Researcher
Ole Jacob Sending
Contactinfo and files
Summary
Ole Jacob Sending is Research Professor in the Research group for global order and diplomacy at NUPI.
Sending does research on global governance, with a particular focus on the role of international and non-governmental organizations in peacebuilding, humanitarian relief, and development. His publications have appeared, inter alia, in International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, and International Theory.
Expertise
Education
2004 Dr. Polit., Department of Administration and Organization Theory, University of Bergen
1998 Master of Science, Political Science. Department of Political Science, SUNY, Albany, New York
1997 Cand. Mag., University of Bergen, Norway. (Economics, Political Science, Sociology)
Work Experience
2023- Research Professor, NUPI
2012-2023 Research Director, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI)
2008-2009 Visiting Scholar, Fulbright Scholarship, Dept. of Sociology, UC Berkeley
2008- Senior Researcher, NUPI
2008-2014 Adjunct Senior Researcher, Chr. Michelsen Institute, Bergen
2006-2008 Senior Adviser, Policy Analysis Unit, Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway
2003- Senior Researcher, NUPI
2002 Visiting Research Fellow, Stanford University (SCANCOR)
1999-2003 Research Fellow, NUPI, PhD Student, University of Bergen
Aktivitet
Filter
Clear all filtersTheory Seminar: The emergence of modern world politics
NUPI has the pleasure of inviting you to a theory seminar with Mathias Albert from the Bielefeld University. The presentation is based on parts of his forthcoming book "A Theory of World Politics", Cambridge University Press, which will be out this Spring.
AGENCY, ORDER, AND HETERONOMY
Constructivist theories have produced a wealth of insights about the dynamics by which social facts shape actors’ identities and how distinct logics of action are at work in upholding and producing particular orders. Reviewing this literature, I argue that the normsoriented scholarship has failed also on its own terms in that it has tailored different logics of action to the task of explaining particular political orders rather than agency proper. These norm-centred accounts present themselves as agent-oriented, but subsume the exploration of agency within an account of the micro-level foundation for a norm-anchored order. In lieu of such a perspective, I unearth one key insight from Richard Ashley and treat agency as an achievement. It is an effort to balance external forces in such a way as to achieve a semblance of agency or control. This view of agency is, I think, implicit in Kratochwil and Onuf’s work on rules. I explicate this view and demonstrate how it offers better tools with which to explore the historically changing conditions within which actors seek to present themselves as proper agents and to shape any given order, which cannot be reduced to, or subsumed within, any particular logic of action.
STEAL Final Seminar: Global Wealth Chains and Tax Evasion
This seminar will present the findings of the project "Global Wealth Chains and Tax Evasion", and a discuss of the latest cases investigated
“Roving Elites and Sedentary Subjects: The Hybridized Origins of the State”
In the introduction to this volume, Hurt and Lipschutz ask about historical precedents for the present-day hybridization of state power and capitalist accumulation strategies and practices. As is well known, the emergence of capitalism was marked by a number of earlier and relevant shifts of governmental rationality, leading back to the break with mercantilism, which was decisive in singling out economics as a separate sphere in western societies. This process was a key drama in western state building during the mercantilist seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it was indigenous to those states. Similar processes emerged in other states only as a result of contact (trade, conquest, colonization etc.) with western states. Characteristically, at present non-western states have a less clear division of political and economic spheres than do western states, and in some states, it makes little sense to talk about separate spheres at all. One of the defining features of what are often called “fragile states” is precisely that the public and the private is not separate, thus contradicting the ideal-typical model of a Weberian state on which the category rests (Eriksen 2011).
The limits of global authority: World Bank benchmarks in Ethiopia and Malawi
Global benchmarks (re)shape political conversations and institutionalise authoritative languages. It does not necessarily follow, however, that benchmarks can exert a lasting or significant influence over policies and behaviour of benchmarked actors. We analyse how the World Bank uses benchmarks to manage its relations with both donors and recipient governments. We analyse the role of the World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA), both at headquarters and in relation to the recent history of two countries in Africa: Ethiopia and Malawi. We find that the CPIA is not – and contrary to what one would expect from the CPIA’s nominal function and the literature on benchmarks – a very important tool for signalling incentives and allocating funds, or shaping the policy dialogue or the World Bank’s strategy in these two countries. Rather, the CPIA is used highly selectively as one factor among many in the negotiations between World Bank staff and governments. We conclude that the CPIA helps establish the World Bank as an actor that embodies global authority on development issues, including with donors, but that there is a tension between such global authority on the one hand, and concrete authority to shape policy in domestic contexts, on the other.
Economic outlooks for Africa
African Economic Outlook 2015: What are Africa´s economic outlooks?
Diplomacy and the Making of World Politics, Introduction
In this Introduction, we accomplish two main goals. First, we provide theoretical tools to better grasp the role and character of diplomacy and how it may be changing in the contemporary era. We develop a relational framework focused on two dimensions: the evolving configurations of state and non-state actors and the competing authority claims that underpin diplomatic practices on the world stage. Second, we begin to theorize the ways in which diplomacy makes and remakes world politics. The remainder of the book offers rich case studies to empirically substantiate our broad argument about the constitution of world politics in practice. In this Introduction, our more limited objective is to explain the significance of our argument for key debates in international relations (IR).
The Politics of Expertise. Competing for Authority in Global Governance
Experts dominate all facets of global governance, from accounting practices and antitrust regulations to human rights law and environmental conservation. In this study, Ole Jacob Sending encourages a critical interrogation of the role and power of experts by unveiling the politics of the ongoing competition for authority in global governance.