Blog Posts
Posted by Tore Wig on Tuesday, 5 July 2022
In his essay Pacifism and the war, George Orwell wrote that “pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist.”, because “[if] you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one.” The war ... Read more »
Posted by Tore Wig & Carl Henrik Knutsen on Thursday, 31 March 2022
We can be pretty sure that the likelihood of both a coup and a revolution in Russia is significantly higher today than it was a couple of months ago. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine looks like becoming a historic event with far-reaching consequences. Alongside the loss of human life and devastation ... Read more »
Posted by Tore Wig on Sunday, 27 February 2022
The wheel of history is now in motion. Russia’s gruesome attack on Ukraine disrupts one of the most significant trends in the history of nation states, namely the astounding absence of large-scale wars of invasion and occupation in Europe since the end of World War II. For many years, peace ... Read more »
Posted by Haakon Gjerløw, Carl Henrik Knutsen & Tore Wig on Tuesday, 22 February 2022
Political scientists have long assumed that a strong state is a prerequisite for a well-functioning democracy. Recent research suggests that this assumption is wrong. “Building a modern democratic state in Afghanistan where the government’s writ runs uniformly throughout the country implies a timeframe of many years, indeed decades,” wrote the ... Read more »
Posted by Tore Wig on Tuesday, 12 January 2021
A study of flawed democracies and semi-dictatorships describes a common pattern of events as follows: After having lost an election, the sitting president claims that the election was invalid, whereupon he attempts a coup d’état and his supporters storm the parliament. A few years ago, this sequence of events would ... Read more »
Posted by Sirianne Dahlum, Carl Henrik Knutsen & Tore Wig on Thursday, 26 March 2020
Seen in hindsight: was Norwegian democracy actually in peril for a few days in mid-March 2020? This piece is part of our blog series Beyond the COVID Curve. COVID-19 has quickly changed everything from our daily routines, to the policies of governments, to the fortunes of the global economy. How ... Read more »
Posted by Erica Chenoweth, Sirianne Dahlum, Sooyeon Kang, Zoe Marks, Christopher Wiley Shay & Tore Wig on Monday, 25 November 2019
Around the globe, mass nonviolent protests are demanding that national leaders step down. Evo Morales, Bolivia’s three-term leftist president, is the latest casualty of mass demonstrations, after being abandoned by the military. Beyond Bolivia, people are rising up against their governments in places as varied as Chile, Lebanon, Ecuador, Argentina, Hong Kong, Iraq and Britain. This ... Read more »
Posted by Sirianne Dahlum, Carl Henrik Knutsen & Tore Wig on Tuesday, 29 October 2019
The success of mass protests depends on who is doing the protesting. Many observers fear that democracy is currently at risk — including in the United States and some European countries. Some commentators blame less-educated members of the working classes for the democratic backlash. According to the stereotype, these voters tend ... Read more »
Posted by Tore Wig on Friday, 10 August 2018
This summer we have had the opportunity to read about the campaign to ‘decolonize academia’: the call to improve the representation of non-Western voices in the curricula of Norwegian educational institutions. The supporters of this campaign justify it on the basis that it will challenge ways of thinking in the ... Read more »
This weekend, decision-makers from all over the world will come together to discuss current and future security challenges at the Munich Security Conference (MSC), which has become the major global forum for discussion of security policy. At the conference, Save the Children will launch its new report The War on ... Read more »
Posted by Tore Wig on Monday, 6 February 2017
What we know about how great power wars start should make us terrified of President Trump. I don’t sleep at night, because of Donald Trump. This is unusual. I wasn’t kept awake at night by George W. Bush or Bill Clinton. Nor do I lose sleep over hot-blooded authoritarians such ... Read more »