Selvforståelse og rolleforventning under ulike regimer : en studie av den russiske intelligentsiaens før og etter kommunismens fall sett i lys av...

Denne studien undersøker rollemønstre og selvforståelse som intellektuelle utvikler under henholdsvis et totalitært og et demokratisk regime. Mer bestemt rettes søkelyset mot den intellektuelle forstått som en samfunnskritiker, en som bidrar til dannelsen av en kritisk og våken offentlig sfære. Sentralt for studien er videre hvordan en gradvis overgang fra et totalitært til et demokratisk regime stiller de intellektuelle overfor nye og ukjente problemer med hensyn til å bli hørt og kunne delta i den offentlige debatt. Dette forholdet har berørt mange av de intellektuelle som var underlagt et kommunistisk system i Sovjetunionen og Øst-Europa. Her drøftes og analyseres hvordan den russiske intelligentsiaen har blitt konfrontert med demokratiets inntreden etter over 70 år med en sterk undertrykking av det frie ord og det sivile samfunn. Studien av intelligentsiaens skjebne gjøres med utgangspunkt i Zygmunt Baumans og Pierre Bourdieus kultursosiologi. Baumans bidrag er konsentrert om hans forståelse av det han definerer som en moderne (Sovjetunionen) og postmoderne (Russland etter 1991) samfunnstilstand og på hvilken måte disse tilstandene definerer intellektuelles roller og selvforståelse. Fra Bourdieu anvendes hans innsikter om intellektuelle som besittere av kulturell kapital og deres posisjon innenfor det han definerer som det sosiale rom. En av studiens hovedkonklusjoner er at sovjetregimet formet en selvforståelse og rolleforventning hos intelligentsiaen som la grunnlag for dens identitetskrise etter 1991.

Supermaktens akilleshæl? Politisk polarisering og beslutningsproblemer ved amerikanske internasjonale militære engasjement

Bulwark, Bridge, or Periphery? Polish discourse on Poland and Europe

After the Communist regime started crumbling in 1989, the official foreign policy of Poland has been redefined. A central characteristic in this process has been Polish involvement in the process of European integration and an application for membership in the European Union. These policies have not been undisputed in Polish political debates. Analyses of Polish European policy tend to concentrate on the official foreign policy of Poland and the strategies of cooperation and integration proposed by EU member states. What they seem to forget is that debates on Europe and what shape the relations between Poland and Europe should take exist within Poland as well. This thesis is an attempt to fill in this gap. What kind of Europe do Poles promote? This thesis argues that foreign policies are conditioned by the ways in which certain concepts are represented in discourse. Its purpose is to present you with an overview of the existing Polish European policy positions, analyze the representations on which they rest and, on the basis of the analysis, draw some conclusions about the preconditions of Polish European policies and make some tentative predictions for they may develop in the future. The purpose of the analysis is thus both explanatory and predicative. Discourses are closely related to the discourses that precede them. I believe that a background study of Polish discourse during Communism is an important background study in order to explicate the foundations of today’s discourse. I will therefore devote a considerable part of the thesis to the discourse of this period.

Foreign Direct Investment in Norway’s Manufacturing Sector

This report investigates the location advantages of the Norwegian manufacturing industry while focusing on economic as well as institutional factors. The economy relies highly on the exploitation of natural resources and only minor parts of its exports are technology based. Norway as a market for consumer goods is not only small in size but is also located at the periphery of Europe. Since the beginning of industrialisation, policies towards foreign direct investment (FDI) have had two targets: The first has been to keep as much of the resource rent as possible within the country and the second, to develop a domestic manufacturing industry. A variety of political tools has been used to achieve these objectives. Although various international agreements aim to reduce preferences for domestic production, several sectors in the Norwegian manufacturing industry remain protected by governmental policy. Norwegian MNEs have internalised former and present L-advantages into firm-specific assets. Domestic interest groups or the state partly control several of these enterprises. Compared to other small European countries, Norway has a relatively low share of FDI in the manufacturing industry. Nonetheless, over the last decades the country has experienced a substantial increase in FDI. This is partly due to investments of foreign affiliates of Norwegian multinational companies, reinvesting in Norway. In 1996, on an average, 18% of the employment in firms with at least 50 employees was located to foreign controlled firms while the corresponding figures in 1980 and 1991 were 8% and 13%. FDI mainly takes the form of mergers and acquisitions and is particularly significant in sectors with an above average R&D intensity and in other market segments with a relatively high producer concentration. The main industrial clusters as well as the production of consumer goods have experienced the major growth of FDI employment in the period 1991–1996. Often, these are also sectors with a high degree of governmental protection.

