Avgrensing av stormakter: Mjuk maktbalansering frå imperietida til den globale æra
I kva situasjonar vel statar mjuke framfor harde former for maktbalansering – altså institusjonelle og økonomiske instrument heller enn formelle militæralliansar og intensiv våpenoppbygging? Når vel dei ein kombinasjon av mjuke og harde midlar? Kva er likskapane og forskjellane mellom korleis mjuk maktbalansering blei praktisert på 1900- og 2000-talet?
15 NUPI-forskere på firedagers maraton i internasjonal politikk
NUPI-forskere spilte en viktig rolle da verdens største konferanse for forskere innen internasjonale studier – ISA 2019 - gikk av stabelen i Canada.
NATO og Noreg i 70 år
NATO fyller 70 år og 1. april inviterer IFS og NUPI til diskusjon om sentrale tema i NATOs historie, og aktuelle utfordringar for Noreg i alliansen.
A Conceptual History of International Relations (CHOIR)
Målsettingen med CHOIR er å undersøke begreper vi tar for gitt i internasjonal politikk....
Frukostseminar: NUPI 60 år – Lille land, kva no?
I 2019 fyller NUPI 60 år. Vi sparkar i gang jubileumsåret med boklansering, og tar ein nærare kikk på kva som har skjedd med vårt «vesle land» gjennom dei siste seks tiåra og visjonen om ei betre organisert verd.
The emergence of foreign policy
International relations scholarship typically treats foreign policy as a taken-for-granted analytical concept. It assumes either that all historical polities have foreign policies or that foreign policy originates in seventeenth-century Europe with the separation between the “inside” and “outside” of the state. It generally holds that foreign policy differs in essential ways from other kinds of policy, such as carrying with it a special need for secrecy. Halvard Leira argues against this view. The difference between “foreign” and “domestic” policy results from specific political processes; secrecy begat foreign policy. Growing domestic differentiation between state and civil society in the eighteenth century- articulated through a relatively free press operating in a nascent public sphere—enabled the emergence of foreign policy as a practical concept. The concept served to delimit the legitimate sphere of political discourse from the exclusive, executive sphere of king and cabinet. He explores these processes in Britain and France, important cases with different trajectories, one of reform, the other of revolution. Historicizing foreign policy like this serves to denaturalize the separation between different forms of policy, as well as the necessity of secrecy. Doing so cautions against the uncritical application of abstract analytical terms across time and space.
Forum: In the beginning there was no word (For It): Terms, concepts, and early sovereignty
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the concept sovereignty for international relations (IR). And yet, understanding the historical emergence of sovereignty in international relations has long been curtailed by the all-encompassing myth of the Peace of Westphalia. While criticism of this myth has opened space for further historical inquiry in recent years, it has also raised important questions of historical interpretation and methodology relevant to IR, as applying our current conceptual framework to distant historical cases is far from unproblematic. Central among these questions is the when, what, and how of sovereignty: from when can we use “sovereignty” to analyze international politics and for which polities? Can sovereignty be used when the actors themselves did not have recourse to the terminology? And what about polities that do not have recourse to the term at all? What are the theoretical implications of applying the concept of sovereignty to early polities? From different theoretical and methodological perspectives, the contributions in this forum shed light on these questions of sovereignty and how to treat the concept analytically when applied to a period or place when/where the term did not exist as such. In doing so, this forum makes the case for a sensitivity to the historical dimension of our arguments about sovereignty—and, by extension, international relations past and present—as this holds the key to the types of claims we can make about the polities of the world and their relations.