Oh my, not another ‘Festschrift’!

Posted by & filed under Uncategorized

Eight years ago, I wrote a short piece for a Norwegian science policy journal lampooning the Festschrift as an outmoded form of academic communication. The Festschrift, I can hear some of my non-Scandinavian readers ask: Are such volumes still being published?

Surprisingly, the answer is yes. Of course, it is largely a self-financing enterprise. In signing up for the Tabula gratulatoria, friends of the honoree promise to fork out a few hundred kroner for a book they are often unlikely to read. A book filled with articles that are generally not quite important enough to be published in academic journals (or, even when they are important, are doomed to oblivion because they are in the wrong outlet). Of course, any Festschrift editor would like to think that his or her project is different. In 1980, I edited a Festschrift in honor of Johan Galtung on the occasion of his 50th birthday. The core of the publication was a list of 667 published and unpublished items that the author had written over the years. I would like to think it was a useful project at the time. In the age of electronic publication, such a task might still be worth undertaking, but probably not to publish as a book.

PHOTO: Creative Commons 2.0.

Why then does the tradition survive? Well, it’s a nice gesture to edit a book (or contribute to one) in honor of a friend. The element of surprise adds a measure of excitement to the project. In a country brimming with oil money, we can probably afford to continue this tradition. In my article, I nevertheless offered an alternative explanation for the survival of the Festschrift: If you announce publicly that you think the Festschrift is outdated, you are put in an embarrassing position if you get one yourself. And if you don’t get one, you risk ridicule – did you really think that anyone would take on such a project for you? I took the risk and said ‘no thanks’ in public, and this has been respected by my colleagues (if they ever had such an idea in the first place). I hasten to add that I have contributed to various Festschriften for others, and of course to numerous Tabulae gratulatoriae.

But, of course, I am not immune to flattery. So when my energetic friend and colleague Hans Günter Brauch, who doesn’t ever take ‘no’ for an answer, invited me to submit a volume to his ‘Pioneers’ series published by Springer, I yielded. So now I have a kind of Festschrift edited entirely by myself! PRIO and the Gløbius foundation have joined forces to purchase open access. You can read it here. And if you have room for another hard-copy book in your collection, it comes at a reasonable price, thanks to the open access option. Enjoy! (Or ignore!)

Lethal Autonomous Weapons: Killing the ‘Robots-don’t-Rape’ Argument

Posted by and & filed under Civilians in Conflict, Gender, Humanitarianism, Law and Ethics

Earlier this spring, we debated a law professor who insisted that lethal autonomous weapons (LAWS) could clean up war. The professor posited that a war fought with autonomous weapons would be a war without rape. Taking humans out of the loop would, the argument goes, lead to more humane war. We find this narrative, where technological innovation is equated with human progress based on the assumption that it will end the occurrence of rape in war, highly problematic. We have since reflected on what this ‘progress narrative’ is about and how we as a scholars should approach this type of narrative, particularly as it is gaining traction as part of the wider set of arguments regularly employed by actors promoting the use of lethal autonomous weapons (see report by Christof Heyns, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions).

A graffiti artist’s impression of a military drone. Photo: CC/Thierry Ehrmann.

Thus, in thinking critically about the nature of the progress narrative of which the ‘Robots don’t rape’ argument is part, we make three observations:

Read More

Russia’s Reputation Sinks Precipitously in International Opinion Polls

Posted by & filed under Regions and Powers

Russian troops moving into Georgia in August 2008.

Seven years ago, Russia launched its week-long war with Georgia. And what seemed then a victory can now be recognized as one of the worst August disasters in Russian history. On the one hand, it is true that the war generated a moment of national unity, which was deeply false but politically very useful. It also produced a conviction that the West was weak and divided, while the reproach in public opinion did not matter. Almost a year and a half ago, Putin sought to reproduce that moment of “patriotic” unity with the annexation of Crimea, but that spectacular triumph soon thereafter delivered him the Donbass quagmire. He also counted on the timidity of Western leaders, but the depth of public indignation in Europe and the US compelled them to take a firm stance and to insist on this firmness over 18 months, despite Moscow’s diplomatic machinations aimed at undermining the West’s unity. Every miscalculation has to be compensated with yet another show of external aggressiveness and domestic repression, but now the Russian elite increasingly worries that the Kremlin’s next supreme whim could prove a blunder too far.

