Publikasjoner
Convenience or complementarity: the African Union’s partnership with the United Nations in Sudan and South Sudan
Over the past 20 years, the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) have developed a unique partnership rooted in complementarity, respect and African ownership. To reaffirm this partnership, the United Nations Secretary-General and Chairperson of the African Union (UN) Commission signed a Joint UN-AU framework for Enhanced Partnership in Peace and Security in 2017. Nevertheless, despite previous lessons learned, gaps in collaboration and strategic thinking, and oversight exist on the ground between the AU and the UN. Drawing on the case(s) of Sudan and South Sudan to further understand the AU’s partnership with the UN through the lens of complementarity and convenience, the paper arrives at a novel conceptualisation of the AU and UN partnership through their political missions. The paper finds that the AU-UN framework is sporadically implemented, and the AU’s role in the partnership on the ground is one of convenience, whereas, in contrast, the UN’s role is one of complementarity aimed at achieving legitimacy. The paper concludes that both organisations in-country were constrained by the lack of collaboration and synergy, which led to a misalignment of joint priorities, impacting the effectiveness of the partnership.
Enhancing the African Union’s function in supporting transitional governments in Africa
In 2010, the African Union (AU) committed to establishing the African Governance Architecture (AGA) as a Pan-African platform to promote good governance, democracy and respect for human rights. The AGA was devised to support the implementation of objectives outlined in the legal and policy pronouncements in the AU’s shared values. However, over the past few years, despite the efforts of this pillar, there has been a noticeable decline in democracy, governance and human rights values in some AU member states. The emergence of coups and constitutional changes has coincided with a trend in the use of transitional agreements/ governments across Africa. Many of these transitional agreements are stagnant, fail to deal with the root causes of grievances (they neglect the challenges that transitional governments must navigate), and often delay steps towards democratic consolidation. Instead they produce forms of military government that entrench authoritarian rule led by military actors who use the transitional agreements to eventually deliver electoral authoritarianism. This paper explores the rise, implementation and effectiveness (processes) of transitional agreements in six African states. It contends that the recent launch of the AU’s Africa Facility to Support Inclusive Transitions in conjunction with the United Nations Development Programme is a worthy effort for supporting transitions in Africa. However, it argues that the AU needs to strengthen the AGA pillar and put in place better provisions to support transition mechanisms. It must develop context-specific adaptive stabilisation strategies to support the different forms of transitional government(s), systems, mechanisms and institutions underpinning these transitions to avoid the emergence of an array of transitional governments that do not deliver for the affected communities. Finally, steps must be taken to deal with the root causes of coups etc., which initially receive widespread support, but might indicate that civilian support may be linked to temporarily seeking solutions to the challenges (e.g., economic underdevelopment, centre-rural challenges, political isolation, insecurity etc.) that the government of the day has neglected to deal with.
Norway: Between engagement and caution
Kapittelet omhandler Norges politiske grep om relasjonene til Kina, og er del av en større rapport der mange europeiske land og EU sin Kina-politikk blir kartlagt. Norge forsøker å kombinere engasjement og aktsomhet i sin tilnærming til Kina, og søker samarbeid i saker av felles interesse, samtidig som Norge vil verne om nasjonale sikkerhetsinteresser og liberale normer internasjonalt. I fraværet av en oppdatert, samlet Kina-strategi, har norske myndigheter tatt flere grep for å styrke koordineringen rundt Kina-relaterte spørsmål. Det er imidlertid vanskelig å se effekten av disse grepene, eller se helheten i hva Norge jobber for å oppnå i sine relasjoner til Kina.
