Kjetil Selvik
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Kjetil Selvik was a Research Professor at NUPI and Head of NUPI’s Research Group on Peace, Conflict and Development until 2024.
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Clear all filtersSelected bibliography Kjetil Selvik 1973 - 2024
Kjetil Selvik leaves behind an impressive body of work, remarkable for both its breadth and depth. In that sense, the work reflects the man. Kjetil was versatile and talented, perceptive and thorough. Selecting from his output is therefore a risky undertaking, but we have nonetheless ventured to choose a handful of his texts to illustrate precisely those scholarly qualities. The selected bibliography in this booklet reflects the main pillars of Kjetil's Middle East research: 1. Industrial policy and the effects of economic liberalisation; 2. Authoritarian regimes in the Middle East; 3. Religion and politics; and 4. Media and politics. The publications touch on Syria, Kuwait, Dubai, Tunisia, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq, among others, and include journal articles, edited volumes and monographs.
How Lebanon’s security sector works amidst state collapse
This paper examines how hybrid security orders in Lebanon were renegotiated during shocks, specifically the state collapse from 2019 to 2023 and the regional war in 2023–2024. It employs the framework of Areas of Limited Statehood to analyse the coexistence of formal and informal governance amid the Lebanese state’s challenges. The study contributes to the understanding of governance by focusing on ‘state effects’ – the tangible practices that emerge in such contexts. The analysis reveals that Lebanon’s hybrid security system employed flexible, bottom-up strategies to cope with the economic collapse, such as relying on international security assistance, circumventing regulations, downsizing activities and rent seeking. However, increased corruption risks undermining the stability these solutions initially provided. Additionally, the paper discusses the Lebanese army’s expanded role in the aftermath of the recent conflict with Israel, highlighting its challenges in enforcing UN Security Council Resolution 1701 while maintaining internal cohesion amid rising discontent among Hizbullah supporters.
Policy brief summarising the EU and other stakeholder’s prevention strategy towards violent extremism in the region, Middle East
The EU-Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Preventive Violent Extremism (PvE) co-operation is wide-ranging, and has been since a formalized partnership between the EU and MENA countries was outlined in the 1995 Barcelona Declaration. It has nevertheless received added attention following numerous terrorist attacks within the EU during the last decade; and European foreign fighters have been linked to the attacks in Paris in 2015; in Brussels, Berlin, and Nice in 2016; and in Manchester, London, and Barcelona in 2017.
Messaging Soleimani's killing: the communication vulnerabilities of authoritarian states
The capacity of authoritarian states to manipulate narratives and undermine the authority of western democracies is increasingly emphasized in International Relations research. Far less scrutiny has been paid to the ways in which the media environment creates communication vulnerabilities for these same repressive states. We address this research gap through a case-study of Persian-language commentary on the targeted assassination of Qasem Soleimani—a crescendo in the conflict between Iran and the United States. We examine how commentators on the two popular satellite channels interpreted Soleimani's killing and subsequent developments, and specifically, whether they rallied around the Iranian flag. The research method employed is qualitative media content analysis. The investigation reveals that the Islamic Republic did not benefit from a significant surge in patriotism among Iranian commentators; in fact, some openly applauded the attack. It was only when President Trump threatened to bomb Iranian cultural sites that the commentators rallied around the flag. The Islamic Republic faced a two-front narrative battle as communication attacks from within the national community intensified the information war with the US. The article concludes that authoritarian states are at a disadvantage when they require communication strategies beyond disinformation and distortion.
Disposable rebels: US military assistance to insurgents in the Syrian war
During the Syrian War, the US and other Western countries trained, equipped and paid Syrian rebels to fight the government and, later, root out the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). When states use armed groups to attain foreign policy objectives, control is a key concern. The US sought to enforce such control over providers and recipients of lethal military assistance in the period from 2013–18. We investigate the parallel CIA and Department of Defence assistance programmes . We challenge theoretical assumptions related to the application of the principal-agent model to explain the dynamics of foreign assistance to rebels. We argue that, in the US strategy to control rebels, co-ordinating the providers and dividing the recipients of security assistance were essential conditions. Meanwhile, the delays in recruitment, the limitations on the number of soldiers trained, the short supply of weapons and the strict regulation of the actions carried out by the rebels all reduced the efficacy of the assistance. This way of instrumentalising security assistance helped the US and its Western allies to crush ISIL while avoiding a collapse in Damascus. However, this happened at the expense of rebel cohesion, autonomy, and legitimacy.
Iran – revolusjon igjen?
Ei ung kvinnes død etter å ha blitt arrestert av moralpolitiet utløyste dei sterkaste protestane i Iran sidan revolusjonen i 1979. Den islamske republikken er tilbake der han starta.
'The generation that will inherit Syria’: education as citizen aid and political opportunity
Grassroots initiatives to provide education were an integral part of efforts to stem the humanitarian disaster unleashed by the armed conflict in Syria. This article studies activists who organised informal schooling for children amid the devastating war. Building on life story interviews, we highlight the versatility of initiatives in the field of education for citizens who simultaneously engage in humanitarian action and mobilise for political change. There is a natural concern to detach humanitarian work from politics in order to gain and maintain a space for action. This has distanced the study of humanitarian aid from social movements research, which focuses on long-term struggles over power and political structures. We maintain, however, that the social movement literature generally, and studies on structural and cognitive political opportunity specifically, can help refine our understanding of the illusive nature of citizen aid. Our findings indicate that Syrians involved in humanitarian educational activities constructed their own structure of opportunities by monitoring shifting political and humanitarian conditions. Opening schools was a technical and pragmatic solution to the educational disaster caused by war. At the same time, it was motivated by a long lasting desire to free Syria from its political plight and to offer an alternative.