Publikasjoner
Special Issue on the Evolving Nature of African-Led Peace Support Operations and African Armies
Key Questions • How has the evolution of African-led PSOs on the continent shaped Africa’s security response to insecurity? • How has African-led PSO influenced the identity of African armies and their responses to insecurity in Africa over the last two decades? • Does the experience of African-led PSOs drive military actors' decision-making during times of crisis? What impact (if any) does African-led PSO have on African military professionalism?
Sverige, Finland og NATO
Våre naboland Sverige og Finland har alltid stått utenfor forsvarsalliansen NATO, men da Russland angrep Ukraina, endret svensk og finsk forsvarspolitikk seg på kort tid. Hvor hender det? snakker med seniorforsker Kristin Haugevik fra NUPI om NATO, og om Sverige og Finlands vei mot et mulig medlemskap. Programleder: Therese Leine, senior kommunikasjonsrådgiver hos Norsk Utenrikspolitisk Institutt (NUPI)
Emigrant external voting in Central-Eastern Europe after EU enlargement
The European Union's Eastern Enlargement of 2004–2007 triggered a large wave of migration. While the influence of Central-Eastern European (CEE) migrants on Western European politics has been studied, the impact of outward migration and political remittances “sent” by expatriates remain unexplored, despite the salience of democratic backsliding and populist politics in the region. We ask how external voting among migrants differs from electoral results in homelands over time, drawing on an original dataset gathering voting results among migrants from six CEE countries in fifteen Western European host countries. Using models estimated with Bayesian ordinary least squares regression, we test three hypotheses: two related to the disparity of diaspora votes from homeland party systems over time; and one to the ideological leanings of diasporas. We observe a growing discrepancy and note that diaspora votes follow the ideological fluctuations in the country of origin but distort it, with CEE migrants voting for more liberal and more economically right-wing parties than voters ‘at home’.
Ad hoc coalitions in global governance: short-notice, task- and time-specific cooperation
Ad hoc coalitions (AHCs) are an indispensable but scantly conceptualized part of global governance. In recent years, several typologies and classifications of global governance arrangements have been provided, mostly differentiating them based on their organizational design features of degree of formality and membership composition. These do not capture AHCs and the role they play in global governance. In this article, we not only provide a conceptualization of AHCs, but also propose ways in which AHCs fit within the broader global governance architecture. We argue that what sets AHCs apart is not so much their (in)formality or membership, but rather their short-notice creation, their task-specific purpose and their temporarily circumscribed existence. We therefore define AHCs as autonomous arrangements with a task-specific mandate established at short notice for a limited time frame. We then develop a research agenda on the nature and future of AHCs, including their short- and long-term relationship with other multilateral arrangements in the global governance architecture. This is important, as we do yet not know how AHCs complement, compete and impact on international organizations and international crisis response.
A quest to win the hearts and minds: Assessing the Effectiveness of the Multinational Joint Task Force
In January 2015, the African Union (AU) authorised the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) as a regional security arrangement of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) to deal with the threat of Boko Haram (BH) in the Lake Chad region. Its mandate includes the responsibility of ensuring a safe and secure environment in the areas affected by the BH insurgency, reducing violent attacks against civilians, facilitating stabilisation programmes in the Lake Chad region, facilitating humanitarian operations and the provision of assistance to affected populations. To achieve its mandate, the MNJTF undertakes both kinetic and non-kinetic operations. Its mandate has been renewed yearly since 2015, and in December 2022, the AU renewed its mandate for another 12 months. This report assesses the effectiveness of the MNJTF in delivering on its three mandate priorities to generate recommendations for the enhancement of the MNJTF´s overall effectiveness.
