The relationship between Nordic peace and levels of militarisation needs interogation, including how peace has relied upon previous levels of militarisation, and what role militarisation plays today. This is particularly important as civilian involvement in conflict escalation complicates easy (an increasingly blurry) divides between civilian and military, peace and war.

When Jim O’Neill coined the BRIC acronym in 2001, the point he was trying to convey was that the global economic system needed to incorporate the world’s largest emerging economies. His advice fell on deaf ears and in 2009, Brazil, China, India, and Russia decided to take matters into their own hands and formed the BRIC grouping. South Africa joined the group in 2010 to form the BRICS. This July, ...

This study examines how soft security, including economic and environmental issues, inform the broader security and geopolitical factors of Moscow’s policy on the Northern Sea Route (NSR). The authors begin by discussing how Russia’s hard and soft security perceptions of Arctic shipping evolved in the post-Cold War era, including perceptional changes in the context of the Ukrainian crisis and ongoing ...

Moscow launched its “Hectare in the Arctic” program in summer 2021, allowing Russian nationals to obtain a free hectare of land in the country’s northern regions. This plan is the latest attempt to address the chronic problem of outmigration and to attract new settlers to the Russian Arctic. Yet, multiple obstacles stand in the way of making the scheme a viable demographic solution. The primary ...

Research question: It is a common expectation among politicians, civil servants and sport managers that hosting a major sporting event or achieving international elite sport success yields a variety of positive externalities grounded in the “Virtuous Circle of Elite Sport and Events” model. However, over the years various studies have shown that this model is not necessarily an accurate depiction ...

This article considers the future of UN peace operations through a complexity theory lens. In the short-term peacekeeping will have to adapt to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fall-out of the Trump presidency. In the medium-term peacekeeping will go through a phase of uncertainty and turbulence due to geopolitical power shifts in the global order. In the longer-term peacekeeping ...

In this paper, I will analyse a case of ethnic transformation in post-1991 Ethiopia based on an ethnographic study of the Eastern Gurage. The case represents an ethnic setting where the conventional conceptualization of ethnicity in terms of a notion of origin undermines the diversities expressed in various forms of category and boundary formations. The ethnic setting does not also fall into, but ...

In security studies, there is an unquestioned assumption of a linear link between trust and security. However, such an assumption neglects complex identity dynamics that can be involved in trust‐building discourses for engendering security. There needs to be greater examination into what is meant by trust, and upon what, and whom, and how the politics of identity works in social trust building and ...

Recently there have been calls from policymakers around the world for practically engaged research to produce evidence-based policy for peace, security and development. Policymakers aim to align three types of methodological approaches to knowledge about peace, security and development in international order: methodological liberalism at state and international levels, aligned with ‘methodological ...

Since Mikhail Gorbachev’s icebreaking Murmansk speech in 1987, the Arctic has been considered to be an “exceptional” region of peace and cooperation in security studies. While acknowledging the relevance of this narrative, this article nevertheless argues the “Arctic exceptionalism” narrative is insufficient for understanding the complex security situation in the region. The lens of comprehensive ...