Publikasjoner
The dangers of Europe’s blindness to a long war in Ukraine
While Western leaders still talk of total victory against Russia, they risk ignoring a grim reality with no end in sight.
How Not to Do UN Peacekeeping: Avoid the Stabilization Dilemma with Principled and Adaptive Mandating and Leadership
Looking back over the past seventy-five years of UN peacekeeping, the most enduring question has been: Is peacekeeping effective? Historically, most peacekeeping operations have been. However, peacekeeping is currently suffering from a significant trust deficit. One important factor that differentiates contemporary peacekeeping operations with a stabilization mandate from the historic record is the absence of a viable political or peace process. When security is not directed to serve a peace process, it produces a stabilization dilemma: the more effectively a peace operation protects and achieves stability, the less incentive there is for ruling political elites to find long-term political solutions. This dilemma generates several perverse effects, including prolonging the conflict, trapping operations in place with no exit options, increasing the resilience of armed groups, and embedding peacekeeping in the local political economy. The article identifies five factors that help prevent the stabilization dilemma and influence the effectiveness of peace operations.
Riddervold: Avtaler med EU – lettere sagt enn gjort
EU utvikler nye mekanismer for beredskap og krisehåndtering på alt fra helse til sikker kommunikasjon, sikring av infrastruktur og tilgang til kritiske råvarer. Norge vil som vanlig være med. Men er det en selvfølge at Norge får avtaler på bestilling? Og hvorfor drøyer det på områder der både EU og Norge ønsker en avtale, spør forsker Marianne Riddervold i denne kronikken.
Ecosystems and Ordering: Exploring the Extent and Diversity of Ecosystem Governance
This article argues that, to grasp how global ordering will be impacted by planetary-level changes, we need to systematically attend to the question of the extent to which and how ecosystems are being governed. Our inquiry builds upon—but extends beyond—the environmental governance measures that have garnered the most scholarly attention so far. The dataset departs from the current literature on regional environmental governance by taking ecosystems themselves as the unit of analysis and then exploring whether and how they are governed, rather than taking a starting point in environmental institutions and treaties. The ecosystems researched—large-scale marine, freshwater, and terrestrial ecosystems—have been previously identified by a globe-spanning, natural science inquiry. Our findings highlight the uneven extent of ecosystem governance—both the general geographic extent and certain “types” of ecosystems seemingly lending themselves more easily to ecosystem-based cooperation. Furthermore, our data highlight that there is a wider range of governance practices anchored in ecosystems than the typical focus on environmental institutions reveals. Of particular significance is the tendency by political actors to establish multi-issue governance anchored in the ecosystems themselves and covering several different policy fields. We argue that, in light of scholarship on ecosystem-anchored cooperation and given the substantive set of cases of such cooperation identified in the dataset, these forms of ecosystem-anchored cooperation may have particularly significant ordering effects. They merit attention in the international relations scholarship that seeks to account for the diversity of global ordering practices.
Cheering and Jeering on the Escalator to Hell: One Year of UK Media Coverage on the War in Ukraine
While there is a common awareness of wartime media censorship in both Ukraine and Russia, there has been less research on Western media coverage and expert analysis of the war in Ukraine. This essay considers the extent to which a skewed and partisan version of the war’s evolution has been presented in UK media. Five stages are identi- fied in the emergence and evolution of a British meta-narrative on the war in Ukraine, replete with ‘cheering’ and ‘jeering’, that works against a realistic understanding of the war’s nature and reasonable consideration of possible future scenarios. It is argued this coverage has sidestepped critical questions of the war’s stage-by-stage escalation and has essentially avoided serious debate of the risks, costs and benefits of such a course.
Drivkraft
Russlandforskeren mener hun har et urolig hjerte, og føler på et ansvar for å fortelle om det hun ser
Vad är frihet?
