Researcher
Jon Harald Sande Lie
Contactinfo and files
Summary
Jon Harald Sande Lie holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Bergen (2011), Research Professor and Head of the Research group on peace, conflict and development.
His research scope pertains to international aid, global governance and state formation, focusing on development and humanitarian aid in Eastern Africa, particularly Ethiopia and Uganda where he has conducted long-term fieldworks in studying the partnership relation at the level of NGOs and those involving the World Bank.
He is co-editor for the journal Forum for Development Studies. He is project manager for the FRIPRO project Developmentality and the anthropology of partnership, and he is project manager and principal investigator of Public–Private Development Interfaces in Ethiopia - Research project | NUPI
Expertise
Education
2011 PhD in Social Anthropology, University of Bergen
2004 MPhil in Social Anthropology, University of Oslo
2000 Cand. Mag. (roughly equivalent to BA): Social Anthropology (1,5 year); History of Ideas (1 year); History of Religion (1 year); Philosophy (0,5 year); Development and Environment (0,5 year)
Work Experience
2022- Research professor, NUPI
2007- Research fellow/Senior Research Fellow, NUPI
2004- Scholarship holder, Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen
Aktivitet
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Clear all filtersEnd review, NORDEM programme 2021-2025
Norway's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) commissioned this review of the NORDEM programme 2021–2024, managed by NORCAP/NRC. The programme supports democracy, human rights, and peacebuilding through expert secondments to international organizations. While the original budget was NOK 455.3 million, actual expenditures with addenda ended up being NOK 483.7 million with the number of assignment-months increasing from 697 in 2021 to 812 in 2024, primarily to OSCE, UN agencies, and EU bodies.
Humanitarian–development nexus
This is a chapter in the book Elgar Encyclopedia of Development.
Localization and developmentality: Policy pragmatism in pandemic times
Motivation: Localization is increasingly invoked in debates about how to reform international aid: to improve aid effectiveness and address ethical concerns by turning hierarchical aid relations on their head. This has proved to be easier said than done. The COVID-19 pandemic produced logistical impediments to aid practitioners, which translated into a renewed, if temporary, interest in localization. Purpose: The initial scope of the research engaged with the notion of partnership during COVID-19, but almost all informants drew attention to the concept of localization. The article maps and analyses the challenges and advantages of localization, as seen from the practitioners' perspective. Approach and methods: The article draws on 24 interviews conducted in Oslo with representatives of various Norwegian development and humanitarian non-governmental organizations and government agencies, in addition to policy and grey literature review. Findings: The article shows that the re-emergence of the localization debate during COVID-19 occurred not because of any ambition to reform aid, but as a pragmatic and temporary response to the logistical impediments caused by the pandemic. Reflections from the interviewees on the pros and cons offer more substantial insights into why localization fails to change practice, while at the same time localization enables a form of indirect governance related to accountability regimes. This is analysed as developmentality, reflecting the logic that localization takes place when recipients do as donors want, but they do so voluntarily, which suggests that localization counterintuitively may reinforce existing power structures. Policy implications: Localization is poorly conceptualized. While a definition could be helpful in practice, one that is too rigid could undermine the diversity of actors and knowledge that localization aims to advance. At the operational level, localization requires greater flexibility and slack throughout the aid chain, especially in the audit and accountability regimes of donor and funding authorities, which permeate and uphold lopsided aid relations.
Bottom-up development as framed freedom: developmentality and donor power
International development assistance is founded on and reproduces a set of conceptual and structural binaries. Development actors themselves have attempted to alter lopsided aid relations, as illustrated by the prominent policy agendas of ownership and localisation in the 2010s. These are both expressions of bottom-up approaches to international aid, which challenge the very hierarchical nature of development as a particular Western instrument and historical project of intervention. This article argues that the top-heavy, donor-driven policies to turn development bottom-up fail not simply because of these discursive challenges. Aid asymmetries also persist because of the neoliberal audit culture evolving in tandem with the liberal contours of ownership and localisation agendas. This is analysed in terms of developmentality, which, as a tacit and indirect form of power, is both produced by and simultaneously undermines the liberal tenets of bottom-up approaches.
