Publikasjoner

How UN Peacekeeping Operations Can Adapt to a New Multipolar World Order

How will United Nations peacekeeping operations adapt to the transition from a unipolar to a multipolar world order? The paper considers emerging dynamics in three areas that may suggest how UN peacekeeping are likely to be affected by a changing world order, namely strategic political coherence, the employment of force, and the outer limits of peace operations. It points out that one of the enduring characteristics of UN peacekeeping has been the resilience of its identity. Another has been the continuous evolution of the specific manifestations of that identity into practice. UN peacekeeping have thus shown a remarkable capacity to continuously adapt to new challenges over the past 70 plus years, and there is no evidence to suggest that it will not continue to do so into the future.

The Political Economy of Policy Vacuums: The European Commission on Demographic Change

Supranational organisations can only confront politico-economic issues that are recognised as important. Typically, issues gain recognition either when they provide an external shock to the system, shaking political actors into action, or when they are framed as important in policy networks concerned with developing the appropriate scientific approach. Ideally political and scientific actors align in creating pressures to recognise the issue as salient and to mobilise organisational responses. Issues differ in their capacity to be driven by both political and scientific pressures, creating crisis management, technocratic, and reform agenda outcomes. Here we explore a further variation, where pressures around an issue are insufficient, creating a policy vacuum. We examine one such policy vacuum in Europe: demographic change. This issue belongs to no particular Directorate-General in the European Commission, but is subject to policy frames from DG EMPL and DG ECFIN. Without sufficient political and scientific pressures, no particular policy position is occupied and advocated despite recognition of the issue’s importance. We discuss the role of policy vacuums and the need for their identification in political economy research.

Kreml og den liberale idéen

Hvor radikal er egentlig Kremls anti-liberalisme?

Y-blokka og Syria

Hva har Y-blokka, kriseloven og Norges Syria-bidrag til felles?

Analyzing Frenemies: An Arctic repertoire of cooperation and rivalry

Mesteparten av samhandlingen mellom stater skjer et eller annet sted imellom robust, idyllisk og ubestridt fred og full krig. Arktis er ikke noe unntak. Her har intensivt transnasjonalt samarbeid og manifestasjoner av sikkerhetspolitisk rivalisering mellom NATO og Russland utspilt seg i over 30 år i kjølvannet av Den kalde krigen. I denne artikkelen utforsker Elana Wilson Rowe, Forsker 1 på NUPI, hvordan stater i Arktis har balansert måten de praktiserer samarbeid og rivalisering på i et spesielt krevende politisk landskap etter Krim-annekteringen for fem år siden.

Reyting gotovnosti k peremenam: Sposobny li rossiyskiye neftyanye kompanii adaptirovatsya k novym realiyam mirovykh energeticheskikh rynkov

Er russiske oljeselskaper i stand til å tilpasse seg til den nye virkeligheten i internasjonale energimarkeder?

International Development Assistance. Policy Drivers and Performance

This book provides a comprehensive search for the basic political drivers of international development cooperation, based on the policy and performance of the OECD countries from the early 1960s to the present. The author focuses on the stated and implemented policies of the so-called frontrunners and the Western hegemon, scrutinizing the changing trends in the justifications, objectives and guidelines set for the policy and their evolving performance vis-à-vis the stated policy and the international ODA target. Yhrough extensive research, the work examines predominant world-views, societal value systems and foreign policy traditions in order to find the policy drivers that vary nation to nation and how development assistance has evolved globally.

China’s Export Success: Due to Unfair Practices or Fair Competition?

Compared with previous ratings, China’s trade policy today is more positively acknowledged. Yet, China can still be criticised in particular because of its non-transparent subsidy policy, the privileged role of state-owned enterprises, the heavy hand of the state in general, the sluggish enforcement of intellectual property rights, and the prevalence of non-tariff barriers. Yet, it cannot be ignored that Chinese entrepreneurship mentality is highly developed outside state interference in world markets. Especially, in the digital economy, high motivation and a large pool of human skills act as drivers of innovations, so far mainly process innovations. The trade war with the US hurts China and is responded by China with asymmetrical retaliation. The more Chinese exports to the US in total are affected, the more costs will have to be borne by US consumers as options to shift to alternative suppliers become weaker. What President Trump would see as a “good” deal for the US is unclear. It can be thus presumed that the trade war will continue into 2020 and that it is in fact a tech war. The EU is affected as EU companies produce in China for the US market and in the US for the Chinese market. While it might gain from trade diversion effects in the short run, the negative effects on investment due to uncertainty weigh more heavily. The EU is tempted to negotiate a free trade agreement with China but rightly refuses to start negotiations before China is prepared to conclude an agreement on investment. The EU should not see China and the US on equidistance. Workable relations with the US are much more important. To conclude, China’s trade policy has improved relative to Western standards but still warrants further steps towards much less state influence. Yet, its global competiveness especially in the state-of-the-art digital economy is high and is owed to a strong entrepreneurial mentality.

Perspectives on European development co-operation : policy and performance of individual donor countries and the EU

A Century of US Diplomatic Security: An Evolutionary Response to a Changing Threat Environment

This chapter traces nearly 100 years of US Diplomatic Security from its pre-WWI origins up to the Obama Administration, describing the key drivers of its qualitative and quantitative expansion through the Cold War into the post 9-11 world. It offers a detailed breakdown of the various roles and missions of the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, as well as the ancillary diplomatic security role played by the US military.