Publikasjoner
“Roving Elites and Sedentary Subjects: The Hybridized Origins of the State”
In the introduction to this volume, Hurt and Lipschutz ask about historical precedents for the present-day hybridization of state power and capitalist accumulation strategies and practices. As is well known, the emergence of capitalism was marked by a number of earlier and relevant shifts of governmental rationality, leading back to the break with mercantilism, which was decisive in singling out economics as a separate sphere in western societies. This process was a key drama in western state building during the mercantilist seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it was indigenous to those states. Similar processes emerged in other states only as a result of contact (trade, conquest, colonization etc.) with western states. Characteristically, at present non-western states have a less clear division of political and economic spheres than do western states, and in some states, it makes little sense to talk about separate spheres at all. One of the defining features of what are often called “fragile states” is precisely that the public and the private is not separate, thus contradicting the ideal-typical model of a Weberian state on which the category rests (Eriksen 2011).
The Modern Roots of Feudal Empires: The Donatary Captaincies and the Legacies of the Portuguese Empire in Brazil
Trade barriers or trade facilitators? On the heterogeneous impact of food standards in international trade
Recent research shows that food standards can be heterogeneous across sectors or countries: they sometimes act as barriers to trade, but in other cases may lead to increased trade. We present empirical evidence from Norwegian seafood export data showing that food standards, measured by SPS and TBT notifications, generally have a negative impact on total exports, the number of exporters and their average exports. However, for fresh seafood, the impact of SPSs is positive. We present a theoretical explanation for this, suggesting that food standards reduce consumer uncertainty about quality and safety and therefore increase demand