Publications
Chinese digi-tech politics: Steering growth, spurring innovation, and reinforcing control
China is a growing digital technology (digi-tech) power and a leading provider of digi-tech resources internationally. China’s digi-tech growth is helping to create opportunities in other and developing countries, but it also stirring concern regarding digital security and the safeguarding of individual freedoms. Digi-tech is at the heart of the major power rivalry playing out between China and the USA. In this brief, we study the key drivers and main implications of Chinese digi-tech politics while also considering Norwegian digi-tech interests.
COVID-19 and the Resilience of Africa’s Peace and Security Networks
Many commentators predicted that the impact of COVID-19 on Africa, with its high levels of under-development and weak public health systems, will be particularly catastrophic. The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health and economic sectors have exposed and compounded preexisting social, political, and environmental vulnerabilities, especially in conflict-affected countries and regions, and have severely stress-tested their social cohesion and resilience. Global and local peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts in Africa have also been significantly disrupted. More than 1 year into the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa, however, the emerging pattern is one of resilience rather than insecurity and chaos. This article assesses the disruption caused by COVID-19 to Africa’s peace and security networks and considers how a complexity informed Adaptive Peacebuilding approach can assist in strengthening community resilience and stimulating self-organized adaptive capacity. The spread of the virus is still increasing steadily, and the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better. The question is what can African civil society, governments and multilateral organizations do to further strengthen and support the pattern of resilience that has emerged over the first 1 year of the COVID-19 crises in Africa?
Small States at the Top of Global Diplomacy: Different Tactics of Estonia and Norway on the UN Security Council
Op-Ed discussing what elected members of the UNSC can hope to achieve in a setting marked by great power tensions and ineffective working procedures.
COVID-19 and the Resilience of Africa’s Peace and Security Networks
Many commentators predicted that the impact of COVID-19 on Africa, with its high levels of under-development and weak public health systems, will be particularly catastrophic. The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health and economic sectors have exposed and compounded preexisting social, political, and environmental vulnerabilities, especially in conflict-affected countries and regions, and have severely stress-tested their social cohesion and resilience. Global and local peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts in Africa have also been significantly disrupted. More than 1 year into the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa, however, the emerging pattern is one of resilience rather than insecurity and chaos. This article assesses the disruption caused by COVID-19 to Africa’s peace and security networks and considers how a complexity informed Adaptive Peacebuilding approach can assist in strengthening community resilience and stimulating self-organized adaptive capacity. The spread of the virus is still increasing steadily, and the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better. The question is what can African civil society, governments and multilateral organizations do to further strengthen and support the pattern of resilience that has emerged over the first 1 year of the COVID-19 crises in Africa? The author would like to recognize the invaluable research assistance of Neyma Mahomed Ali and the contribution of ACCORD’s COVID-19 Conflict and Resilience Monitor. The engagement with colleagues and contributors stimulated much of the analysis contained in this article.
The Persistence of the Civic-Ethnic binary: Competing Visions of the Nation and Civilisation in Western Central and Eastern Europe
The normative binary of ‘good-progressive’ and ‘bad-retrograde’ nationalism, traceable to the civic and ethnic dichotomy, is alive and well in studies of nationalism and populism today. This article underlines the insufficiency of this approach, firstly by examining three stances on the civic nation in the West, each of which rejects ethnic nationalism and reflect different fundamental concerns. Moving east, in Central Europe the binary is inverted and turned against ‘liberal cosmopolitans’; in Russia, the Kremlin’s ‘state-civilization’ project can be viewed as a distinct trend in nation-building for non-Western contemporary great powers.
Securitisation of the EU approach to the Western Balkans: from conflict transformation to crisis management.
This chapter analyses the EU’s crisis response in the Western Balkans through the lens of EULEX. By exploring how those immediately responsible for mandate execution and those directly affected by its outcomes perceive EULEX, we discover gaps that highlight the pitfalls of direct and ingrained political interference in the mission’s work. While EULEX has been seen as an important watchdog for preventing further human rights abuses, the EU’s approach to Kosovo and the region continues to be characterised by competing priorities: the EU’s broader political objectives impact the mission’s legal work and hamper the EU in achieving a coherent and impactful rule of law policy. In turn, this decreases the local populations’ trust and approval of EULEX and ultimately undermines the EU’s overall goals of promoting good governance and a European perspective for Kosovo. This tension highlights the incompatibility of the EU’s short-term focus on crisis management and the more longterm focus on crisis transformation. We see this as particularly problematic for an actor whose self-image as a ‘normative power’, is underpinned by an assumption that its influence in the world in gained through ‘the power of ideas’.
Small States, Different Approaches. Estonia and Norway on the UN Security Council
In 2021, Estonia and Norway serve alongside Ireland as elected European members on the UN Security Council. In this report we ask: Why do smaller states like Estonia and Norway invest time, energy and resources seeking a non-permanent seat on the Security Council? What can they hope to achieve during their period as elected members? And how did Estonia and Norway work – individually and together – to achieve their ambitions in 2021 when they were both serving on the Council?
Why peace is important for COP and why COP26 is important for peace
In the medium to long-term, the most effective prevention against the worst effects of climate change - including violent conflict over scarce resources - is the reduction of carbon emissions. However, how we go about reducing emissions, and how we choose to adapt and mitigate, can either cause harm, including potentially triggering conflict, or it can contribute to sustaining peace.
Seizing the Momentum. EU Green Energy Diplomacy towards Kazakhstan
The relationship between the EU and Kazakhstan has historically been dominated by trade in oil and natural gas. However, the EU’s Green Deal and commitment to reach climate-neutrality by 2050 means that the bloc is slowly but surely reducing foreign non-renewable energy imports. Moreover, energy transitions and halting climate change have become global developments and commitments, enshrined in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Fossil-endowed Kazakhstan has pledged to be carbon neutral in 2060, but its transition policies must pick up speed. Meanwhile, the EU is embarking on a reinvigorated energy diplomacy agenda that should encourage and support other countries to transition towards renewable energy production, export and domestic consumption. This policy brief explores what tools the EU could use to support such transitions and what Kazakhstan could benefit from most. It considers the link with geopolitics and competitiveness and how to overcome obstacles for EU-Kazakhstani renewable energy cooperation, whilst also offering recommendations as to next steps forward.
Digital technology and development
Increasingly, the global challenges posed by digitalization and cybersecurity are emerging as central to the organization of development assistance – with consequences for billions of people in the developing world. The distribution of digital technology and connectivity is occurring at an unprecedented pace, offering new opportunities and contributing to economic growth across the world. While development agencies and donor countries are utilizing such opportunities as a vehicle for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), new societal vulnerabilities are arising alongside them. These vulnerabilities have significant implications in terms of – among other things – freedom of speech, human rights, and modern forms of slavery. This is especially the case in those countries currently making the leap into the digital age, where there is a pressing need for knowledge, education, institution building and experience sharing. Sustainable growth through digital technology is dependent on analogue foundations, with donor countries having an important role to play through development assistance and capacity-building mechanisms. With this in mind, this article looks at the rapid growth in internet usage in sub-Saharan Africa and its implications for governance, cybersecurity and development in the region.