Publikasjoner
Why voters don’t turn up in larger numbers in Lok Sabha elections – all politics is local
Historically, national elections in India have had an average voter turnout of about 60 per cent, but there have been massive differences in turnout both across India and across different elections. Voter turnout is important for the legitimacy of democratic elections, and Indian elections are known for their high turnout. It is also crucial in determining who wins an election because the party preferences of those who vote occasionally are probably different from the party preferences of those who vote each time. There is great variation in voter turnout in India across constituencies and over time. This study shows that the size of the constituency also seems to have a large bearing on voter turnout.
This data shows why Indian MPs don’t truly represent their people
As the national elections of 2019 draw close, and incumbents prepare to face voters again, a straightforward question follows: how many people does a Member of Parliament really represent? On average, an Indian parliamentarian today represents constituencies with more than 1.5 million or 15 lakh eligible voters, or close to 2.5 million or 25 lakh citizens. This is more than the population of over 50 countries across the world and almost four times the number of citizens a Member of Parliament represented in the first Indian election in 1952. The sheer size of the electorate that each MP is supposed to represent may be seriously undermining representative democracy in India.
Veivalg og spenninger i norsk sikkerhetspolitikk: Norges forhold til NATO og EU
Norges sikkerhetspolitiske orientering har vært solid plantet i NATO-medlemskapet og det tette bilaterale samarbeidet med USA siden 1950-tallet. Parallelt har EU med jevne mellomrom også stått på den norske sikkerhetspolitiske dagsorden. Norsk sikkerhetspolitikk har vært preget av en rekke spenninger og veivalg i avveiningen mellom den transatlantiske og den europeiske pillaren, og der utviklingen av EUs felles sikkerhets- og forsvarspolitikk og USAs skiftende utenrikspolitikk har stått sentralt. Artikkelen drøfter også hvilke nye utfordringer og samarbeidsmuligheter vi ser konturene av i en tid der etablerte institusjoner og samarbeidsmønstre utfordres av en mer omskiftelig sikkerhetspolitisk situasjon, det globale maktskiftet fra Vesten til Asia, geopolitisk rivalisering, anti-liberale strømninger, og økt motstand mot EU.
Illiberalism, geopolitics, and middle power security: Lessons from the Norwegian case
Middle powers have played a key role in supporting global governance, a rules-based order, and human rights norms. Apart from conveying and effectuating global solidarity and responsibility, multilateral cooperation has been an arena where middle powers seek protection and leverage relatively modest power to greater effect, sometimes as “helpful fixers” to great powers. This article argues that geopolitical revival and the contestation of the liberal order are challenging middle powers' traditional sheltering policies, based on empirical evidence from the Norwegian case. First, the weakening of multilateral organizations is making middle powers more vulnerable to great power rivalry and geopolitics, and Norway's relationship with Russia is particularly pointed. Second, existing shelters such as NATO and bilateral cooperation with the US are negatively affected by the latter's anti-liberal foreign policies, making looser sheltering frameworks important supplements. While Norway's and other middle powers' traditional policies within the “soft power” belt may continue, “doing good” may become less prioritized, due to the need for security.
Mutual Lack of Introspection and the ‘Russia Factor’ in the Liberal West
Minda Holm makes three claims in this article: one about the representation of Russia as an external enemy and the reflex to blame Russia for unwanted domestic developments; one about the liberal Western Self’s continuous violation of the principles it judges others by; and one about the seemingly deliberate lack of critical introspection amongst Russian and Western elites. The Western Self is largely viewed as liberal by default, irrespective of the extensive illiberal actions – seen in, for example, the post-9/11 era. Whereas politics is messy and full of contradictions, Western liberal morality is often presented as somehow standing monolithically above those contradictory actions: despite torture, a secret extraordinary rendition and detention program and wide-ranging breaches of international law, the US Self under Bush Jr. remained decidedly ‘good’. Whilst the Self’s identity as liberal persists despite violating those liberal principles, states such as Russia are stigmatized for the same types of violations. That this creates frustration with those defined as standing on the outside or, better, denied access to the true inside, should not come as a surprise. But, Russia’s continuous denialism and whataboutism, and the role of academics in this negative cycle, doesn’t bode well for the future of Russia-West relations.
Museums, memory and meaning-creation: (re)constructing the Tajik nation
To overcome the traumas of the 1992–1997 civil war, the Tajik authorities have turned to history to anchor their post‐independence nation‐building project. This article explores the role of the National Museum of Tajikistan, examining how the museum discursively contributes to ‘nationalising’ history and cultural heritage for the benefit of the current Tajik nation‐building project. Three main discursive strategies for such (re)construction of Tajik national identity are identified: (1) the representation of the Tajiks as a transhistorical community; (2) implicit claims of the site‐specificity of the historical events depicted in the museum, by representing these as having taken place within the territory of present‐day Tajikistan, thereby linking the nation to this territory; and (3) meaning‐creation, endowing museum objects with meanings that fit into and reinforce the grand narrative promulgated by the museum. We conclude that the National Museum of Tajikistan demonstrates a rich and promising, although so far largely unexplored, repertoire of representing Tajik nationness as reflected in historical artefacts and objects of culture: the museum is indeed an active participant in shaping discursive strategies for (re)constructing the nation.
