Kristian Stokke

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• PhD, Penn State University
• Professor at University of Oslo

This article analyses Myanmar's transition from authoritarianism and asks if it represents a transition towards democracy or a hybrid form of rule. Starting from theoretical debates about modes of transition, the article examines competing discourses on Myanmar's opening and argues that it resembles an imposed more than a negotiated transition. Nex...

What is the role of political representation by ethnic parties in a multi-ethnic state that has undergone a transition from military rule, and is seeking to resolve protracted intrastate conflicts? The present article examines this question through a contextual case study of ethnic parties in Myanmar – a state that is characterised by unresolved et...

The post-Cold War period has seen the rise of international liberal peacebuilding, as an overarching framework for international interventions in intrastate conflicts. In contrast, the current period is marked by decline of liberal peacebuilding, and a simultaneous rise of domestic illiberal peacebuilding. This has created a gap between the predomi...

Resistance against autocratization is an important contemporary issue that calls for increased scholarly attention. The global wave of autocratization has generated a proliferation of research on the drivers of autocratization, but fewer studies on the possibilities, strategies, spatialities, and effectiveness of resistance. This article responds t...

The contemporary rise of autocratization calls for increased attention to the role of civil society in resisting authoritarianism. While the literature on autocratization is growing, there are fewer analyses of the dynamics of civil society resistance. The purpose of the article is to address this knowledge gap through a contextual case study of ci...

Sri Lanka’s attempts to transition its energy system have been undermined by geopolitical competition, particularly between China and India, that have exploited the South Asian country’s weak neoliberal state and increased control of its energy infrastructure and economy.

Perioden fra 1970-tallet til årtusenskiftet var preget av den såkalte tredje demokratibølgen, og ga opphav til diskurser om demokratiske overganger og internasjonal bistand til å bygge demokratiske institusjoner. Verden i dag er derimot preget av økende autokratisering, det vil si institusjonelle og politiske endringer i retning av mer autoritære s...

This anthology hasHiariej been based on two foundational premises. On the one hand, we have seen citizenshipCitizenship as inherently multi-dimensional, and have especially foregrounded four processes that define the meaning and substance of citizenshipSubstance of citizenship: cultural inclusionCultural inclusion in communities of citizens, juridi...

This theory-orientedStökke, Kristian chapter discusses the meaning of politics of citizenshipPolitics of citizenship. In it, I will argue that a broad conceptualization of citizenship may provide an integral framework for studying political contentionsPolitical contention over cultural, legal, social, and political exclusionExclusion and inclusion.

This editedStökke, Kristian volume is a collection of studies on contemporary citizenshipCitizenshippoliticsHiariejin IndonesiaIndonesia. The goal is to examine the struggles for citizenship claimsCitizenship claimsand rightsRights in selected sectors, as well as how it is placed within the largerDevelopment of democracy structural context, particu...

Myanmar has undergone a democratic opening that has been followed by negotiations to end the country's many and protracted armed conflicts. The substance of democracy is, however, challenged by the military's continued power, and the peace process has been inconclusive. In this situation, the forthcoming election in late 2020 is a critical juncture...

Myanmar is characterized by a puzzling paradox when it comes to the relationship between religions and political parties: While religions, especially Theravada Buddhism, are omnipresent in society and frame politics in multiple and contentious ways, the reintroduction of electoral politics has not been followed by the formation of religious parties...

Democracy has attained a hegemonic position both as a normative ideal and as the dominant form of government, but there are growing concerns about democratic decline and crisis. The numerical growth of democracies has slowed down, and there have been some reversals from democratic to authoritarian rule in recent years. Nevertheless, the primary con...

This report documents the conference “Lessons from Indonesia in Comparative Perspectives,” held in Oslo on 29-30 November 2017. The event was the closing conference for the Power, Welfare and Democracy project, which was conducted by the University of Oslo (Norway) and the Universitas Gadjah Mada (Yogyakarta, Indonesia) from 2012 to 2017. The repor...

Myanmar may for a long time remain in a transitional state with an uncertain future. After a series of political and economic liberalization reforms from 2011 onwards, Myanmar’s political trajectory remains open-ended, although the most plausible scenario remains a continued slow democratization process. The democratic opening has been driven large...

