A rights-based approach to development, a cornerstone of the European Union’s (EU) development policy, can be interpreted as an attempt to govern development assistance through impartial rules and standards. Yet, such an ...

Kommentaren tar for seg fire trekk ved det Helga Hernes kalte «det kvinnevennlige sosialdemokratiske medborgerskapsidealet»: dets brodd mot liberalismen, vekten på politisk deltagelse og sosiale rettigheter, og ideen om ...

Despite that independent agencies are typically justified in terms of technical efficiency, they inevitably have to make political judgments. How can political reasoning be legitimate in such institutions? This paper starts ...

Deliberative systems theory is a promising candidate for a normative theory of democracy that combines ideal requirements with feasibility. Yet, recent theoretical elaborations and studies of citizens’ online media use ...

Mange samfunnsvitere forsker på politikk – som hovedtema eller i forlengelsen av andre forskningsinteresser. Når samfunnsforskere studerer politikk, konsentrerer de seg typisk om å fortolke og forklare politiske prosesser ...

Recent scholarly literature on the EU’s development policy has argued that the Union is using its provision of development cooperation to advance its geo-strategic interests. This paper investigates whether there has been ...

Public organizations are subject to many kinds of control mechanisms and analysts worry that they often suffer from an “accountability overload.” This article argues that such diagnoses are typically set without an adequate ...

This article examines government agencies facing choice architectures that are multiple, overlapping, ambiguous, and sometimes incompatible—in short: turbulent. It makes two contributions: First, two conceptual images of ...

Does the EU’s Aid for Trade (AfT) initiative contribute to global justice? Complementing work that considers distributive justice, in this paper we adopt the central tenets of the republican theory of non-domination as a ...

The contribution of this study is two-fold: First, it outlines a conceptual framework on political order; and secondly, it offers empirical illustrations on the case of Nordic cooperation. Taken together, the article makes ...

This article considers established metrics for smart city development and evaluates their suitability for implementation in Arctic urban settlements. To do this, the article first surveys smart city literature and the ...

Administrative reform policies cutting across several sectors are commonplace in the public sector. However, reform policies do not necessarily result in organizational change. This article examines intra-organizational ...

This article contributes to the philosophical debate on values in science by exploring how scientists themselves understand the proper role of moral, political, and social values in expert practice. I present findings from ...

This article explores how the appeal to depoliticized expertise worked to legitimize increased supervisory and executive power to the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, after the 2015 refugee crisis. Frontex ...

In many countries, members of parliament receive publicly funded allowances to communicate with the electorate. Some hope that ensuing parliamentary communication engages the people with politics and increases electoral ...

Advisory ex ante referendums, such as the referendum on the UK membership in the European Union in 2016, provide MPs with a (more or less) clear mandate from their principal, but they are not legally binding. Implementation ...

The European Union’s defence and security policy has remained predominately under the sovereign control of the member states, and therefore the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) is understood to be intergovernmental. ...

Does European Union (EU) foreign economic policy contribute to global justice or does it further neo-colonial structures of economic dependence? To assess this question, we evaluate if and how the EU’s ‘Aid for Trade’ (AfT) ...

The paper compares two prominent approaches to global gender justice; Alison Jaggar’s ‘distributive’ approach and Nancy Fraser’s ‘participatory’ approach. It argues that both theories have contributed valuably to develop ...

This study questions the traditional story of the detachment and independence of expert bodies such as agencies, central banks and expert committees. It shows that there are numerous institutional links with elected bodies ...

How is arbitrary rule – dominance – to be avoided when political differentiation is on the rise in the multilevel constellation that makes up the European Union? The EU is a power-wielding entity, that, due to its democratic ...

In this paper, Johanne Døhlie Saltnes recasts the story of the like-minded’s intermediate resistance and subsequent acceptance of the EU’s aid effectiveness reforms from one of competing interests and identities to one of ...

Recent trade negotiations in the EU have provoked unprecedented levels of controversy, in particular the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the US. One crucial channel for public ...

