International Security
Research Department I sets out to investigate and compare the security policies that states pursue. Our researchers analyze these policies in relation to the normative orientations and justice claims that they entail along with their potentialities for conflict. The policies are also evaluated in respect to the positive or negative contributions they may have for a peaceful world order. The question that interests us in particular is if recurring conflict among vastly differing national conceptions of international security leaves room for the development of non-hegemonic systems of norms. The empirical fields that comprise this research department include arms control, disarmament, non-proliferation, armament and military policies, deployments of armed forces, and national discourses about security. The associated studies are guided by a normative stance that aims at decreasing the level of violence in international relations. They work on the supposition that states continue to assume a crucial position in matters of war and peace, despite an ongoing process of globalization.
Studies within the research program Just Peace Governance have two primary tasks. First, they investigate the position assumed by justice claims within the foreign affairs and security policies of states, along with their influence on potentials for conflict in international relations. Second, they examine the opportunities for and constraints on a peaceful and just world order that emerge as a result of the way that states handle their instruments of force. Whereas the first perspective approaches justice as an “independent variable” that affects the actions and interactions of states, in the second perspective, justice appears as an “independent variable” which impacts the way that states behave.
Based on the insights we gained into the security policies pursued by democracies from last research program, Antinomies of Democratic Peace, we here focus on comparing policies among various political systems and cultures. We pose the question of whether systematic differences exist among groups of states that share certain characteristics. One may heuristically assume that world politics today are host to differing, and clashing, conceptions of justice: one side comprises the manifest or latent justice claims made by non-Western states. These entail the frustration and resentment stemming from perceived injustices in the contemporary world order, which have been supported by the hegemonic position of the West in global politics from past centuries until today. The other side comprises the universal ambitions of Western policies that demand considerable concessions from non-Western partner countries in terms of their national sovereignty. In this context, several of our research projects focus on the extent to which these confrontations in the area of security policy are accompanied by risks, and how they might be handled in a constructive and productive manner.
Along with the basic research carried out within this research program, the research department investigates current policy issues with a focus on arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation. These issues are, in part, addressed as a by-product of basic research as well as by way of independent projects.
- Proactivism and State Identity: Irish and Canadian Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Policy
- “A Matter of Theology, not Evidence”: US Missile Defense and Ideational Change
- Functional Change in Conventional Arms Control in Europe (finished)
- Metanorms, Justice Claims and the Contestation of the Responsibility to Protect
- Nuclear Weapons 2.0: US Nuclear Weapon Research after the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
- Permissive Effects of International Norms: Napalm and the Long Non-Emergence of the Norm Against Cluster Munitions (finished)
- Arms Control in the Middle East: Between Self-Help and Cooperation
- The Role of Justice Perceptions in Treaty Interpretation Debates
- Conditions for Successful Governance in the Conflict Between Humanitarianism and Sovereignty
- From Biological Disarmament to Biosecurity: Securitisation or Humanisation of Biological Weapons Control After September 11, 2001?
- EU Non-Proliferation Consortium
- A Twenty-First Century Concert of Powers
- Technology and Politics of Nuclear Disarmament, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control
- Justice and Compliance: Explaining the Effectiveness of International Regimes
- New Forms of Warfare: The Transformation of War
- To Save Arms Control, Disarmament and Non-Proliferation
- Norm-Based Security Structure: Conventional Arms Control in Europe
- Steps Towards a World Free of Nuclear Weapons
- Salafism in Germany
- "Rogue States", "Outlaws", and "Pariahs": Dissidence Between Delegitimization and Justification
- Contested World Orders
- Antinomies of Democratic Arms Control in the 1990s
- Arguing and Bargaining
- The Image of the Democratic Soldier: Tensions Between the Organisation of Armed Forces and the Principles of Democracy in European Comparison
- Democracies and the "Revolution in Military Affairs"
- The Imperial Discourse. The Liberal World-View Between Global Governance and Neo-Conservatism
- The Transformation of Arms Control. Norm Dynamics and Notions of Justice in Arms Control, Disarmament and Non-Proliferation
- Wars of Democratic States since 1990
- Missile Defense Research
- Transparency as a Prerequisite of Arms Control
- Causes of the Differences in War Involvement of Democracies since 1990
- Preparation for the NPT Review Conference 2010: Proposals for the Norwegian Presidency of the Seven Nations Initiative