Diplomacy and foreign policy

Political change and historical analogies

This article deals with how scholars, policy analysts and activists, striving to make sense of current political change, have turned to history for analogies and ideas for action. While it is encouraging to see the Trump presidency and other instances of upheaval leading to a strengthened interest in history, in academe and public life more generally, there nevertheless is a need to caution against facile appropriations of the historical record and the use of superficial similarity to legitimize political action. I discuss ways of historicizing the present, through some examples of historical analogies applied to the first months of the Trump presidency and other relatively current instances of change. I start with a discussion of historical analogies and concepts, stressing how they can be understood as both first order and second order constructs. Then I discuss the current usage of historical analogies and concepts as both first order and second order constructs, before I conclude.

Learning from Experience - International Policing

In the Norwegian MFA-funded project ‘Learning from Experience – International Policing’ the researchers examined several aspects of police participation in international deployments in order to extract best practices and lessons learned. The project consisted of four main parts: 1) looking at how Norway and like-minded countries manage knowledge in connection to the recruitment and deployment of police officers in international missions; 2) analysing training experiences for peace operations; 3) gathering, systematizing and analysing experiences and insights of individual Norwegian police officers who had served in international operations (1989–2016); and 4) analysing the Specialized Police Team model that Norway deployed to MINUSTAH to build Haitian police capacity to investigate sexual violence. This Policy Brief sums up the main findings of the project, and offers policy recommendations on the basis of other research.

Norwegian Police in International Operations 1989-2016

This policy brief presents the main findings and recommendations from a longer survey-based report with the same title, documenting the experiences of Norwegian police personnel in international operations from 1989 until today. The purpose of the survey was to systematically gather the knowledge Norwegian police bring home from international operations, be they peace operations, stabilization missions or other assistance missions. This information is an important source of information for policymakers, practitioners and academics in order to understand the challenges Norwegian police have met, not only in the field but also before deployment and after return. This is meant to provide an improved knowledge base for developing new policy and practice for Norwegian police deployments and international police assistance.

Global Governance

From humanitarian action to development aid in northern Uganda and the formation of a humanitarian-development nexus

The instituted order of humanitarianism is both changing and challenged. This article addresses the transition between humanitarian action and development aid in northern Uganda, which was driven by the government’s ambition to reassert its humanitarian sovereignty by discursively recasting the situation from one of crisis to one of recovery and development, regardless of the persistent humanitarian needs. In response, humanitarian actors either withdrew or moved into development aid. This bourgeoning humanitarian–development nexus questions the nature and future of humanitarianism and whether there is a hierarchy – or contradiction – between the humanitarian mandate and pragmatic approaches to save lives and protect civilians.