Uforståelig påstand
While it is important to have an academic and political debate on the effects of an EU-US trade agreement (TTIP), it is too easy to write off the contributions you do not like as "outdated".
Non-Arctic countries and Arctic politics
Talk at roundtable seminar organized by Japanese Institute of International Affairs and the Norwegian Embassy in Japan. Part of the NUPI project for the Munich Security Conference.
Invited speaker: Russian climate politics
Invited speaker on Russia's climate politics, at SWP-Berlin's Working Group on Russia: Annual conference, 7 December 2020
Reputation crisis management and the state: Theorising containment as diplomatic mode
This article theorises containment as a diplomatic response mode for states when faced with potentially harmful attacks on their international identity and reputation. Despite widespread agreement in International Relations (IR) scholarship that identities matter in the context of state security, studies of crisis management have paid little attention to ontological security crises. Scholarly literature on public diplomacy has concerned itself mainly with proactive nation branding and reputation building; work on stigma management has privileged the study of how ‘transgressive’ states respond to identity attacks by recognising, rejecting or countering criticism. Our contribution is two-fold. First, we make the case that states do not perform as uniform entities when faced with ontological security crises – government representatives, bureaucratic officials and diplomats have varying roles and action repertoires available to them. Second, we argue that containment is a key but undertheorised part of the diplomatic toolkit in crisis management. Unpacking containment as a crisis management response mode, we combine insights from IR scholarship on emotions and diplomacy with insights on therapeutic practices from social psychology. We substantiate our argument with a case study of how Norwegian government representatives, bureaucratic officials and diplomats responded to escalating international criticism against Norway’s Child Welfare Services following a wave of transnational protests in 2016. A key finding is that whereas the dominant response mode of government ministers and bureaucratic officials was to reject the criticism, diplomats mainly worked to contain the situation, trying to prevent it from escalating further and resulting in long-term damage to bilateral relations.
Discovering Opportunities in the Pandemic? Four Economic Response Scenarios for Central Asia
The COVID-19 crisis represents not only an unprecedented economic disruption but also an opportunity for Central Asia. A specific economic policy response may trigger either game-changing reforms that can facilitate the development of full-fledged market institutions or lead to a protracted crisis that would jeopardize almost 30-year long market economy transition progress. As it is rather unclear where the recovery pendulum will make its final swing, the current situation provides fruitful soil for various assumptions. This paper proposes and examines four scenarios of economic response strategies for the region as a whole, and for Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in particular, that result in unique development trajectories. The paper employs the foresight methodology to build four scenarios related to the situation after the lockdown is fully lifted. The scenarios serve the purpose of helping decision makers to embark on informed decisions while shaping anti-crisis measures and better understand causality mechanisms behind their policy choices.
Emerging Lessons from Implementing Climate-Related Peace and Security Mandates
Six of the ten largest United Nations-led peace operations in 2020 were located in countries that are the most exposed to climate change. Both UN peacekeeping operations and special political missions are increasingly mandated by the UN Security Council to consider and respond to climate-related security risks. In response, UN peace operations have tried to more effectively respond to climate-related peace and security challenges by adapting existing approaches and exploring innovative new ways in which to operationalize these tasks. Efforts to translate these climate and environmental-related mandates into policies and practices are a work in progress, and can benefit from ongoing learning, monitoring, and adaptation. In this regard, lessons and good practices for integrating climate-related security risks into policies, analysis, activities, and reporting are beginning to emerge.
Mekanismer for screening av utenlandske investeringer. Oversikt over et utvalg land
Etter tusenårsskiftet har åpne økonomier i økende takt satt i gang prosesser for å vurdere risikoen av utenlandsinvesteringer. Bakgrunnen for dette er økende grad av investeringer fra mindre transparente økonomier, frykt for svekket konkurranse blant internasjonale aktører, samt teknologiske endringer som kan gjøre stater mer utsatte. Dette har blant annet fått EU til å vedta en regulering som etablerer et rammeverk for screeningmekanismer (Regulation (EU) 2019/452). Utviklingen de seneste årene - og særlig i løpet av COVID-19 pandemien - er at slike mekanismer ekspanderer, blir mer detaljerte og permanente, og omfatter større deler av økonomien, med lavere terskelkriterier og dermed et økende antall transaksjoner som screenes.
Norway as an in-between for Russia: Ambivalent space, hybrid measures
This three-year project addresses the acutely relevant question of whether Norway is acquiring the precarious status of an ‘in-between’ state in the Kremlin’s eye after the watershed e...