Public–Private Development Cooperation: Interface and Conflicting Logics in the Formation of a Strategic Partnership
Public–private development partnership constitutes the core of a deepening normative agenda that places private actors as active development agents and as means through which other development objectives are pursued in partnership with publicly funded aid actors. This normative agenda may challenge international development. This article goes beyond the official policy level to explore the formation of public– private development cooperation in practice, not just on paper. It zooms into the partnership between a Norwegian NGO and a multinational company and their joint project to renovate an old vocational college in Ethiopia to serve the private actor’s need for qualified workers. The article shows how a publicly funded development project becomes a proxy for private interests, but argues that the diversion of public aid is not due to bad intentions or conflicting interests. Rather, it is the result of interface situations created by the public–private partnership agenda and its intentional merger of actors with distinct institutional logics, accountabilities and rationales. The article demonstrates how actors put together as part of the public–private partnership agenda end up undermining the agenda itself because of the interface situations created in the nexus of public and private actors.
Africa in a time of global crisis: Some trends
Africa is facing major challenges. Poverty is increasing again after many years of decline, and many countries are experiencing an economic crisis as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, including rising inflation. Several countries are indirectly affected by Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has led to high energy prices and reduced access to grain and fertiliser. Several countries and regions are also marked by terrorism and violent conflicts, and climate change is creating increased risks of floods, droughts and heatwaves. Parallel to this, the role of the great powers in Africa is changing rapidly. After a period of strong European and American dominance, other great powers, such as China and Russia, have stepped up their activities in Africa. China has invested heavily in infrastructure, trade and development aid, while Russia has gained an important role in a number of countries, particularly through military aid and arms supply. Other countries, such as India, Turkey and Qatar, have also invested heavily in Africa. These developments are taking place simultaneously as Africa’s global significance is set to increase. First, the region has important natural resources, such as oil and gas, as well as rare minerals and earth metals that are in high demand in the context of the green transition. Second, Africa is severely affected by climate change, which can lead to social unrest, violent conflicts and extensive migration. In a time of increasing geopolitical rivalries and instability, this means that developments in Africa will have considerable global ramifications. Although other countries have increased their interest in and become more important partners for African countries, the EU and Europe are still Africa’s largest trading partners and providers of development aid. The influence of the EU and Europe in Africa is not challenged in this respect, but rather in areas such as governance, infrastructure and energy, and specifically from the Russian side within what we can call a niche of security markets. Russia has been able to operate here by offering arms sales, military training and services from the Wagner Group (a private military company) to regimes that Europe and the United States are not willing to provide that type of support for. The struggle for political and economic influence in Africa is stronger and more intense than since the Cold War, and there is reason to believe this will continue. This also gives African countries more choice and autonomy vis-à-vis external actors. African states are not just objects to be acted upon by the international community, whether through development aid, investment or in international forums; they are also active agents who, with increased self-awareness, will seek to navigate the new landscape of global power rivalries and fragmentation. This is a development that must be taken seriously. Neither Norway nor Europe can afford to take Africa and African support for our positions in international politics for granted. This report provides a brief overview of the key trends in Africa, which form the basis for Norway’s development of a new strategy for Africa.
The humanitarian-development nexus: humanitarian principles, practice, and pragmatics
The humanitarian–development nexus is increasingly being cast as the solution to humanitarian concerns, new and protracted crises, and to manage complex war-to-peace transitions. Despite widely endorsed amongst policymakers, this nexus presents some challenges to those implementing it. Humanitarian action and development assistance represent two distinct discursive and institutional segments of the international system that are hard to juxtapose. Humanitarianism’s apolitical and imminent needs-based approaches building on established humanitarian principles are fundamentally different from the more long-term, political, rights-based approaches of development. As they rub shoulders, as intentionally instigated by the nexus, they affect and challenge each other. These challenges are more acute to the humanitarian domain given the constitutive status of the humanitarian principles, which, when challenged, may cause changes to the humanitarian space and a mission-cum-ethics creep. This article explores the formation and effects of the humanitarian–development nexus as rendered both at the top, amongst policymakers, and from the bottom. The latter explores the discursive transition from conflict to reconstruction in Northern Uganda. Humanitarian organisations’ different response to the transition demonstrate more pragmatic approaches to the humanitarian principles and thus how the nexus itself is also formed bottom up and further exacerbates the mission creep.