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Nordic criminal policy evaluation has unique features, such as ones related to policy context, policy content, and the availability of excellent register data. This paper briefly lays out these features and argues that the future of Nordic criminal policy evaluation could well lie in exploiting these features even more. It is argued that we should aim to tie criminal policy evaluation to social policy evaluation more broadly. And that we should aim to use policy evaluations to study margins of behavior rather than "just" measure average effects of reforms or policies. These aims will be hard to reach unless we think of and search for even better data than we already have.

Hvorfor bliver Libanon ved med at hænge sammen som en slags stat trods alle problemer, og hvorfor ender libaneserne trods demonstrationerne tilsynelatende med passivt at støtte deres ledere?

When a US drone was shot down by Iran, Trump called off a military response just ten minutes before it was due to start, while the reaction to the attacks on Saudi Arabian oil installations on September 14, which the US accused Iran of being behind, has been moderate. There were no real threats of military operations. In October, three thousand US troops were deployed to Saudi Arabia, in part a replacement for troops who were sent home on leave. The talk of a US retreat though is misleading as the US still keeps its bases in the Persian Gulf, and has deployed 14,000 troops since spring - with more on way. The signals from the Trump administration - soft reaction to attacks, withdrawal from Syria, deployment of more troops to the Gulf - have left the Arab Gulf states worried: is the US about to change its geo-strategy in the Persian Gulf and leave the Arab Gulf states to defend themselves, or is the US preparing for a war with Iran? In the years 2014 - 2018, China completed partnership agreements with at least 13 states in the greater Middle East, and has established its first naval base in Djibouti. It is the largest importer of oil from the region, and it has increased economic investment and trade in the three areas of priority outlined in China's Arab Policy Paper from 2016: (1) energy, (2) infrastructure construction, and (3) nuclear energy, satellites and new energy resources. This raise the question whether China is about to replace the US in the Middle East and thus initiate a China-US rivalry in the region? DIIS researcher Lars Erslev Andersen analyses this question in his new DIIS Working Paper taking China's policy towards Iran after the renewed US sanctions following the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal from 2015 as a litmus test for China-US relations in the Gulf. The paper concludes that there are not many indications that China is trying to challenge US interests in the region, as China in its economic activities has been freeriding on the security provided by the US for years. Rivalry leading to possible confrontations between the two great powers will thus depend on how the US is conducting its Middle East policy, especially in the Persian Gulf, and how China will cope with these changes.

Thirty years ago, a new world order was announced. After the Cold War the world would be a peaceful place and conflicts would be solved multilaterally. In the West it was expected that the only superpower and "leader of the free world", the US, would indeed lead the fulfilment of the new world order. Russia, China, and other power centres understood world order differently. As did transnational jihadists. Thirty years after, the same politicians and scholars in international relations that announced the new world order are now arguing for the end of a liberal world order. The world is facing a future with competition and rivalry between the great powers. The US prioritizes the "America First" policy, China is a rising power and Russia challenges the American position in the world, especially in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Still we are talking about "world order". But what does order mean? What is order more precisely? In this Working Paper, DIIS Senior Researcher Lars Erslev Andersen develops a theoretical approach to the understanding of (world) order. Based on the philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, and including Albert Einstein's theories, this approach proposes a definition of the will to life as the desire for order. This is put into perspective using Friedrich Nietzsche's determination of two fundamental desires based on his studies of Greek tragedy; the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The approach discusses and proposes several theories about world order to be rethought based on the definition of world order as will and representation and the will to life as the desire for order. Inspired by the paradigm shifts that have changed the interpretation of Nature in theoretical physics since Einstein's theory on gravitation and the development of quantum mechanics it argues that time has come for a theoretical paradigm shift in the study and understanding of international relations.

Aestheticization is a pervasive force in consumer culture (Featherstone 2002); it is central to the invention and reinvention of symbolic resources that structure current market economies (Reckwitz 2017). A recent example with a complex nexus of consumption, identity, politics and nostalgia, is the reinvention of 'Nordicness' and 'The Nordic Lifestyle', with sub-fields such as (New) Nordic Cuisine, (New) Nordic Design and (New) Nordic Cinema (Leer 2016, Andersen et al. 2019, Skou and Munch 2016). This paper investigates the aestheticization of 'The Nordic Way of Life' as commodified and marketed in the form of the magazine Oak - The Nordic Journal.

With marriage comes in‐laws, and if the in‐laws include delinquent males, their delinquency could affect the prosocial effects of the given marriage. In this article, I focus on the effect of having a convicted brother‐in‐law as a general indicator of this broader phenomenon of family‐formation processes impairing the positive impact of marriage on crime desistance. I use registry data on all men from birth cohorts 1965–1975 in Denmark (N = 69,066) to show that when a man marries, his new family ties to delinquent brother(s)‐in‐law do indeed hinder his criminal desistance. The results that take into account the characteristics of husbands, wives, their shared family‐formation process, and the criminality of male family members suggest that 1) family dynamics tend to keep criminality within family networks and 2) influences from one's broader social network through marriage are important for the protective effects of marriage. Analyses of previous conviction, co‐offending between a man and his brother‐in‐law, as well as analyses of in‐laws who reside in close proximity confirm the two mentioned main findings. In all, the findings reported in this article add to our understanding of the processes by which families are tied, and how these family‐formation processes influence men's behavior.

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