Norsk utviklingspolitikk i en tid med klimaendringer og geopolitisk spenning
Denne strategiske satsningen har som hovedmål å bidra til at Utenriksdepartementet, Norad og andre aktører innenfor utviklingspolitikk skal få systematisk og relevant kunnskap om hvord...
Norsk utenrikspolitikk i en varmere verden
Til tross for at klima omtales som vår tids største utfordring, har konsekvensene av klimakrisen fortsatt en marginal betydning i norsk utenrikspolitikk. Vi analyserer hvordan overgangen til et fornybart energisystem, økt klimamigrasjon, press på oljenasjonen Norges omdømme, og store utfordringer for FN, EU og NATO, vil endre betingelsene for norsk utenrikspolitikk. Vi beskriver hvordan utenrikspolitikken påvirkes i tre fremtidsbilder med henholdsvis rask omstilling (A), sen omstilling (B) og ingen omstilling (C). Det utenrikspolitiske handlingsrommet blir mindre i alle fremtidsbildene. Den viktigste prioriteringen i norsk utenrikspolitikk bør være å hindre dramatiske klimaendringer fordi det vil undergrave norsk velstand, sikkerhet og internasjonal stabilitet. I siste del av artikkelen drøfter vi hvilke konsekvenser klimakrisen bør få for prioriteringer i utenrikspolitikken og for våre viktigste allianser. Vi argumenterer for at klimakrisen gir tunge argumenter for å knytte Norge enda nærmere til EU, og for å samarbeide tettere med Kina.
Introduction: Making Liberal Internationalism Great Again
At a time when liberal internationalism and institutions of multilateral cooperation arebeing dealt almost daily blows, this special issue revisits the notion and practice ofmiddle power liberal internationalism. The introduction suggests that while liberal inter-nationalism is far from dead, the challenges are serious and multiple. Reflecting on theseven essays contained in the volume, it argues that the biggest challenge for a futureliberal internationalism is not to double-down on its normative virtues, but critically toreflect on how it can be retooled to respond to new challenges.
"Contracting development: managerialism and consultants in intergovernmental organizations"
Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) are now managed with an eye to managerial trends associated with transnational professionals, a view that has ramifications for how IGOs govern their policies and processes. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with staff in IGOs, we trace how managerialism in IGOs is changing how staff perceive work practices. We find that IGOs increasingly rely on consultants to enact policy scripts and to evaluate program success. This signals a subtle yet significant shift from expertise and bureaucratic impartiality, grounded in particular types of knowledge, to skills and flexibility to meet client demands and advance best practice norms according to prevailing world cultural frames. This managerial trend in IGOs is partly driven by stakeholder dynamics but is primarily a normative change in who is seen as having the authority to make claims over professional best practices. Such managerialism is contracting the development policy space. This contraction is partly driven by consultants, who defer to their peers and to donors rather than IGO staff and concerned member states. This work also depletes institutional memory for IGO operations. We trace how IGO staff perceive managerial trends and changes in work practices.
Ethnic Diversity in the Recruitment of Diplomats: Why MFAs Take the Issue Seriously
Diversity and its management have become an issue in all organisations. Ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs) do not escape the issue. In the 2000s, states decided to consider more ethnic diversity in the recruitment of their diplomats. In some countries, this new goal requires affirmative action programs. This article is based on three case studies. The first case study analyses two Western countries — France and Norway — where MFAs have to reflect the diversity of immigration in their societies. The second case study analyses the case of Brazil, a country where the legacy of slavery still causes discrimination in the recruitment of diplomats. The third case study analyses ethnic diversity in the MFAs of India and Singapore, which recognise multiculturalism or multiracialism. The study draws five comparative conclusions to generalise on why MFAs in the world cannot escape the challenge of ethnic diversity in their recruitment policy.
The Politics of Diasporas and the Duty of Care: Legitimizing interventions through the protection of kin
The duty of care (DoC) is largely portrayed as being of a benevolent and liberal character, with welfare states aiding its citizens abroad. In this chapter Holm examines a more complex phenomenon involving the DoC: that of a state and its diaspora. Seeing Duty of Care in relation to diasporas poses a conceptual shift: often multinational in identification, with a perceived or real ‘homeland’, and at times with dual (legal) citizenship, diasporas may be sought protected under an extended, non-territorialized notion of belonging to a state’s citizenry. Looking at Russian rhetoric in the Georgia war in 2008 and the Crimean annexation and Ukraine crisis in 2014, Holm explores how the Duty of Care can be evoked rhetorically to defend diaspora groups by kin-states. In relation to a domestic audience, this prism proves highly effective, as the state portrays its actions as defending ‘their’ people abroad out of a moral necessity and responsibility for their kin. It also functions to dismiss international stigma and critique at home based on a perceived higher moral purpose. As in the case of diasporas in inter-state conflicts with Georgia and Ukraine, this turns the Duty of Care into a complicated, and potentially highly politicized, international matter. It also provides a communitarian alternative to the cosmopolitan R2P: in theory, any group can be defined as worth defending as one’s own, across and despite opposing claims to sovereignty. The chapter concludes with discussing the wider ramifications of diaspora group protection by kin-states for challenges to the liberal international order.