NUPI Research Online (Norwegian Institute of International Affairs)
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Trade and trust: the role of trade in de facto state conflict transformation
Get PDFDe facto states – unrecognized secessionist entities that eke out a living on the margins of the international system – are often heavily dependent on external patron states for economic aid and investment. When the parent state – the state that the de facto state seeks to break away from – responds to the secessionist attempt by imposing sanctions or economic blockades, this further exacerbates such dependency. Moreover, due to their lack of international recognition, de facto states often have limited opportunities to engage with the outside world beyond the patron and the parent state. However, closer examination of one such de facto state, Abkhazia, reveals that de facto states can enjoy some bounded independent economic agency. Abkhazia’s maneuvering between Russia as “patron,” Georgia as “parent state,” and the wider international community (here exemplified by the EU) in the sphere of trade and economic interaction has important implications for de-facto state conflict transformation.publishedVersio
Utenriks- og sikkerhetspolitiske holdninger i valgåret 2021
Get PDFHva opplever befolkningen som de største utfordringene for Norge? Og hvordan bør de håndteres? Hvor står befolkningen i spørsmålet om tilknytningen til Europa og EU? Og hva slags tillit har velgerne til de utenrikspolitiske programmene til de ulike partiene før stortingsvalget? Har partienes utenrikspolitiske programmer i det hele tatt noen betydning for velgerne? NUPI har gjennomført en opinionsundersøkelse der disse spørsmålene blir besvart og i denne rapporten presenterer vi funnene fra undersøkelsen.publishedVersio
Securitisation of the EU approach to the Western Balkans: from conflict transformation to crisis management.
Get PDFThis chapter analyses the EU’s crisis response in the Western Balkans through the lens of EULEX. By exploring how those immediately responsible for mandate execution and those directly affected by its outcomes perceive EULEX, we discover gaps that highlight the pitfalls of direct and ingrained political interference in the mission’s work. While EULEX has been seen as an important watchdog for preventing further human rights abuses, the EU’s approach to Kosovo and the region continues to be characterised by competing priorities: the EU’s broader political objectives impact the mission’s legal work and hamper the EU in achieving a coherent and impactful rule of law policy. In turn, this decreases the local populations’ trust and approval of EULEX and ultimately undermines the EU’s overall goals of promoting good governance and a European perspective for Kosovo. This tension highlights the incompatibility of the EU’s short-term focus on crisis management and the more longterm focus on crisis transformation. We see this as particularly problematic for an actor whose self-image as a ‘normative power’, is underpinned by an assumption that its influence in the world in gained through ‘the power of ideas’.publishedVersionpublishedVersio
Strengthening the resilience and adaptive capacity of societies at risk from hybrid threats
Get PDFHow would the civilian population of a specific country respond to significant disruptions caused by hybrid threats? This paper explores different response scenarios and considers what can be done to strengthen the resilience and adaptive capacities of a civilian population, and its social institutions, when such threats are likely. One of the main challenges in increasing civilian resilience is the uncertainty and unpredictability of both the threat and how people will respond to it. The paper recommends utilizing an adaptive approach that is designed to cope with the complexity, uncertainty and unpredictability.This paper was produced as a part of the Resilient Civilians in Hybrid Population-centric Warfare project, funded by
the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme under grant SPS G5442. For more information about the project,
see https://site.uit.no/hybrid/.publishedVersio
Surveillance Technology at the Fair: Proliferation of Cyber Capabilities in International Arms Markets
Get PDFState cyber capabilities are increasingly abiding by the “pay-to-play” model—both US/NATO allies and adversaries can purchase interception and intrusion technologies from private firms for intelligence and surveillance purposes. NSO Group has repeatedly made headlines in 2021 for targeting government entities in cyberspace, but there are many more companies selling similar products that are just as detrimental. These vendors are increasingly looking to foreign governments to hawk their wares, and policymakers have yet to sufficiently recognize or respond to this emerging problem. Any cyber capabilities sold to foreign governments carry a risk: these capabilities could be used against individuals and organizations in allied countries, or even in one’s home country. Because much of this industry operates in the shadows, research into the industry in aggregate is rare. This paper analyzes active providers of interception/intrusion capabilities within the international surveillance market, cataloguing firms that have attended both ISSWorld (i.e., the Wiretapper’s Ball) and international arms fairs over the last twenty years.1 This dataset mostly focuses on Western firms and includes little on Chinese firms, due to historical under-attendance of Chinese firms at ISSWorld. However, the overarching nature of this work will help policymakers better understand the market at large, as well as the primary arms fairs at which these players operate. This paper identifies companies explicitly marketing interception/intrusion technology at arms fairs, and answers a series of questions, including: what companies are marketing interception/intrusion capabilities outside their headquartered region; which arms fairs and countries host a majority of these firms; and what companies market interception/intrusion capabilities to US and NATO adversaries?Surveillance Technology at the Fair: Proliferation of Cyber Capabilities in International Arms MarketspublishedVersio
