CANCELLED: Europe in 2020 – a Finnish perspective
This event has been cancelled due to unforeseen events.
Theory Seminar: “Traditional” institutions and polity-building in Chechnya and Ingushetia
Dr Ekaterina Sokirianskaia, will present her book project on the situation in North Caucasus.
Fieldwork on/with/through non-governmental organizations: navigating NGO ethnography
Ethnographic fieldwork among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can provide rich data on the practices and micro-level processes of civil society actors, as well as mechanisms of cooperation or implementation. But ‘doing’ fieldwork is not an analogous process of entering a ‘field’ and collecting data through conversation or observation; as the researcher searches for information and connections, answers and access are likely to be shaped by how she is perceived by other actors in the field. Especially in contexts where the researcher gains access to informants or field sites through the facilitation of an organization – such as the case can be in humanitarian or development research – the researcher must regularly navigate and (re)assert her role in the eyes of both organizations and surrounding communities. The dialectics of perception, role assertion and legitimacy are constant processes. This paper draws lessons from long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted among faith-based NGOs in Ethiopia, as well as interviews with other scholars who have conducted research on and with NGOs. Through this, I seek to critically explore what it means to be researching for, with, and through organizations. Is, for instance, the distinction of doing 'research of development', as compared to doing 'research for development', a viable distinction, or merely a heuristic? And how do researchers navigate this divide, in a context where they often risk being perceived as the organization they are researching, or may take upon themselves smaller tasks in the host organizations, in order to gain further understanding and access to ‘the field’?
The Political Economy of Policy Vacuums: The European Commission on Demographic Change
Supranational organisations can only confront politico-economic issues that are recognised as important. Typically, issues gain recognition either when they provide an external shock to the system, shaking political actors into action, or when they are framed as important in policy networks concerned with developing the appropriate scientific approach. Ideally political and scientific actors align in creating pressures to recognise the issue as salient and to mobilise organisational responses. Issues differ in their capacity to be driven by both political and scientific pressures, creating crisis management, technocratic, and reform agenda outcomes. Here we explore a further variation, where pressures around an issue are insufficient, creating a policy vacuum. We examine one such policy vacuum in Europe: demographic change. This issue belongs to no particular Directorate-General in the European Commission, but is subject to policy frames from DG EMPL and DG ECFIN. Without sufficient political and scientific pressures, no particular policy position is occupied and advocated despite recognition of the issue’s importance. We discuss the role of policy vacuums and the need for their identification in political economy research.
Kreml og den liberale idéen
How radical is Kremlin's anti-liberalism?
Russia and the European Human Rights System
There is a change in Russia's approach to the European Convention on Human Rights. What are the prospects for Russian participation in this system?
Why Populist Foreign Policies in Europe are Doomed to Fail
Professor Andrew Moravcsik visits NUPI to talk about the surge of populism in Europe and its limitations for foreign policy.
Voting for development? Ruling coalitions and literacy in India
Across the world, governments skew the distribution of state resources for political gain. But does such politicisation of resource allocation affect development trajectories in the long run? We focus on the long-term effects of voting for the ruling coalition on primary education in India. Using a close-election instrumental variable design and drawing on a new socio-economic dataset of India's state assembly constituencies in 1971 and 2001, we examine whether areas represented by members of ruling coalitions experienced greater increases in literacy over 30 years. We find no evidence of this being the case, in the overall data or in relevant sub-samples. The null results are precisely estimated, and are consistent across OLS and 2SLS specifications and several robustness checks. These findings suggest the politicised distribution of some funds in the short run does not affect long-term development trajectories.
Cybersikkerhet
(In Norwegian only) Den teknologiske utviklingen og framveksten av digitale nettverk har ført til noen av de mest dramatiske endringene vi har sett på flere generasjoner. Dette gjelder både endringer i sosial samhandling, men også endringer i den mer generelle samfunnsmessige utviklingen. Disse framskrittene har også hatt viktige implikasjoner for sikkerhetspolitikk, internasjonal politikk og forhold mellom stormakter. I fokusspalten i dette nummeret av Internasjonal Politikk har vi invitert samfunnsvitere til å belyse hvordan cybersikkerhet bidrar til å endre forhold mellom stater og internasjonale organisasjoner samt internasjonal politikk.