In the theory-oriented article, the author discusses the meaning of politics of citizenship. He argues that a broad conception of citizenship may provide an integral framework for studying political contentions over cultural, legal, social and political exclusion and inclusion. He starts out from an identification of four key dimensions of citizens...

The concept of nation‐state highlights the state as a community, that is, the state as a focal point for national identity, and the nation as a source of legitimacy for the state. Nation‐states are central to geographic scholarship and especially studies of nationalism, nation‐state formation, and citizenship. Contemporary state–community relations...

Samfunnsgeografi er studiet av samfunnets romlighet. Som student i samfunnsgeografi utvikler du din geografiske forestillingsevne og blir i stand til å forstå betydningen av det geografiske i samfunnet rundt deg. Denne boka gir deg en innføring i fagets historie og kjernebegreper – som rom, sted, skala, territorium og nettverk – samt en gjennomgang...

The article examines the role of political parties in Myanmar’s democratisation process. We argue that the substance of democratisation depends on popular representation through political parties but question their capacity to provide such representation. Examining capacity through the concept of party institutionalisation, we find that most partie...

This article is about resettled Afghan Hazaras in Australia, many of whom are currently undergoing a complex process of transition (from transience into a more stable position) for the first time in their lives. Despite their permanent residency status, we show how resettlement can be a challenging transitional experience. For these new migrants, w...

This article contributes to the study of changing climate discourse and policy in emerging powers through a case study of climate discourse in India since 2007. Based on interviews with key actors in Indian climate politics and textual analysis, three general climate discourses - the Third World, Win-Win and Radical Green discourses - are identifie...

This article examines the emergence and transformation of Norway’s peace engagement in the context of changing international relations. Focusing on foreign policy discourses and practices, the article portrays peace engagement as value-based efforts to support resolution of distant intrastate conflicts, and a strategy to promote Norway’s interests...

This article analyses how civil society organisations (CSOs) influenced the implementation of the National Land Titling Project (PETT) in Peru. Land titling projects such as PETT raise a number of questions about the social implications of formalisation. Women often are disadvantaged when it comes to land titling, due to several factors such as lac...

In the introductory chapter, we defined and advocated transformative democratic politics as political agendas, strategies and alliances for introducing and utilizing democratic institutions that promote ordinary people’s opportunities in order to enable them to pursue their interests and aspirations. In Chapter 2, we also observed that important ex...

The point of departure for this book has been the observation that the contemporary Global South is characterized by a seemingly paradoxical co-existence of formal institutions that are supposed to support liberal democracy and stagnation of democratization towards its universally accepted aim of popular control of public affairs on the basis of po...

Transformative democratic politics are necessary to the advance of substantive democratization. They are vital to the improvement of popular control over public affairs and for promoting economic growth and social welfare. In this diverse collection, the authors examine the political dynamics of democratization in the Global South, and the potentia...

Chapter 1 identified the key dynamics of democratic transformative politics and argued that they can be exemplified by historical experiences in Scandinavia and contemporary Brazil. It was also observed that these dynamics of democratic transformative politics come close to the prescriptive conclusions in the book on ‘Rethinking Popular Representat...

This is a literature review that was written for a research project on “Power, Welfare and Democracy in Indonesia”. It will be printed in a forthcoming issue of PCD Journal, published at Universitas Gadjah Mada.

The third wave of democracy in the Global South in conjunction with market-driven globalization since the mid-1980s has not only undermined authoritarianism, but has also swept away many preconditions for political advances. Moreover, it could be argued that there has been a stagnation of democracy in many post-transition states, seen in the depoli...

Contemporary armed conflicts are typically intrastate conflicts in the Global South. These are often represented as global security threats, providing a justification for practical geopolitics of promoting liberal peace through elitist peace negotiations and instrumental use of humanitarian and development aid. In this context, the contemporary heg...

The Peace Process and the Excluded Public Sri Lanka's 5th peace process was characterised by being narrowly confined to formal negotiations between the principal protagonists to the conflict. The negotiations between the United National Front(UNF) government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) excluded a broad range of elite and popular...

This book examines the internationally facilitated peace process between the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in order to provide critical insights on contemporary attempts at crafting liberal peace in intrastate conflicts. The general argument is for a broadened political perspective on conflict resolu...

