WEBINAR: Launch of special issue of International Spectator
We are happy to promote the launch of a special issue of the "International Spectator" journal on Governance, Fragility and Insurgency in the Sahel: A Hybrid Political Order in the Making, guest edited by Morten Bøås and Francesco Strazzari.
Kacper Szulecki
Kacper Szulecki is a Research Professor in International Climate Governance at NUPI, and a Professor II at the Centre for Development and the Envi...
Cristiana Maglia
Cristiana Maglia is a senior research fellow at NUPI. She is currently the post-doctoral researcher of the project Ad hoc crisis response and inte...
Governance, fragility and insurgency in the Sahel: a hybrid order in the making
Once a region that rarely featured in debates about global security, the Sahel has become increasingly topical as it confronts the international community with intertwined challenges related to climate variability, poverty, food insecurity, population displacement, transnational crime, contested statehood and jihadist insurgencies. This Special Issue discerns the contours of political orders in the making. After situating the Sahel region in time and space, we focus on the trajectory of regional security dynamics over the past decade, which are marked by two military coups in Mali (2012 and 2020). In addressing state fragility and societal resilience in the context of increasing external intervention and growing international rivalry, we seek to consider broader and deeper transformations that can be neither ignored nor patched up through the framework of the ‘war on terror’ projected onto ‘ungoverned spaces’. Focusing especially on the mobilisation of material and immaterial resources, we apply political economy lenses in combination with a historical sociological approach to shed light on how extra-legal governance plays a crucial role in the deformation, transformation and reformation of political orders.
Explaining violence in Tillaberi: insurgetn appropiration of local Grievances
The Tillabéri region in Niger has quickly lapsed into a state of violence and come under the control of ‘violent entrepreneurs’ – that is, non-state armed actors possessing some kind of political agenda, which is implemented in tandem with different types of income-generating activities. Violent entrepreneurs rule by force and violence, but they also distribute resources, provide some level of order and offer protection to (at least parts of) the population in the areas they control, or attempt to control. In many local communities in peripheral areas of the Sahel, these violent entrepreneurs have a stronger presence than international community actors and their national allies. This situation is partly the result of spill-over effects from the war in Mali and local herder-farmer conflicts, but the key factors are the ability of jihadi insurgents to appropriate local grievances and the failure of the state to resist this.
Building Tax Systems in Fragile States
How can international donors contribute where institutions are weak?
Russlands forhold til og interesser i Hviterussland
Lecture to the Norwegian Parliament on Russia's relations to Belarus and what strategy the Kremlin might opt for as the crises evolves
Relations between Russia and Norway: Spiraling towards a new Cold War?
Lecture on how official rhetoric shapes and conditions the space for manoeuvre between two collective political entities. Using the examples of Norway and Russia in the period 2014-2019, I presented how the way in which political leaders talk about each other can contribute to conflict escalation.
"The Russian Understanding of War: Blurring the Lines between War and Peace"
The Russian Understanding of War: Blurring the Lines between War and Peace Julie Wilhelmsen (NUPI, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs) reviews The Russian Understanding of War: Blurring the Lines between War and Peace by Oscar Jonsson.
Political violence and polarization in France: the threat, the discourse and the response
Since 2015, more than 250 civilians have been killed in jihadist attacks in France. Is France particularly prone to jihadist violence, and how does terrorism affect French society and French politics?