Conclusion: Are Rising Powers Breaking the Peacebuilding Mold?
In this concluding chapter we analyze the peacebuilding concepts, policies and practices of the group of rising powers - Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Turkey – that we have chosen to focus on in this book. We find that these countries share a number of approaches, but note that they also diverge in several areas. The rising powers have a broader concept of peacebuilding than most Western donor countries, but the extent to which they equate peacebuilding with development varies. They have a more holistic operational approach, they have a longer time horizon and a strong emphasis on national ownership, but the latter is often narrowed down to governmental consent. They share a heightened sensitivity to sovereignty, but negotiate this in a variety of different ways. It is also possible that rising powers will adopt more results-based and shorter-term approaches. We find that the rising powers have influenced the discourse and practices of peacebuilding, especially at the United Nations, but have not transformed them. Several recent setbacks raise doubts about whether rising powers will sustain their new influential role in peacebuilding. Our research show that rising powers have set forth a broadly coherent set of principles and rationales as the basis for their new approach to peacebuilding. These principles and practices, and especially their results, are likely to influence how Western donors, the UN, regional organizations and non-governmental organizations approach peacebuilding in important ways in the coming years.
Rising Powers and Peacebuilding: Breaking the Mold
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This edited volume examines the policies and practices of rising powers on peacebuilding. It analyzes how and why their approaches differ from those of traditional donors and multilateral institutions. The policies of the rising powers towards peacebuilding may significantly influence how the UN and others undertake peacebuilding in the future. This book is an invaluable resource for practitioners, policy makers, researchers and students who want to understand how peacebuilding is likely to evolve over the next decades.
UN-Friedenssicherung und Terrorismusbekämpfung: seltsame Bettgenossen?
English summary: UN Peacekeeping and Counterterrorism: Uncomfortable Bedfellows? Based on the case of the UN Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), the article argues that UN peacekeeping neither is, nor will be ready operationally, doctrinally or politically to take on counterterrorism tasks. Such a development will jeopardize the legal protection of UN staff, and the ability of the UN to be an impartial arbiter of conflict, and for other parts of the UN family to carry out humanitarian work. The article thus argues that MINUSMA is an anomaly in the history of UN peacekeeping, and should be avoided as an example for future operations.
Contested Professionalization in a Weak Transnational Field
I analyse the contested emergence of so-called needs assessments and the push towards ‘evidence-based action’ within humanitarian organisations. The introduction of evidence-based action since the late 1990s inaugurated a systematic change within humanitarian organisations: it implied that practical experience from humanitarian crises - since long a hallmark of authority among humanitarian professionals - was no longer sufficient alone to establish authority and dominate humanitarian organisations. The push to use ‘objective’ methods to assess humanitarian needs came primarily from donors, who demanded that humanitarian organisations better demonstrate efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability. While humanitarian professionals across different organisations can be said to share moral commitments and expertise, they were nonetheless not able to push back against the introduction of standardised needs assessments. The explanation for this is to be found in the fact that the humanitarian field lacks autonomy: Because humanitarian organisations rely extensively on outside actors (donors) for financial and political support, their internal organisation and outlook is heavily shaped by non-humanitarian actors. As a result, the ability of transnationally organised humanitarian professionals - operating in humanitarian crises - to shape humanitarian priorities and modes of work is undercut by their respective organisations´ relative dependence on outside actors. Present-day humanitarian organisations are thus marked by two different strands of professionalism: one with basis in practical experience from humanitarian crises, emphasising proximity to those in need and the role of bearing witness, and one with basis in more abstract models of knowledge of management, resource-mobilisation, and measuring needs through standardised methods.
Professional Networks in Transnational Governance
Who controls how transnational issues are defined and treated? In recent decades professional coordination on a range of issues has been elevated to the transnational level. International organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and firms all make efforts to control these issues. This volume shifts focus away from looking at organizations and zooms in on how professional networks exert control in transnational governance. It contributes to research on professions and expertise, policy entrepreneurship, normative emergence, and change. The book provides a framework for understanding how professionals and organizations interact, and uses it to investigate a range of transnational cases. The volume also deploys a strong emphasis on methodological strategies to reveal who controls transnational issues, including network, sequence, field, and ethnographic approaches. Bringing together scholars from economic sociology, international relations, and organization studies, the book integrates insights from across fields to reveal how professionals obtain and manage control over transnational issues.
Grasping the everyday and extraordinary in EU–NATO relations: the added value of practice approaches
Much scholarly work seeking to explain the EU–NATO relationship emphasises conflicting national or institutional interests, strategic individuals, and operational inefficiencies and overlaps. This article offers an alternative account of how both the everyday and the extraordinary in EU–NATO security cooperation can be identified and analysed by applying practice theory. Despite the “Cyprus issue”, which has left EU–NATO cooperation under Berlin Plus in political stalemate, regular interaction involving civilian and military EU and NATO staff at all levels and various sites has increased over the past decade. The article shows how a practice take is well suited to uncover the practical logic at work in these, predominantly informal EU–NATO encounters; how practices are established, enacted, and also abrupted. Furthermore, it discusses how shared “background conditions” – skills and experience – facilitate practices, learning, and community-building but also competition and rivalry.
The Challenges and Dynamics of Alliance Policies: Norway,NATO and the High North
The global system of alliances that the United States built after the Second World War underpinned the stability and prosperity of the postwar order. But during the 20th century, the multilateral NATO alliance system in Europe and the bilateral San Francisco alliance system in Asia rarely interacted. This changed in the early 21st century, as US allies came together to fight and stabilise conflicts in the Middle East and Central Asia. This volume presents the first-ever comparative study of US alliances in Europe and Asia from the perspectives of US allies: the challenges, opportunities and shifting dynamics of these fundamental pillars of order. This volume is essential reading for those interested in contemporary and future regional and global security dynamics.
Det illiberale Europa
Det er klare fellestrekk i landenes politiske utvikling. Gjennom lovendringer svekker myndighetene uavhengigheten til domstolene, sivilsamfunnet og media. I tillegg deler de et konservativt politisk tankegods, hvor regjeringene vektlegger statlig suverenitet, religion, familie og nasjon som et alternativ til det liberaldemokratiske tankegodset i EU.
The Challenges and Dynamics of Alliance Policies: Norway,NATO and the High North
This chapter sets out to discuss two major framework conditions for Norwegian foreign, security and defence policy: North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the High North. Having to address increasingly heterogeneous security concerns and agendas, how do alliances shape their members’ foreign, security and defence policies? And how do the specific challenges related to the High North, such as Russia and other states’ policy agendas, form Norwegian responses and policies? In answering these questions, we aim to explore the framework conditions in a contemporary and historical context.