Digital Supply Chain Dependency and Resilience
Mens en voksende mengde litteratur tar for seg hvordan stater i økende grad søker å sikre sine digitale områder og begrense avhengigheter, har det blitt viet mindre oppmerksomhet til hvordan digital infrastruktur påvirker deres evne til å gjøre dette. Denne artikkelen presenterer en ny tilnærming til å studere cybersikkerhet og digitale avhengigheter, med fokus på hvordan private selskaper påvirker staters evne til å sikre kritiske tjenester. I denne artikkelen analyserer vi digitale forsyningskjeder for å undersøke de tekniske tverrgående tjenestene, infrastrukturene og lokasjonene som populære mobilapplikasjoner er avhengige av. Vi argumenterer for at disse avhengighetene har ulike effekter på motstandskraften til digitale teknologier på nasjonalt nivå, men at det å håndtere disse avhengighetene krever ulike og til tider motstridende tiltak. For å studere dette fenomenet utvikler vi en metodikk for å utforske dette empirisk ved å spore og undersøke de spredte og ofte implisitte avhengighetene i populære mobilapplikasjoner. For å analysere disse avhengighetene registrerer vi rå datatrafikkstrømmer for så å geolokalisere de ulike avhengighetene til utvalgte applikasjoner sett fra Oslo, Barcelona, Paris, Zagreb, Mexico By og Dublin.
Generation three and a half peacekeeping: Understanding the evolutionary character of African-led Peace Support Operations
African-led Peace Support Operations (PSOs) were established to support the African peace and security architecture by developing integrated capacities for deployment in crises. However, since the deployment of the first African-led PSOs, there has also been the emergence of new types of African-led PSOs, such as the African Union Mission in Somalia; the Lake Chad Basin Commission Multinational Joint Task Force; the Joint Force for the Group of Five for the Sahel; the Southern African Development Community Mission in Mozambique; and the East African Community Force in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The paper examines why African-led PSOs have emerged, arguing that these operations have allowed for increased African agency and shaped the African peace and security space. The paper finds that African-led PSO reflects a more regional and local-specific response in a declining era of new United Nations peacekeeping operations but has also resulted in an overreliance on force to solve the continent’s peace and security issues. Consequently, the paper arrives at a novel conceptualisation of African-led PSOs, positing that they represent generation three and a half of peacekeeping which focus on the effectiveness of force and the morality of using force to deal with insecurity and multifaceted crisis.
Anarchy is a Bridge: Russia and China are Pushing NATO and Japan Together
After nearly 70 years of distant relations, security ties between NATO and Japan are flourishing. A number of important initiatives have recently been adopted, including high-level political dialogues, joint military training, and cooperation in science, technology, and cyber security. This article considers recent developments in NATO-Japan relations and in particular their origins, drivers and implications.
Major Powers in a Shifting Global Order
How to measure power in international affairs is an eternal matter of debate, especially among political scientists. Many generic approaches have been suggested, among them control over resources; control over actors; and control over events and outcomes,2 and numerous efforts have been made to develop concrete formulas. In China, academic institutions 3 and independent scholars have competed as to how best to measure “comprehensive national power”. All approaches and formulas have something to offer, and all have inherent limitations.
Considering ecological security from the perspective of Arctic ecosystemic politics
This brief essay is part of a book forum on Matt McDonald's book (2021) presenting the idea of ecological security. In the essay, I reflect on progress and prospects for Arctic cooperation and governance in order to consider the promise and limitations of McDonald’s ecological security framework. The Arctic is an instructive example for such an exploration. The longstanding post-Cold War cooperation in the Arctic is strongly rooted in an appreciation of the interconnected nature of the Arctic ecosystem, even as the governance mechanisms remain far from what would qualify as an ecological security approach in McDonald’s sense. Nonetheless, I suggest that especially two aspects are instructive from the Arctic example. The first relates to how ecological security would potentially interface with an already quite full landscape of governance practices rooted in ecosystems, and associated power political genealogies and effects. The second point is a reflection on unfolding events, seeking to explore how continued inputs from other forms of security governance could impact on emerging or partial attempts to govern with an ecological security perspective. Here, the status of Arctic cooperative governance after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an illustrative example to consider. Both points can be read as impediments limiting the applicability of the ecological security framework. However, as McDonald argued, impediments are not the same as absolute limits (2021, 192) and potential obstacles are explored here in the spirit of advancing possibilities for ecological security.