'The generation that will inherit Syria’: education as citizen aid and political opportunity
Grassroots initiatives to provide education were an integral part of efforts to stem the humanitarian disaster unleashed by the armed conflict in Syria. This article studies activists who organised informal schooling for children amid the devastating war. Building on life story interviews, we highlight the versatility of initiatives in the field of education for citizens who simultaneously engage in humanitarian action and mobilise for political change. There is a natural concern to detach humanitarian work from politics in order to gain and maintain a space for action. This has distanced the study of humanitarian aid from social movements research, which focuses on long-term struggles over power and political structures. We maintain, however, that the social movement literature generally, and studies on structural and cognitive political opportunity specifically, can help refine our understanding of the illusive nature of citizen aid. Our findings indicate that Syrians involved in humanitarian educational activities constructed their own structure of opportunities by monitoring shifting political and humanitarian conditions. Opening schools was a technical and pragmatic solution to the educational disaster caused by war. At the same time, it was motivated by a long lasting desire to free Syria from its political plight and to offer an alternative.
The European Union's space diplomacy: Contributing to peaceful co-operation?
Den europeiske union (EU) har blitt en nøkkelspiller i verdensrommet, nest etter USA. Denne artikkelen diskuterer hvilken type diplomatisk aktør EU er i verdensrommet ved å utforske om det bidrar til fredelig samarbeid eller om EU – på grunn av økende geopolitisk konkurranse på jorden – er i ferd med å utvikle seg til en tradisjonell realistisk aktør. For dette formålet bruker artikelen tre analytisk distinkte modeller for EUs rompolitikk, som også gjelder andre Global Commons-områder. Artikkelen finner at EU ikke behandler verdensrommet som et område med geopolitisk konkurranse. I stedet bidrar den til romdiplomati gjennom sitt fokus på å regulere og institusjonalisere romvirksomhet. Men i stedet for å være drevet av «romfluktideen», er EU forpliktet til fredelig utvikling av verdensrommet hovedsakelig for økonomiske, strategiske og samfunnsmessige formål, i tråd med det man kan forvente av en liberal institusjonalistisk aktør.
Russlandsforskere, hva nå?
Russlands krig mot Ukraina har enorme konsekvenser, først og fremst for Ukraina, men også for Russland og Russlands andre nabostater. Krigen har ikke bare kastet om på europeisk og norsk sikkerhets- og utenrikspolitikk, den vil ha store konsekvenser også for den norske forskningen på, og kunnskapen om, Russland. Mulighetene for forskning i Russland har blitt stadig mer begrenset over flere år, og etter februar 2022 er døren nærmest helt stengt. Samtidig er kunnskap om Russland viktig for Norge, som deler grense og forvalter kritiske ressurser i samarbeid med Russland. Slik vil det fortsette å være. Spørsmålet nå er hvordan denne kunnskapen skal skapes og oppdateres, gitt at rammebetingelsene som den norske forskningen på Russland de siste 30 årene har blitt produsert under, har endret seg dramatisk. Hvordan skal vi oppdatere norsk kunnskap om Russland i årene fremover? Hvilke metoder og data er tilgjengelige, og hva kan vi forvente av disse?
Africa in 2022
Dr Andrew E. Yaw Tchie shares his assessment on what have been the most significant issues shaping Africa in 2022.
The humanitarian-development nexus: humanitarian principles, practice, and pragmatics
The humanitarian–development nexus is increasingly being cast as the solution to humanitarian concerns, new and protracted crises, and to manage complex war-to-peace transitions. Despite widely endorsed amongst policymakers, this nexus presents some challenges to those implementing it. Humanitarian action and development assistance represent two distinct discursive and institutional segments of the international system that are hard to juxtapose. Humanitarianism’s apolitical and imminent needs-based approaches building on established humanitarian principles are fundamentally different from the more long-term, political, rights-based approaches of development. As they rub shoulders, as intentionally instigated by the nexus, they affect and challenge each other. These challenges are more acute to the humanitarian domain given the constitutive status of the humanitarian principles, which, when challenged, may cause changes to the humanitarian space and a mission-cum-ethics creep. This article explores the formation and effects of the humanitarian–development nexus as rendered both at the top, amongst policymakers, and from the bottom. The latter explores the discursive transition from conflict to reconstruction in Northern Uganda. Humanitarian organisations’ different response to the transition demonstrate more pragmatic approaches to the humanitarian principles and thus how the nexus itself is also formed bottom up and further exacerbates the mission creep.