Malawi: A Political Economy Analysis
This report provides a comprehensive political economy analysis of contemporary Malawi. The country epitomises the primacy of patrimonial politics – including endemic corruption – with a powerful presidency at the helm and a weak legislature, although with a largely independent judiciary. Political parties, barely distinguishable in terms of policies and ideology, are dominated by strong personalities whose regional and ethnic provenance influence voter preferences. Political clientelism, characterised by informal decision-making, trumps sound economic policy formulation and implementation, despite purported efforts to reform and build institutions based on legal-rational Weberian principles. This inhibits long-term transformation of the ailing agrarian economy vulnerable to climate change. The report recounts salient features of social sectors such as education and health, and highlights the burden posed by high population growth rates on resources and social services. Improvements have been noted in civil and political rights but less in economic and social rights owing largely to the fact that half the population live in poverty. Apart from social and electoral cleavages, Malawi exhibits no serious domestic conflicts. A dispute with Tanzania over the northern part of Lake Malawi remains unresolved
Skatteutfordring i afrikanske land
Skatt er nøkkelen til utvikling, men flere afrikanske land møter på utfordringer både nasjonalt og internasjonalt. Hva slags løsninger finnes? Dette var blant spørsmålene diskutert blant ledende forskere under EADI-konferansen i Bergen.
Political economy analyses
I dette prosjektet analyserer vi politisk økonomi for elleve land som er sentrale i Norges utviklingssamarbeid...
Diplomacy through the back door: Norway and the bilateral route to EU decision-making
This article examines how Norway, a veteran EU outsider by choice, works on a day-to-day basis to compensate for its lack of formal voice in EU institutions. After Norwegian voters' second rejection of EU membership in a national referendum in 1994, Prime Minister Brundtland observed that Norway now must be prepared to use “the back door” to reach EU policy-makers. I suggest that for Norway, a key alternative route to the EU decision-making table has gone through bilateral partnerships. I identify two chief variants of this bilateral trajectory, what I term long-term and rotating bilateralism. Firstly, Norway has pursued long-term ties with selected bilateral partners within the EU system. Secondly, it has systematically strengthened its diplomatic presence in the member state holding or about to take over the rotating presidency of the EU Council. I conclude with some reflections on the relevance of Norway's “bilateral experience” for Britain, as a future EU outsider.
Mozambique: A Political Economy Analysis
This report uses a political economy analysis to shed light on some of the paradoxes that characterize Mozambique mid 2017: Entrenched poverty, the resuscitated armed conflict/war, the trust crisis between the Mozambican (Frelimo) government and its development partners, the spiralling debt and the party-state. Since 2017, Mozambique is arguably at one of its most critical moments since the end of the civil war, in a crisis-like cocktail of political, economic and social problems. By the time of writing, the Mozambican authorities only released the content of the Kroll report (an independent forensic audit of the ‘secret’ loans taken up in 2013) in summary form. Mozambique defaulted on its foreign debt in 2016, which has become unsustainable for the immediate future. The ‘secret’ loans explain a smaller part of the new debt, while heavy international and domestic borrowing and public spending after the discovery of large new mineral resources drove up the debt levels. The economy unhinged not by a full-blown resource curse, but rather by the mere prospect of large future income from the offshore LNG gas and coal, which we dubbed the “presource curse”.
Autonomy or integration? Small-state responses to a changing European security landscape
Is there a pattern in how small European states, inside and outside of the EU, adapt and adjust to EU foreign and security policy? This article introduces a Forum in Global Affairs, discussing how small states are responding to a changing European security landscape. We assess selected European small states’ room for manoeuvre within various fields under the EU external action, and within EU institutional structures more broadly – as part of everyday diplomatic interactions in Brussels and in the context of the rotating EU presidency. As the European integration process enters a new phase, possibly marked by a trend of more differentiated integration and flexibility of individual attachments, small states will continue to face the choice between formal autonomy and integration, and between de facto hesitance and adaptability. With Brexit, the remaining large member states may become more influential, but small states will collectively have a majority of the votes and total population. Perhaps the coming era of European integration will become the era of small states?
South Sudan: A Political Economy Analysis
This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the current state of South Sudan. A main argument is that its political economy is fundamentally atypical: achieving independence in 2011 and dissolving into renewed civil war in 2013, South Sudan is suffering the crisis of a weak, neo-patrimonial guerrilla government, with fragmented military-political systems that stretch across its extensive borderlands. This report locates the current crisis within a longer and deeper context, and explores the power dynamics and centrifugal destructive forces that drive patterns of extractive, violent governance. These forces underpin today’s economic and state collapse, civil war, famine, the flight of its people, and their local tactics of survival.
Digitale Sabotasjeangrep mot Norsk Petroleumssektor (DISP)
I dette prosjektet arbeider forskerne med å kartlegge trusselbildet og den historiske bruken av digitale våpen mot kritisk infrastruktur, samt redegjør for problematikk og uklarheter i ansvarsfordelin...