Missing Girls: Women’s Education and Declining Child Sex Ratios in India
Get PDFSex ratios in India have been declining for decades, and “missing girls” are a serious social and political problem. Drawing on subdistrict-level data from the 2001 and 2011 Censuses and detailed data on women’s education and fertility, we show that more-educated mothers have fewer girl children than less-educated mothers, but that these girls are also more likely to survive. The policy implication of these findings is that among uneducated mothers, the focus should be on child treatment and survival; among educated mothers, attitudinal campaigns that emphasise the value of having girl children are likely to be more successful.acceptedVersio
Governance, Social Policy, and Political Economy: Trends in Norway’s Partner Countries
Get PDFIn 2017–2018, NUPI (the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs) headed a project where political economy analyses were undertaken in eleven of Norway’s partner countries. These analyses were published as eleven separate reports. The reports focused on power relations and political developments in the partner countries, but they also analyzed the nature of governance. After the publication of the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators for 2019, the MFA approached NUPI and requested that we summarize the findings of this report for Norway’s eleven partner countries and assess these findings in light of the political economy analyses. We were also asked to investigate whether there were any connections between the nature and quality of governance on the one hand, and the nature of social policies and the human rights situation on the other. This report presents the findings of this assessment of the governance scores in the light of the above-mentioned political economy analyses. The report is structured as follows: Firstly, after briefly describing the governance indictors used by the World Bank, we summarize the eleven countries’ scores on the various governance indicators. Secondly, we assess the evolution of governance in the eleven countries, by comparing the scores in the 2019 report with those from 2011. Thirdly, we summarize the findings of the political economy analyses of the eleven countries and discuss how they fit with the governance scores. Finally, we present the eleven countries’ expenditure on social policies, as reported in the ILOs World Social Protection Report, and the human rights situation for the partner countries, and then describe how these findings relate to the governance scores.publishedVersio
In quest of sustainable politics and economics of natural resources: a summary of contributions and future research directions
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Using satellite data and machine learning to study conflict-induced environmental and socioeconomic destruction in data-poor conflict areas: The case of the Rakhine conflict
Get PDFThis paper studies socioeconomic and environmental changes in the neighboring areas Bangladesh-Myanmar border from 2012 to 2019, thus covering the period before and after the 2017 Rakhine conflict in Myanmar and outflux of refugees across the border to Bangladesh. Given the scarcity and costliness of traditional data collection methods in such conflict areas, the paper uses a novel methodological model based on very-high-resolution satellite imagery, nighttime satellite imagery, and machine-learning algorithms to generate reliable and reusable data for comparative assessment of the impacts of the Rakhine conflict. Assessments of welfare and environmental risks using this approach can be accurate and scalable across different regions and times when other data are unavailable. Key findings are: the general livelihood situation has worsened and income sources shrunk in Rakhine; forced migration damaged the ecologically fragile regions in the two countries; the destruction of aquaculture wetland ecosystems is observed in Rakhine; the deforestation rate reached 20% in Rakhine and 13% on the Bangladeshi side of the border. The results can provide guidance to policymakers and international actors as they work to repatriate the victims of the conflict in Rakhine and minimize the conflict’s security and environmental consequences. The methodology can be applied to other data-poor conflict and refugee areas in the world.publishedVersio
Global Governance, Expert Networks, and "Fragile States"
Get PDFThe chapter discusses how expert networks within and outside the UN and other international organizations have shaped definitions and policy responses to "fragile states". We detail, in particular, the bifurcation of policy responses to fragile states owing to the proliferation of expert networks, with the original state building approach being replaced by two partly overlapping, partly diverging responses of investing in military capacity building on the one hand, and investing in humanitarian responses and the protection of civilians, on the other.publishedVersio