Publikasjoner
The History of International Thought
Being a distinct discipline entails being able to recount the disciplinary history and pre-history, and in IR this has led to a sustained engagement, first with the history of international thought in the classical sense, then with historiography. Over the last decades, scholars have increasingly come to see International Relations Theory neither as the recurrence of ancient patterns of thought nor as a miraculous conception of the early 20th century. Rather, continuous stories have been written, where IR has become tied to a wide variety of previous thought. In this volume we explore this scholarship in breadth, explicitly opposing the notion of “great traditions” and “great debates”, and focusing primarily on the challenges, and on works undermining, redirecting or expanding the canon.
Doing Historical International Relations
The relationship between International Relations and History has varied greatly over the last century, following largely from the historiographical changes in International Relations theorising. This volume details the changing relationship over the last 60 years, through a number of both seminal and newer texts. The volume starts with classics of the 1950’s and 60’s, continues with the ebb of historical scholarship in the 1970’s and 80’s and the forceful calls for a regeneration, and concludes with the opening of new perspectives over the last two decades. Although the newer generations have indeed rehashed some of the older ideas, there has also been an obvious increase in the sophistication of (meta) theoretical reflection and methodological awareness. There have never been more or more varied ways of justifying historical scholarship in International Relations.
Historical International Relations
As a quarry for data, testing-ground for theory and site of investigation, history has been one of the unacknowledged partners of International Relations. The last two decades has witnessed both a substantial increase in the scope of historical IR scholarship and in the sophistication of methodological approaches to history, accompanied by a rapidly increasing (and multidisciplinary) interest in the history of international thought, as well as an ever more sophisticated historiography of the discipline itself. This Major Work is structured in a way to engage with the key recent developments in the field of international relations, providing the reader with an overview of approaches to history in IR; the history of international thought/historiography; and the emergence of the state and the state system.
Peacebuilding, Ownership, and Sovereignty from New York to Monrovia: A multi-sited Ethnographic Approach
How does peacebuilding organize people within systems of power and authority? In this dissertation I address the ways in which current global peacebuilding processes challenge established notions of the state and different conceptions of sovereignty. Adopting a studying-through approach further enabled me to trace aspects and activities across several organizational levels and geographical sites during fieldwork; (i) the UN Security Council, (ii) peacebuilding bureaucracy and policy making in DPKO in New York, (iii) the implementation level and peacebuilding process in Liberia. Peacebuilding activities turned Liberia into an object of governing. This produced certain paradoxical processes, whereby the UN, in seeking to build the state, also became the state.
Engergy Security in the Baltic Sea Region: Regional coordination and and management of interdependencies
The study maps changing energy relations in the Baltic Sea region in the aftermath of two events – the 2004 EU enlargement that has changed the political and institutional / regulatory landscape of the region and the outbreak of the armed conflict in Ukraine that has put the issue of energy security – and security in more general terms – very high on the European political agenda. It discusses how the regional distribution of energy resources and energy policies have contributed to altering the level of energy security in the whole region and in particular countries, how various actors have addressed energy security concerns by cooperative policies, in particular, EU wide and sub-regional (Nordic, Baltic) coordination measures aimed at managing energy interdependencies and increasing energy security.
Islander innovation: A research and action agenda on local responses to global issues
Europe’s Return to UN Peacekeeping in Africa? Lessons from Mali
In a break from recent tradition, European member states are currently contributing significant military capabilities to a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operation in Africa. Europeans are providing more than 1,000 troops to the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) by staffing a wide range of operations including an intelligence fusion cell, transport and attack aircraft, and special forces. Yet for European troop-contributing countries (TCCs) that have spent several years working in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) operations in Afghanistan, participating in a UN mission has been a process of learning and adaptation. For the UN, the contributions of key capabilities by European countries have pushed the UN system to adjust to the higher expectations of the new European TCCs, which has proved difficult in Mali’s complicated operating environment and political situation. The report examines this complex relationship and shows the challenges and opportunities for both the UN and its European member states participating in MINUSMA. In terms of challenges, the report identifies obstacles facing European TCCs as they adapt to the UN peacekeeping system, the domestic political concerns of European TCCs, and the need for increased partnership among TCCs within the mission. In terms of opportunities, the report finds the potential of European military contributions to strengthen UN peacekeeping operations facing capability constraints and the UN’s ability to learn and adjust to increasingly asymmetric threat environments, as it responds to the needs of European TCCs.
United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad I and II (MINURCAT I + II)
This chapter focuses on the United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT I + II), a peacekeeping mission deployed by the UN Security Council in September 2007 to address some of the spillover effects of the war in Darfur, Sudan. MINURCAT was initially protected by a smaller European force, EUFOR, to carry out its mandate to protect civilians in danger, including refugees and displaced persons, and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid in Chad. After providing an overview of the crisis in Chad, the chapter outlines MINURCAT’s mandate and evaluates its operational achievements and limitations, as well as the important lessons that can be learned from its experience.
Governing Cocaine Supply and Organized Crime from Latin America and the Caribbean: The Changing Security Logics in European Union External Policy
The logics of the European Union’s policy and practices against narcotic drugs in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have undergone a substantial shift the past decade: from development to security. Based on an empirical mapping of the EU’s drug-related projects in LAC, this article argues that an ‘integrated and balanced’ approach to drugs policy is being replaced by a bifurcation between the broader domains of development policy and security policy. Questions are raised as to how the EU’s projects on development and security might counteract one another, and how the Union’s programme aimed at dismantling transnational organized crime along the cocaine trafficking routes to Europe might have unintended consequences. While keeping in mind the shifting tectonics of the international drug prohibition consensus, the article goes on to analyze the increasingly salient security rationale in EU external drugs policy against the backdrop of the EU’s emerging role as a global security actor. In doing so, it touches upon the intrinsic tensions between human rights and (supra) national security.