Det ligger mye makt i makten til å utrede. Vi bør bry oss mer om hvem vi gir i oppdrag å utrede offentlig politikk – og hvordan utrederne leverer. For å kunne si om norsk utredningsvesen holder mål eller ikke, må vi ha en ...

This editorial introduction presents an overview of the themes explored in the symposium on Deliberation after Consensus. For all the talk of its obsolescence and irrelevance, the concept of consensus still remains centrally ...

This study traces the claims of a ‘scientization’ and a ‘participatory turn’ in modern governance within the system of temporary policy advisory committees in Norway. It analyzes whether there is evidence of the two claims ...

Differentiation is becoming an increasingly salient feature of European integration. The multifaceted European crisis and the subsequent Brexit vote (paving the way for a ground‐breaking case of differentiated disintegration) ...

In the aftermath of the British referendum to leave the European Union and the European Commission's ‘White Paper on the Future of Europe’, it is not only time to take stock of the existing literature on differentiated ...

Community law was established as a meta-legal order to provide a systematic solution to conflicts betweeen national legal orders. Integration, and in particular integration of law, was required to tackle the functional and ...

Utgangspunktet for artikkelen er de utfordringer europeiske representative demokratier, og spesielt sentraladministrasjonen, står overfor. Diskusjoner om forvaltningens demokratiske kvalitet kan foregå innenfor en stabil ...

The strength of solidarity ties among individuals is often discussed in relation to membership within a community of equals. This assumes strong links between reported solidarity actions, political attitudes, and national ...

Online media have transformed the political news landscapes, changing not only professional journalistic practices but also the way in which citizens participate in political communication. In the debate about the impact ...

Brexit is a high‐stakes political process, but there is still no clear understanding of the political factors that underpin the various affiliation modes that the UK is currently debating. These are treated as quite static ...

The Lisbon Treaty gave the European Parliament extensive new powers and its consent is now required for the vast majority of EU international agreements. At the same time, national parliaments—and even regional ones—are ...

The main purpose of this article is to improve the wicked problem framework by incorporating the problem of political order, as it appears in the context of Brexit. The first part specifies what is meant by political order ...

The aim of this article is to examine the role of ministerial officials in an integrated European multilevel administrative order. This study argues that organizational variables at the national level constitute a decisive ...

Benefiting from a novel data set spanning nearly half a century, this study probes the sustainability of public governance. Theoretically, it examines how sustainable public governance rests on its organizational fabric. ...

Epistemic democrats are rightly concerned with the quality of outcomes and judge democratic procedures in terms of their ability to ‘track the truth’. However, their impetus to assess ‘rule by experts’ and ‘rule by the ...

Migration is a topic that has frequently been present in political debates and the mass media in recent years, especially following the European and EU migration and refugee crisis. Newspaper debates in Norway presented ...

This paper contributes to discussions surrounding interest group representation in the European Parliament. Drawing from conceptualizations of legitimacy, and theoretical work on information-access we argue that different ...

Epistemic democrats are rightly concerned with the quality of outcomes and judge democratic procedures in terms of their ability to ‘track the truth’. However, their impetus to assess ‘rule by experts’ and ‘rule by the ...

Although not a member of the EU, Norway is deeply affected by European integration, owing to its participation, since 1994, in the EEA Agreement which made Norway a full participant in EU’s internal market. Norway’s ...

I argue the European Central Bank shows how mutually defining are i) the epistemic assumptions of independent central banking; ii) the powers of a central bank; iii) the political order in which it operates and iv) ...

In this article I enquire into the sources of legitimacy of the European Union's (EU) Common Foreign and Security Policy. I suggest that as the EU has moved beyond intergovernmentalism in this policy field, it cannot derive ...

Deliberation has not only epistemic and moral value, it also has transformative value. Even if deliberation faces the problem of indeterminacy, it is assumed to have explanatory power. This article spells out why this is ...

There is arguably no security crisis so great as the one that stems from climate change. For some time, the EU, rather than the US, has led the way in terms of far-ranging policies to reduce carbon emissions. But despite ...

