norwegian support to taxation in fragile states: 1. Do no harm 2. Safeguard donor coordination, but ensure a certain humility 3. Support customs administration 4. Capacitate management and taxation of natural resources 5. Support the United Nations Tax Committee 6. Improve taxpayer-tax administration relations 7. Remember the sub-national tax system 8. Support civil based organisations 9. Develop research capacity
Boklansering: Perspectives on international taxation and capital flight from Africa.
– Hvordan påvirker det internasjonale skattesystemet de nasjonale inntektssystemene i Afrika? Ny bok fra Skattjakt/TaxCapDev-nettverket lansert i Norge
Everyday sovereignty: International experts, brokers and local ownership in peacebuilding Liberia
The present article investigates how sovereignty is performed, enacted and constructed in an everyday setting. Based on fieldwork and interviews with international embedded experts about the elusive meaning of ‘local ownership’, we argue that while sovereignty may, indeed, be a model according to which the international community ‘constructs’ rogue or failed polities in ‘faraway’ places, this view overlooks that these places are still spaces in which contestations over spheres of authority take place every day, and thus also spaces in which sovereignty is constructed and reconstructed on a daily basis. Local ownership, then, becomes our starting point for tracing the processes of the everyday enactment of sovereignty. We make the case that sovereignty should not be reified, but instead be studied in its quotidian and dynamic production, involving the multiplicity of actors reflecting the active production of the state beyond its presumptive existence as a homogeneously organized, institutionalized and largely centralized bureaucracy.