Improving Future Ocean Governance – Governance of Global Goods in an Age of Global Shifts
Japan’s G20 presidency in 2019 will take the lead in promoting environmentally sustainable economic growth and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As a gathering of coastal states, under Japan’s presidency the G20 will specifically work to reduce marine plastic pollution and support marine biodiversity. This policy paper highlights how oceans are governed spaces and points to the key role of the oceans in realizing the SDGs. We argue that the G20 can and should play an important role in addressing major governance gaps in ensuring the sustainable management of oceans. Recognizing that there are increased geopolitical tensions, and that we do indeed already have comprehensive multi-level governance systems in place to handle many aspects of the growing ‘blue economy’ and avoiding the tragedy of the commons, the G20 should primarily stress the need for full and effective implementation of existing instruments and measures at the national, regional and global levels and increased consistency across levels of governance. This would effectively address many of the challenges and make use of the opportunities of the oceans. However, the rapidly moving horizon of technological development and insufficient progress in mitigating global climate change represent new governance challenges that require renewed effort and innovative thinking for a sustainable future for the oceans. This policy paper provides recommendations as to how G20 states can: consolidate their own capacity and assist non-G20 states in taking responsibility for strengthening marine science and implementation of existing regulatory frameworks, exercise innovative global and regional leadership to address emerging opportunities and associated governance challenges and facilitate the meaningful involvement of the private sector and the public in ensuring a collective governance order around oceans.
Assessing the Effectiveness of the United Nations Mission in the DRC/MONUC-MONUSCO
Rapporten fokuserer både på den siste perioden av MONUSCOs mandat (2013-18), og tar hensyn til arbeidet til MONUC siden 1999, og tar derved et langsiktig syn på den fredsbevarende tilstedeværelsen i landet. FNs fredsbevarende engasjement i DRC siden slutten av den andre Kongo-krigen har strukket seg over nesten 20 år, tre presidentvalg, åtte spesialrepresentanter for FNs generalsekretær, og en rekke politiske og sikkerhetsmessige kriser som involverer nasjonale og regionale aktører og ikke-statlige. væpnede grupper. Oppdraget har gjenoppfunnet seg selv, forsøkt å tilpasse seg skiftende konfliktdynamikk, og måtte endre holdning på grunn av krav fra Sikkerhetsrådet, den kongolesiske regjeringen og regionale stater, samt som svar på nylige kutt i finansieringen. Som en av de største flerdimensjonale fredsbevarende operasjonene – for tiden inkludert 15 000 soldater og 1 300 politifolk fra 124 medvirkende land, samt 3 400 sivile – har MONUC-MONUSCO fått betydelige ressurser og et usedvanlig ambisiøst mandat. Å vurdere samsvaret mellom ressurser og mandat og måtene misjonen har tilpasset sine tilnærminger for å være effektive i ekstremt utfordrende omstendigheter er hovedmålene for denne rapporten.
Diplomacy, the arts, and popular culture
Diplomacy usually takes place in settings that are constructed not only with a view to functionality, but also to beauty. Beauty lends status and ambiance to diplomatic sites. The first part of this entry discusses the use of art by diplomats. The second part discusses how diplomacy is represented in popular culture and art. Since very few people have first‐hand knowledge of diplomacy, and diplomacy as such is rarely given much exposure in the news, most people owe their understanding of diplomacy to representations of diplomacy in popular culture and the arts. These representations have legitimacy effects. They feed back into how diplomats represent themselves to the public and, by extension, into how politicians represent issues to the public. In this sense, representations of diplomacy have an indirect constitutive effect on diplomacy.
EUNPACK Executive Summary of the Final Report & Selected Policy Recommendations. A conflict-sensitive unpacking of the eu comprehensive approach to...
Since adopting a ‘comprehensive approach’ to crisis management in 2013, the EU has spent considerable time and energy on streamlining its approach and improving internal coordina¬tion. New and protracted crises, from the conflict in Ukraine to the rise of Daesh in Syria and Iraq, and the refugee situation in North Africa and the Sahel, have made the improvement of external crisis-response capacities a top priority. But the implementation of the EU’s policies on the ground has received less scholarly and policy attention than the EU’s actorness and institutional capacity-building, and studies of implementation have often been guided primarily by a theoretical or normative agenda. The main objective of the EUNPACK project has been to unpack EU crisis response mecha¬nisms and provide new insights how they are being received and perceived on the ground by both local beneficiaries and other external stakeholders. By introducing a bottom–up perspective combined with an institutional approach, the project has tried to break with the dominant line of scholarship on EU crisis response that has tended to view only one side of the equation, namely the EU itself. Thus, the project has been attentive to the local level in target countries as well as to the EU level and the connections between them. The research has been conducted through an inductive and systematic empirical research combining competencies from two research traditions that so far has had little interaction, namely peace and conflict studies and EU studies. A key finding in our research is that while the EU has been increasingly concerned with horizontal lessons learnt, it needs to improve vertical lessons learnt to better understand the local dynamics and thus provide more appropriate responses.