Norway is a somewhat exceptional country in Europe in political terms. It is one of the few European countries that are not members of the European Union (EU). Rather it has structured its connections with European ...

This article is about democratic accountability and a Europe struggling to find viable answers to the questions of who and what shall constitute “Europe” and how to develop legitimate political institutions for governing ...

The study demonstrates how the EU contributes to a self-reinforcing administrative bias due to domestic-level organizational factors. Strong European integration without membership reinforces a politico-administrative gap ...

It is often claimed that medical professionals are subject to conflicting duties in their role morality. Some hold that the overridden duty taints the professional and generates a patient claim to a form of moral compensation. ...

How can we understand the role of secrecy in the making of the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP)? This article analyses the nature of secrecy and questions some of the main assumptions surrounding ...

International institutions are proliferating over a wide range of issue areas, creating what have recently been described as regime complexes. More than complicated arrangements, regime complexes are structures: they are ...

This article explores the problems the EU and the SRB face in trying to implement a credible system for resolving banks without the use of taxpayer funds as a key part of banking union that avoids the doom loop between ...

This study explores the room for reconciliation between democratic and epistemic claims to modern policy-making. The key institutional design question it deals with is how to compose arenas of policy advice and consultation ...

The role of scientists as experts is crucial to public policymaking. However, the expert role is contested and unsettled in both public and scholarly discourse. In this paper, I provide a systematic account of the role of ...

Expertise has been highlighted as a central source of power and legitimacy within the European Union system, and has been pointed to as one explanation of the relative influence of EU institutions in policy-making processes. ...

Improving policy deliberation is a central objective for theEuropean Union's institutions. Focusing on the European Parlia-ment's committee hearings as an understudied area of Europeangovernance, we aim to understand their ...

The European Union’s foreign and security policy is commonly described as an intergovernmental affair. Despite limited formal powers, several studies suggest that the European Parliament has increased its influence on the ...

The question posed in this article is how to explain that the governance of secrecy in EU external relations varies. While the Common Foreign and Security Policy appears to retain its secretive character, the EU’s external ...

The UN Beijing World Conference on Women in 1995 was a landmark event resulting in the famous Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action. In 2015, a review of the implementation of the 1995 Beijing agenda — Beijing 20 — ...

The deep transformation of the practice of European law calls for a systematic rethinking of the theories with the help of which European law is analysed, reconstructed and assessed. In this Article, I test the reconstructive ...

The EU’s approach to what it describes as “banking union” is not what one would design with a clean slate. It reflects the political constraints and the path of history. This paper compares the institutional and operational ...

This article contributes to the contemporary foreign policy debate about how norms influence policymakers’ behaviour. Hypotheses of norm-driven action are frequently dismissed when norms are inconsistently followed. However, ...

This article examines pro-European mobilisation in the United Kingdom following the European Union (EU) referendum. It develops a framework that combines Isin’s ‘acts of citizenship’ with Nancy Fraser’s three dimensions ...

Dette essayet tar utgangspunkt i arbeidet med å bygge opp faget Offentlig administrasjon og organisasjonskunnskap i Bergen på slutten av 1960-tallet og ut over 1970-tallet, med Knut Dahl Jacobsen som “the founding father”. ...

ABSTRACT. It might be thought that Brexit is just a case of the UK getting honest with itself and its partners. On that interpretation, much British opinion never really accepted European integration. Hence, the UK should ...

How do the EU and the US respond to rising powers making territorial claims? Are they unified in their approaches, and if not, where do their policies diverge? Transatlantic unity or dissent in response to main geopolitical ...

This study questions the traditional story of the detachment and independence of expert bodies such as agencies, central banks and expert committees. It directs attention to the numerous institutional links with elected ...

Policy-making in democratic systems involves the consultation of affected interests as well as relevant expertise. Yet, who provides decision-makers with input and how this has changed over time is a matter of contention. ...

Denne artikkelen ser nærmere på forskeres deltakelse i politikkutforming ved å ta utgangspunkt i en sentral del av den norske politikkutformingsprosessen: NOU-utvalgene (Norges Offentlige Utredninger). Den undersøker ...