This is the bottom line from the article in Eurasia Daily Monitor, 10 September

This Week in South Sudan – Week 32

Posted by

Monday 3 August The SPLA claimed it has contained the inter-ethnic fighting in Western Equatoria state, creating a buffer zone between youth from Zande communities and armed Dinka cattle herders. The South Sudanese government presented a new diplomatic push towards strengthening its’ bilateral relationship with the government of neighbouring Sudan. In Yambio town, Western Equatoria, hundreds… Read more »

Institutional Characteristics and Regime Survival: Why Are Semi-Democracies Less Durable than Autocracies and Democracies?

Posted by and & filed under Conflict Patterns, Governance

In Zaïre (currently DR Congo) in 1991, the country’s personalist ruler Mobutu Sese Seko faced popular unrest, army mutinies, and shrinking resources for patronage. Mobutu was seemingly starting to lose his grip on power, which he had held since the mid-1960s. In response, Mobutu ended the decades-long ban on political parties other than his own Popular Movement of the Revolution, promised free and fair elections, and entered into a coalition government. Yet, a couple of years later ‒ after the situation had “calmed down”, and after having shored up army support ‒ Mobutu reversed the liberalization measures.

Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia and Mobutu Sese Seko both experimented with semi-democratic regimes.

Almost 150 years earlier, in 1848, several European monarchs from established dynasties also experienced popular pressure for liberalization, following the “February Revolution” in France. The different monarchs and their conservative supporters actually employed quite similar tactics to Mobutu ‒ liberalize when faced with overwhelming opposition and popular unrest, and then retract the concessions when control is regained! As a result, the “semi-democratic” arrangements resulting from Europe’s 1848 springtime uprisings were often reverted by the year’s end, and old authoritarian arrangements reinstated. In Prussia, for example, Friedrich Wilhelm IV faced massive protests and riots in Berlin in March 1848, and caved under pressure to allow the popular election of the first all-Prussian legislative assembly. Within eight months the King regained control with army support, dissolving the national assembly.Read More

Becoming One of Us: The Politics of Citizenship in France, Norway and the UK

Posted by and & filed under Migration

Citizenship and naturalization legislation in France, Norway, and the UK has changed substantially more during the 2000s than in previous decades. In which areas of citizenship policy have changes occurred? And how do these changes relate to the trend of reinvigorating the citizenship institution to increase social cohesion?

PHOTO: Creative Commons/lucastheexperience on Flickr.com

This blog post is an exerpt from a Policy Brief from the research project ‘Negotiating the nation: Implications of ethnic and religious diversity for national identity’ (NATION).

  • Citizenship legislation in France, Norway, and the UK has changed more in the 2000s than previously.
  • Countering terrrorism and striving for social cohesion are two clear areas of citizenship policy development.
  • The conflation of citizenship, immigration, and terrorism questions in policy creates dillemmas.
  • Permitting dual citizenship is increasingly becoming the norm in Europe.

Read More

Russia Insists on own Impunity, Gains Pariah Status

Posted by & filed under Regions and Powers

Who is responsible for the MH17 tragedy?

Exactly 40 years ago, the Soviet Union signed the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), accepting commitments to respect the norms of international behavior and to observe the standards of human rights. The Kremlin had, in fact, no intention to relax domestic pressure on dissidents (who formed the legendary Helsinki group) but saw the document as a matter of pivotal importance to establish the inviolability of European borders. Today, Putin’s Russia is recycling some of the most notorious Soviet methods of suppressing the human rights movement—but at the same time, Moscow also rejects the constraints of international law and violates the borders of its neighbors at its convenience. The Kremlin assumes that Russia’s impunity is guaranteed by the country’s nuclear arsenal, but all these missiles and warheads can do nothing to deter global public opinion, which is increasingly turning against Russia.

The full text of the article is in Eurasia daily Monitor, August 3.

This Week in South Sudan – Week 31 & 30

Posted by

Monday 27 July President Obama and regional leaders agreed to pressure the two South Sudanese factions to agree to a peace agreement by Aug. 17, and threatened both sides with sanctions or other measures if they do not comply. Tuesday 28 July The think-tank International Crisis Group published a new report on the IGAD peace… Read more »

Impressions from Norway

Posted by & filed under International Summer School

This is the second of two guest blog posts by students who attended this year’s Peace Research course at the International Summer School 2015.

My visit to Oslo, Norway, to participate in the International Summer School always had an element of pleasant surprise. It was my first time visiting; straight from the end of the Indian summer to the cool comfort of the country of the midnight sun. Awestruck by the abundant nature, a fellow student and I slowly made our way into the Blindern dormitory. It really took a while to settle down. As we missed the registration part, there were a few issues which people over here were more than happy to sort out for us. I was part of the Peace Research course, and a series of stimulating classes started the next day.

Polaroid pictures from this year’s cabin trip. Photo by summer school student Pedro Henrique Souza.

Read More