Sri Lanka has repeatedly gained international attention among scholars of politics and development as an illustrative case of development theory and practice. This was initiated with Sri Lanka's strong emphasis on importsubstitution industrialisation and social welfare in the 1960s and 70s, but the country also gained critical attention for its shi...

The article provides a brief review of the current state and future prospects of political geography in Norway. Although political geography has been revitalised internationally, it has a relatively short history and weak institutional basis in Norway. There are, however, notable exceptions both within and outside the discipline. The main part of t...

South Africa is currently moving from a polarised politicisation of the right to treatment, towards contentions over the implementation of treatment programmes for people living with HIV/AIDS. This article examines the politics of local governance in the Lusikisiki HIV/AIDS programme in the Eastern Cape Province. This is a case where the principal...

Social exclusion and inclusion have gained much attention and have been widely debated in recent years. The two concepts clearly illustrate the close but complex relations between state and society. The book State and Society examines the role of state-society relations for social exclusion and inclusion in Nepal. The book is a collection of five...

This article provides a critical analysis of the public opinion on peace in Sri Lanka, with consideration to two determinants: social differentiation and politicisation of identities. Specifically, it aims at developing arguments about the correlations between public opinion, social position, and political mobilisation. Inspired by Bourdieu’s conce...

Since the end of the Cold War, Norway has widely functioned as facilitator for conflict resolution in interstate conflicts and, thus, constructed Norwegian foreign policy as an international peace promoter. This article provides a critical understanding of the discursive construction and institutional practices of Norwegian peace engagement and the...

Contemporary armed conflicts are typically intrastate conflicts in the Global South. These are often represented as global security threats, providing a justification for practical geopolitics of promoting liberal peace through elitist peace negotiations and instrumental use of humanitarian and development aid. In this context, the contemporary heg...

The theme of this article is the transnational activities of members of the Tamil diaspora in Norway and their significance for development in the North-East of Sri Lanka. Our analysis acknowledges the complexity of Tamil transnational activities, particularly in regard to issues which may be seen as political. A key observation regards the pragmat...

Rethinking Popular Representation starts out from the deep concern with contemporary tendencies towards depoliticization of public issues and popular interests. It argues that the root cause of this is flawed representation, due to both elitist institution building and fragmented citizen participation. Hence the book makes a case for the need to re...

The state of democracy in the Global South is marked by a striking paradox: while liberal democracy has attained an ideologically hegemonic position through two so-called waves of democracy, the qualities of such democracies is increasingly called into question. The "old" democracies in the global South like Sri Lanka are weakened. Democracy defici...

Symbolic representation is a key dimension of political representation and deserves critical attention when the agenda is to rethink popular representation. In his outline of a framework for analysing political representation, Törnquist1 highlights the lasting influence of Pitkin’s classic study of The Concept of Representation.2 Pitkin famously di...

The earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra on 26 December 2004 unleashed a tsunami in the Indian Ocean that affected more than a dozen countries throughout South and Southeast Asia and stretched as far as the northeastern coast of Africa. The two worst affected areas - North-East Sri Lanka and the Aceh region in Indonesia - have both been marked...

Democratisation and democratic institutionalisation are not peaceful processes. The heterogeneity of the demos, the inequalities that are present, and the divisions emanating from practices of exclusion all serve to ensure that conflict and struggle are intrinsic to democratic transition as demands for participation and representation are formulate...

There is growing interest in the links between development and peace in low and middle-income countries, and in particular between international development assistance and conflict resolution. This chapter analyses these links in the context of Sri Lanka's fifth peace process (2002-2004), by examining the unconventional approach of using the develo...

About the book: 'This unique book is a true encyclopedia of political geography. It gives a comprehensive outlook of its origin, objectives, history, and content. The Handbook focuses on three cornerstone themes – the state, power, gender and positionality, and offers an excellent panorama of contemporary political geography in relation with other...

Sri Lanka's armed conflict highlights the relations between war/peace and development, both in terms of impacts of war on livelihoods and in terms of reconstruction and development as means for peace-building. It should be recognised that the grievances behind a conflict may not be identical with post-conflict needs. Such transformation of developm...