At first glance, one might view the political differentiation in the European Union as a reflection of the autonomy of its member states, signifying flexibility and the dispersion of democratic control. However, under ...

In the run up to the 2014 European Parliament elections, the new Spitzenkandidaten process and European-wide party campaigns were considered a mechanism to create a more engaged European public. However, right-wing Eurosceptic ...

Formålet med denne studien er å belyse departementsansattes rolle i europeisk flernivåforvaltning i tidsperioden 1996 til 2016. Studien argumenterer for at organisatoriske variabler på nasjonalt nivå er avgjørende for ...

Recurrent claims of selective and inconsistent implementation of the European Union’s (EU) human rights clause questions the legitimacy basis of the Union’s human rights policy. If the EU’s actions do not match its rhetoric, ...

This paper contributes to an on-going exchange in political theory on the normative legitimacy of expert bodies. It focuses on epistemic worries about the expertisation of politics, and uses the Nordic system of advisory ...

When the member states of the European Union (EU) accepted the Defence and Security Procurement Directive, the expectation was that they would be able to retain a substantial amount of autonomy. During the implementation ...

This article develops a standard for evaluating how parliaments can contribute to the legitimacy of the European semester. It then uses that standard to identify where national parliaments may be able to oversee the semester ...

In the first part of the chapter, I discuss the role of digital media in crisis communication and identify the conditions under which social media can spearhead a shift in public communication dynamics. In the second part ...

The Eurocrisis has generated a deep and ongoing politicization of the EU within and across national public spheres, fuelling age-old and new political and social conflicts, which in turn shape public perceptions of crisis ...

Contemporary governance relies extensively and increasingly on academic expertise. This expertise dependency is intimately related to the technological and regulatory complexity and level of specialization of modern society. ...

Recent work on digital political engagement has extensively shown that social media platforms enhance political participation and collective action. However, the idea that citizen voice through social media can give rise, ...

The purpose of this collection is to discuss what we may learn from thinking about the EU in federal terms. Our point of departure is that this represents a two-fold challenge. It is on the one hand a matter of establishing ...

Commissions appointed to examine and propose solutions to major policy problems play a vital role in policy formulation in the Nordic countries. Whereas existing accounts emphasize the corporatist and statist features of ...

I denne oppgaven studeres den politiske prosessen knyttet til et direktivforslag for å forbedre kjønnsbalansen i europeiske bedriftsstyrer. Direktivforslaget ble fremmet av EU-kommisjonen høsten 2012 og har blitt vedtatt ...

From the opinion-swinging British tabloids which have become synonymous with anti-EU sentiment, especially during the ‘Brexit year’ of 2016, to the Commission’s Euromyths-busting service, dedicated to counteract Eurosceptic ...

What is the role of secrecy in crafting EU foreign policy? This paper analyzes the concept of secrecy in governance, and argues that to some degree secrecy is of functional necessity for policy-makers. Despite common ...

Can a directly elected European Parliament help deliver standards by which the European Union can be indirectly legitimated through its component national democracies? This article argues that the Union can be indirectly ...

Europe has been badly hit by several overlapping crises. This article explores how they were triggered by and, in turn, aggravated a structural crisis of European law. It spells out the concrete implications of ‘austerity’ ...

This study deals with the German Federal Government’s approach of ensuring public support for its ‘Energiewende’, the swift and complete transition to an energy system based on renewable sources. First, the government’s ...

A curious interconnectedness/consent conundrum marks today's world. Whereas states and societies are becoming more closely interconnected, increased proximity need not increase popular acceptance of federal democracy. ...

The European Union (EU) is the world’s biggest donor of aid to developing countries. The provision of EU aid is conditional on respect for human rights and democratic principles in the recipient countries. This article ...

Justifications for extending the Union’s boundaries to include new Member States have been much discussed. Only since the Brexit referendum have justifications for shrinking the Union’s boundaries through withdrawals of ...