Search results

Fragile or failed states are often caused by long lasting and violent conflicts - Liberia is one of them. Since the war ceased in 2003, the United Nations and its coalition of states have tried to rebuild the nation and maintain its peace. Nation building can be seen from two different angles: as a Weberian legal and rational order or as a process that highlights social and contextual factors. Within social sciences this process can be studied either by looking into what factors contribute to a successful nation building or how this process works in practice. The article focuses on the former, by listing and analyzing the involved UN institutions with an emphasis on the Peacebuilding Commission and Peacebuilding Fund. L. Pitkaniemi

During the Cold War, the Norwegian Armed Forces were organized to fight an invasion against Norwegian territory. The end of this era should at least in principle imply changes not only in military practices on the ground but also in the training and education of officers. This article analyses the inertia in the internationalization of higher military education programs in Norway, where the strengthening of a subject like International Relations began only at the end of the 1990s. One explanation for the discrepancy between the military curriculum, on the one hand, and the new military environment facing the officers, on the other, is that existing practices were taken for granted and reproduced in social structures. The debate about military education also reflects a traditional conflict between those who have seen an academization of military education as an intervention into the monopoly of knowledge of the officer profession, and those who embraced such a development. Adapted from the source document.

The article compares the Norwegian & the German political debate on changes to the respective countries' citizenship laws. The Norwegian law will come into force in September 2006, while the German law was introduced in 2000. In citizenship laws we can find a contrast between an ethnic & cultural understanding of political community & a rights-based understanding. This contrast was hardly touched upon in the Norwegian debate. Among the Norwegian political parties there was broad agreement to carry on with the principle of ethnic decent. Moreover, all parties, with an exception of the Socialist Left Party (SV), wanted to introduce more restrictions on the established Norwegian practice to accept dual citizenship. The German debate dealt with the contrasting principles, & the conflict followed the left/right cleavages. The main difference found between the two countries refers to the left parties. Both with regard to the principle of ethnic decent/territorial principle & the acceptance of dual citizenship, the Social Democrats in Norway & Germany presented opposite standpoints. References. Adapted from the source document.