This data shows why Indian MPs don’t truly represent their people
As the national elections of 2019 draw close, and incumbents prepare to face voters again, a straightforward question follows: how many people does a Member of Parliament really represent? On average, an Indian parliamentarian today represents constituencies with more than 1.5 million or 15 lakh eligible voters, or close to 2.5 million or 25 lakh citizens. This is more than the population of over 50 countries across the world and almost four times the number of citizens a Member of Parliament represented in the first Indian election in 1952. The sheer size of the electorate that each MP is supposed to represent may be seriously undermining representative democracy in India.
Veivalg og spenninger i norsk sikkerhetspolitikk: Norges forhold til NATO og EU
Norges sikkerhetspolitiske orientering har vært solid plantet i NATO-medlemskapet og det tette bilaterale samarbeidet med USA siden 1950-tallet. Parallelt har EU med jevne mellomrom også stått på den norske sikkerhetspolitiske dagsorden. Norsk sikkerhetspolitikk har vært preget av en rekke spenninger og veivalg i avveiningen mellom den transatlantiske og den europeiske pillaren, og der utviklingen av EUs felles sikkerhets- og forsvarspolitikk og USAs skiftende utenrikspolitikk har stått sentralt. Artikkelen drøfter også hvilke nye utfordringer og samarbeidsmuligheter vi ser konturene av i en tid der etablerte institusjoner og samarbeidsmønstre utfordres av en mer omskiftelig sikkerhetspolitisk situasjon, det globale maktskiftet fra Vesten til Asia, geopolitisk rivalisering, anti-liberale strømninger, og økt motstand mot EU.
Illiberalism, geopolitics, and middle power security: Lessons from the Norwegian case
Middle powers have played a key role in supporting global governance, a rules-based order, and human rights norms. Apart from conveying and effectuating global solidarity and responsibility, multilateral cooperation has been an arena where middle powers seek protection and leverage relatively modest power to greater effect, sometimes as “helpful fixers” to great powers. This article argues that geopolitical revival and the contestation of the liberal order are challenging middle powers' traditional sheltering policies, based on empirical evidence from the Norwegian case. First, the weakening of multilateral organizations is making middle powers more vulnerable to great power rivalry and geopolitics, and Norway's relationship with Russia is particularly pointed. Second, existing shelters such as NATO and bilateral cooperation with the US are negatively affected by the latter's anti-liberal foreign policies, making looser sheltering frameworks important supplements. While Norway's and other middle powers' traditional policies within the “soft power” belt may continue, “doing good” may become less prioritized, due to the need for security.
Improving Future Ocean Governance – Governance of Global Goods in an Age of Global Shifts
Japan’s G20 presidency in 2019 will take the lead in promoting environmentally sustainable economic growth and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As a gathering of coastal states, under Japan’s presidency the G20 will specifically work to reduce marine plastic pollution and support marine biodiversity. This policy paper highlights how oceans are governed spaces and points to the key role of the oceans in realizing the SDGs. We argue that the G20 can and should play an important role in addressing major governance gaps in ensuring the sustainable management of oceans. Recognizing that there are increased geopolitical tensions, and that we do indeed already have comprehensive multi-level governance systems in place to handle many aspects of the growing ‘blue economy’ and avoiding the tragedy of the commons, the G20 should primarily stress the need for full and effective implementation of existing instruments and measures at the national, regional and global levels and increased consistency across levels of governance. This would effectively address many of the challenges and make use of the opportunities of the oceans. However, the rapidly moving horizon of technological development and insufficient progress in mitigating global climate change represent new governance challenges that require renewed effort and innovative thinking for a sustainable future for the oceans. This policy paper provides recommendations as to how G20 states can: consolidate their own capacity and assist non-G20 states in taking responsibility for strengthening marine science and implementation of existing regulatory frameworks, exercise innovative global and regional leadership to address emerging opportunities and associated governance challenges and facilitate the meaningful involvement of the private sector and the public in ensuring a collective governance order around oceans.
Marianne Riddervold
Marianne Riddervold er forsker I (deltid) i Forskningsgruppen for sikkerhet og forsvar hos NUPI. I tillegg er hun forsker 1 ved ARENA Senter for e...
EUNPACK Executive Summary of the Final Report & Selected Policy Recommendations. A conflict-sensitive unpacking of the eu comprehensive approach to...
Since adopting a ‘comprehensive approach’ to crisis management in 2013, the EU has spent considerable time and energy on streamlining its approach and improving internal coordina¬tion. New and protracted crises, from the conflict in Ukraine to the rise of Daesh in Syria and Iraq, and the refugee situation in North Africa and the Sahel, have made the improvement of external crisis-response capacities a top priority. But the implementation of the EU’s policies on the ground has received less scholarly and policy attention than the EU’s actorness and institutional capacity-building, and studies of implementation have often been guided primarily by a theoretical or normative agenda. The main objective of the EUNPACK project has been to unpack EU crisis response mecha¬nisms and provide new insights how they are being received and perceived on the ground by both local beneficiaries and other external stakeholders. By introducing a bottom–up perspective combined with an institutional approach, the project has tried to break with the dominant line of scholarship on EU crisis response that has tended to view only one side of the equation, namely the EU itself. Thus, the project has been attentive to the local level in target countries as well as to the EU level and the connections between them. The research has been conducted through an inductive and systematic empirical research combining competencies from two research traditions that so far has had little interaction, namely peace and conflict studies and EU studies. A key finding in our research is that while the EU has been increasingly concerned with horizontal lessons learnt, it needs to improve vertical lessons learnt to better understand the local dynamics and thus provide more appropriate responses.