Publikasjoner

Taliban i Moskva og Doha

Forrige uke møttes en delegasjon fra Taliban og sentrale afghanske politikere til samtaler i Moskva. Møtet var det mest omfattende av sitt slag siden 2001, året da USA gikk til krig mot Taliban. Møtet kom like etter at Taliban har vært i banebrytende forhandlinger med USA i seks dager i Doha, Qatar. For første gang ble Taliban og USA enige om et utkast til et mulig rammeverk for fred.

Participatory Democracy and Evidence-based Decision Making at the Local Level in Ukraine

Comparative Analysis for Theory Development: Reflections on a Study of Women’s Empowerment

Methodological texts about comparative work have focused overwhelmingly on controlled comparisons aimed at causal inference. To show the range of possible goals and approaches, this piece reflects on our own choices while studying the state and women’s empowerment in Norway, Japan, and the United States. We show how our research design evolved with our theoretical thinking, and explain that we did not select comparative “cases,” but rather diverse contexts with interesting variation in our main concept of interest. Finally, we discuss how we constructed multi-cultural research teams to take advantage of insider and outsider perspectives during fieldwork.

Finding a European response to Huawei’s 5G ambitions

This policy brief suggests that European countries should institute national reviewing boards overseen by intelligence agencies to vet Huawei equipment. If that is not feasible due to a lack of resources or capabilities especially among smaller countries, European governments should consider pooling resources and create a common reviewing board. This would also prevent duplication of efforts on national levels. European authorities should also demand from Huawei to clearly separate its international from its domestic business operations in order to further reduce the risk to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of European mobile networks.

Rational choice theory and demand for petty corruption

This article studies corruption as a rational choice phenomenon. Unlike the widespread game-theory approach to explaining corrupt behaviour, this article attempts to describe corruption as continuous utility-maximizing problem. It comes up with a demand for corruption function, which shows how the readiness of a rational person to accept corrupt income depends on several factors such as official wage rate, severity of punishment, awareness of those penalties, probability of being detected and probability of being prosecuted.

Islam Keeping Violent Jihadism at Bay in Times of Daesh: State Religious Institutions in Lebanon, Morocco and Saudi Arabia since 2013

Can official Islamic institutions play a role to curb Sunni jihadi violence? Most Arab governments have granted a role to such institutions in recent years. Yet, the cases of Lebanon, Morocco and Saudi Arabia exhibit considerable differences: Sunni religious institutions in Lebanon are weak and only have a domestic role, and face difficulties fulfilling this role. The corresponding institutions in Morocco and in Saudi Arabia, however, are powerful and also perform foreign policy roles through religious diplomacy. Mainstream Muslim scholars want to be recognised as allies in the global struggle against jihadi violence; they have common interests with Western and Arab governments in combating jihadi violence. However, in the current climate of government control over official religious institutions, they lack the popular legitimacy needed to fight against violent jihadism. Religious institutions cannot be efficient when used as tools by authoritarian Arab governments. Political subjugation of religious clerics is a major reason for the fragmentation of the religious field and a driver of radicalisation.

Complexity thinking and adaptive peacebuilding

Cedric de Coning explores how complexity thinking can contribute to our understanding of how to create more inclusive peace processes, and how adaptive approaches enable local and external peacebuilders to apply new models of practice, experimentation and learning. These differ fundamentally from approaches where the role of peacebuilders is to implement a pre-designed intervention. De Coning suggests that pressure for change tends to accumulate over time often without signs of progress, and that key system changes occur during periods of turbulence when the self-sustaining ‘path dependencies of violence’ are disrupted. Adaptation does not imply embracing disorder or abandoning goals, but rather being more front-footed, coping with uncertainty, anticipating change and embracing experimentation.

Assessing the Effectiveness of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS)

Rapporten fokuserer på den siste perioden av UNMISS' mandat (2014-18), med sikte på å gi et "øyeblikksbilde" av misjonens arbeid på tvers av dets fire hovedmandatområder: beskyttelse av sivile, tilrettelegging for humanitær levering, promotering menneskerettigheter og støtte til fredsprosessen. Som en stor, flerdimensjonal fredsbevarende operasjon – med 17 000 soldater, 2 000 politi og 2 000 sivile – har UNMISS fått betydelige ressurser og et usedvanlig ambisiøst mandat. Å vurdere samsvaret mellom ressurser og mandat, og måten misjonen har tilpasset sine tilnærminger for å være effektive under ekstremt utfordrende omstendigheter er et hovedmål med denne rapporten. Gjennom hele sin eksistens har UNMISS vært en del av en mye bredere regional og internasjonal konstellasjon av aktører som arbeider for å stabilisere landet og oppmuntre konfliktparter til å gå inn i en meningsfull fredsprosess. I mange tilfeller har UNMISS spilt en begrenset støttende, koordinerende eller på annen måte indirekte rolle i landets overordnede bane; i andre er det en sentral aktør i øynene til befolkningen i Sør-Sudan. Dette utgjør en utfordring for enhver vurdering av oppdraget fordi UNMISS på det meste kan betraktes som en bidragsyter blant mange som jobber sammen for å avslutte borgerkrigen og legge grunnlaget for varig fred. Årsakssammenheng i disse settingene er vanskelig å fastslå. Ikke desto mindre, ved å trekke på de betydelige dataene og analysene som er tilgjengelige, og intervjuer med mer enn 260 mennesker i Sør-Sudan og regionen over flere uker, presenterer denne studien et sett med evidensbaserte funn om virkningen av oppdraget og faktorene som har muliggjort og hindret oppfyllelsen av sitt mandat.

EU climate and energy policy: new challenges for old energy suppliers

Climate policy will transform the EU energy demand mix. This has implications for the main suppliers of fossil fuels to the EU, foremost among which are Algeria, Colombia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the USA. Norway has a better starting point for adapting to changing EU energy demand than the other energy suppliers and therefore represents a best-case scenario. Whatever Norway fails to do, the other countries are even less likely to achieve. The question is whether Norway has been quick enough to exploit the opportunities to play a proactive role in the EU’s energy transition. This chapter argues that it has not, dragging its feet on natural gas vehicles, Norwegian wind power, electricity interconnectors, green battery development and mixing of hydrogen into natural gas. Some possible reasons for the tardiness are Norway’s dual resource course of oil and hydropower, carbon lock-in, energy populism, resource nationalism and blind spots in the perception of Norway’s place in international climate and energy policy.

Reactive Power EU: Russian Aggression and the Development of an EU Arctic Policy

There are many factors driving the development of European Union (EU) foreign policy. While much of the literature focuses on how particular interests, norms or internal processes within Brussels institutions, this article sheds light on the role of external factors in shaping EU foreign policy through an in-depth examination of the recent development of EU Arctic policies. We find that increased Russian aggression, not least in Ukraine, is key to understanding why the EU recently has taken a strong interest in the Arctic. In a more insecure environment, Member States are more prone to develop common policies to counter other powers and gain more influence over future developments, especially as it relates to regime-formation in the Global Commons. In effect, the EU demonstrates a kind of reactive power when it comes to dealing with new geopolitical threats.