”Frihet” är på allas läppar i dagens offentliga samtal – och lyfts då särskilt som ett värde som tillhör den politiska högern. Rita Augestad Knudsen tar i den här artikeln sin utgångspunkt i Lea Ypis bok Fri. En uppväxt vid historiens slut, och läser den som ett möjligt bidrag till debatten. Augestad Knudsen diskuterar hur Ypis bok kan förstås som ett försök att flytta frihetsbegreppet närmare den politiska vänstern, och att säga något om vad frihet innebär som ett politiskt värde idag. Författaren tar också upp hur boken fungerar som text och litteratur, med tonvikt på de idéer om frihet som framträder i den, och hur den skildrar Albaniens nära förflutna ”vid historiens slut” och övergången från auktoritär kommunism till marknadskapitalism. Trots att Fri är både spännande och intressant läsning så uppfyller den tyvärr inte fullt ut sina implicita löften om att utveckla dagens politiska frihetsdiskurs.
UN Peacekeeping Operations in a Multipolar Era
How is multipolarity impacting on UN peacekeeping operations? This article sets out to answer this question by examining the ongoing decline in UN peacekeeping operations and the concurrent rise of regional and ad hoc coalitions in an era of increasing geopolitical competition. The article argues that coalitions have significantly less focus on human rights, international humanitarian law, and the protection of civilians. They thus represent a shift away from the liberal values that have marked UN peacekeeping operations, and are coherent with current geopolitical shifts where China is chipping away at human rights at the UN and African states are increasingly voicing a need for more robust operations. The article concludes that the likely outcome of these trends is a continued decline of UN multidimensional peacekeeping, but that coalitions may receive logistical and administrative support from the UN peace operations machinery.
Pathways for peace 5th Anniversary European Consultation: Are our concepts and theories of change for inclusion and prevention still relevant for o...
The UN and World Bank published a landmark report in 2018 on “Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict.” The report urged a pivot to prevention, strengthened the business case for prevention initiatives, and highlighted new research on the importance of inclusion in efforts to prevent conflict and build peace. Five years later, the global landscape has changed significantly and is now grappling with a complex set of converging crises and cascading risks. In the context of the report’s 5th anniversary, the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), in partnership with the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs of the United Nations and the Fragility, Conflict and Violence Group of the World Bank, arranged a virtual consultation with mostly European-based researchers, practitioners, and policymakers on 4th April 2023. The consultation was part of a series of events that are reflecting on the contribution of the Pathways for Peace report. The overarching question for the consultation was whether the concepts, and theories of change, that was at the core of the Pathways for Peace report - especially inclusion and prevention - are still relevant for our fast changing conflict landscape? This summary note captures the key insights gained from the European Consultation.
Rapport fra Respons-prosjektets åpningskonferanse, Oslo, 21. mars 2023
Åpningskonferansen for Utenriksdepartementets Respons-prosjekt fant sted på Sentralen i Oslo 21. mars 2023. Norsk Utenrikspolitisk Institutt (NUPI) var arrangør, og arrangementet var derfor organisert innenfor rammen av NUPIs årlige utenrikspolitiske konferanse. Tittel for konferansen var “Norsk utenrikspolitisk konferanse 2023: Respons – norsk utenrikspolitikk for en ny tid”. Programmet besto av seks sekvenser, med til sammen 28 innledere og ordstyrere på scenen. Åpningssekvensen risset opp det overordnede bildet, etterfulgt av egne bolker om sikkerhetspolitikk, utviklingen i nord-sør dynamikken og forholdet mellom Kina og Vesten. Konferansens to siste sekvenser tok for seg norsk utenrikspolitikk i møte med en internasjonal kontekst i rask endring. Statsminister Jonas Gahr Støre (Ap) holdt åpningstalen i den første bolken, mens utenriksminister Anniken Huitfeldt (Ap) deltok i panelsamtale i den siste bolken. Mesteparten av programmet foregikk på norsk, men enkelte innlegg og utvekslinger ble holdt på engelsk. Under følger en oppsummering av noen hovedtema og problemstillinger som ble drøftet i hver bolk.