Corruption. A review of contemporary research

This report is an overview of contemporary research on corruption. The main objectives of the study have been to organise existing knowledge on corruption, discuss the major controversies within and across disciplines and to identify some areas in most need for further research with an emphasis on questions relevant for development policy. The review has been carried out as a joint study by researchers at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), Bergen, and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), Oslo. Special thanks to the CMI and NUPI librarians for their assistance. Financial support from the Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation, (NORAD) and extra time from our institutes are gratefully acknowledged. The survey may be somewhat biased towards economic approaches, reflecting the fact that the writing and editing have primarily been done by the economists Odd-Helge Fjeldstad (CMI) and Jens Chr. Andvig (NUPI). In addition, Tina Søreide (CMI), also an economist, has contributed to chapter 3. Inge Amundsen(CMI), a political scientist, has written chapter 4 and made several contributions to chapters 2 and 10. Tone Sissener (CMI), a social anthropologist, has written chapter 5. The study focuses on academic research. While a survey of the output from public commissions would be useful, they are not systematically covered here. Moreover, to make the survey accessible to a multidisciplinary readership, efforts have been made to present the more abstract and technical research in a non-technical way. In spite of its limitations we hope this survey will be considered useful – and be used – by researchers, students, development practitioners and aid officials.

Justice and cultural diversity in Guatemala : an analysis of the rights of ethnic groups in Guatemala based on two liberal approaches to justice in...

The report is a revised version of the author's thesis by the same title.

Forsvar og identitet: de norske friskusverdiene

Dette kapitlet diskuterer forholdet mellom norsk nasjonal identitet og norsk forsvarspolitikk. Det argumenteres for at forsvarets legitimitet etter 2. verdenskrig har hvilt på et sett uuttalte verdier som var sentrale i ettertidens tolkning av, og fortellinger om, krigen i Norge. Disse krigsmytenes styrke ligger i deres fremstilling av historien i avpolitiserte og «naturlige» former. Mytene fremhever et sett verdier som ikke kan relativiseres, og som regnes som evige i norsk kultur. De er dermed sentrale verdier i norsk identitet generelt. Derfor har de vært viktige i ettertidens tolkning og legitimering av motstandskampen under krigen, men også for oppbygningen av det moderne forsvaret i Norge. Teoretisk forsøker artikkelen å vise det konstruktivistiske poenget at alt sosialt er historisk betinget. Det finnes intet essensielt, universelt og evig gitt i det sosiale. Selv de mest inngrodde «sannheter» har en historie, og er i stadig endring selv om vi ikke merker det. Imidlertid er nettopp en tilsynelatende inngrodd «sannhet» et eksempel på hvordan makten fungerer i moderne samfunn; den skaper og begrenser politiske handlingsrom.

Family-controlled Child Labor in Sub-Saharan Africa - A Survey of Research

The paper presents and analyzes recent research into child labor problems in Africa, mainly made by economists and social anthropologists. It focuses on the labor performed in African households and controlled by the family.

An Essay on Child Labor in Sub-Saharan Africa - A Bargaining Approach

The separation of children from their families have a large number of social and economic aspects. At least the economic aspects are under-researched. At the point of transition of leaving their families somehow the children have to be considered as separate decisionmakers. This is the perspective I adopt in this essay. The question raised is whether poverty, changes in social norms or external shocks to the family system such as the AIDS epidemic, lead the children to prematurely fend for themselves in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Security, integration and identity change

In this working paper Pernille Rieker attempts to contribute to a better understanding of both how the EU functions as a security system and what kind of impact the integration process has on national security identities. While security has always been the main reason behind the integration process, security and integration have usually been studied separately. Integration specialists have given more attention to economy than to security, and security experts have studied traditional security institutions and overlooked the EU. Rieker attempts to combine these two theoretical traditions by drawing on a combination of recent work on security communities and international socialisation. While the development in the Nordic countries will be used as brief examples in the final part of the paper, a more detailed analysis of these countries’ security identities will follow in a forthcoming study.