Sometimes when I have felt a little depressed I would go to Parliament to sit in the public gallery and look down at all those 'terrorists' now occupying the government benches. It is something to lift the heaviest heart to behold those who were regarded by the previous apartheid government as the most dangerous terrorists, and who now, in the new...

Joint political mobilisation between trade unions and community groups, often referred to as ‘social movement unionism’, has been upheld as a way forward for organised labour in a neoliberal world economy. Analysing the interaction between unions and communities is critical for understanding the potential and actual roles played by trade unions in...

What are the prospects and means of achieving development through a democratic politics of socio-economic rights? Starting from the position that socio-economic rights are as legally and normatively valid as civil and political rights, this anthology explores the politics of acquiring and transforming socio-economic rights in South Africa. The book...

In spite of the fact that leaders of the anti-apartheid social movements have entered into political power and defined the relations between state and civil society in collaborative terms, South Africa’s democratic transition has not put an end to adversarial popular struggles (Ballard et al. 2003). One decade into democratic rule, the South Africa...

There is a major contradiction in contemporary politics: despite a wave of democratisation that has swept across much of the world, globalisation appears to have reduced those forces that have encouraged democracy historically. Democratic aspirations may well founder upon local political realities. But there is another side to all of this that is s...

Contemporary discourses about the politics of developing countries have brought together an unlikely set of bedfellows. Intellectuals and policy actors whose ideas are rooted in very different values and theoretical assumptions nonetheless converge around the view that there is a ‘new politics’ grounded in local political spaces and practices. The...

The point of departure of this article is a conception of nations as discursive constructions of ‘us’/‘here’ in relation to ‘them’/‘there’. The empirical analysis examines three national discourses in Rehoboth, Namibia: (1) a discourse on the ethnic Baster nation; (2) a discourse on the Namibian nation-state and (3) a discourse on the nation-state...

The point of departure for this article is the contemporary tendency towards localisation of politics in the context of neo-liberal globalisation. Mediated through institutional reforms, political discourses and localised struggles, this localisation of politics produce new and transformed local political spaces. The purpose of the article is to ex...

This article aims at gaining greater insight into the functioning of small-scale industries in an African context. The findings are based on predominately qualitative fieldwork conducted on small-scale carpentry industries in Accra, Ghana. A special concern is whether the small-scale carpenters are capable of acquiring the technological capabilitie...

Regionalism has commonly been expected to dissolve as a consequence of the administrative regional penetration of the centralized modern state and the homogenizing forces associated with modernization. This mode of reasoning has reappeared recently among authors who see globalization as a universal force that will eradicate regional economic inequa...

Recent discussions in development have moved away from holistic theorisation towards more localised, empirical and inductive approaches. In development practice there has been a parallel move towards local 'participation' and 'empowerment', which has produced, albeit with very different agendas, a high level of agreement between actors and institut...

This article examines Sinhalese and Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka in the period from independence in 1948 to the rise of militant Tamil separatist nationalism in the early 1980s. Inspired by recent developments in political geography, the core of the argument is that Sinhalese and Tamil nationalism represent post-colonial political projects where...

Persistent poverty and on-going restructuring of the state have produced new conceptualizations of social development and poverty alleviation in the South. It is argued in this article that it is important to undertake critical political analyses of specific programs for poverty alleviation. The scope and scale of poverty alleviation programs are s...

The agenda for “good governance” postulates that it constitutes both a precondition for and an outcome of economic development. In direct opposition, neo-Marxist analyses assert a causal link between economic liberalization and bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes. This article argues that the relationship between governance and economic development...

The Sri Lankan parliamentary election in August 1994 and the presidential election in November 1994 marked the transfer of government from the conservative United National Party (UNP) to the social democratic People's Alliance (PA). The UNP had held power since 1977, under the leadership of three presidents; J. R. Jayawardena (1978- 1988), R. Prema...

Research in development geography in Norway has already come of age. As a scholarly tradition it dates back more than a generation. In simple terms we can claim the activity to be doubly rooted, in missionary activities and development aid. Development geography as a subdiscipline and research activity was first established at the University of Osl...

Industrialization does not necessarily mean an increasing share of mass production in largescale enterprises. The flexible specialization concept puts small industries at the centre of the industrial strategy debate. Piore and Sabel (1984) suggested that the deterioration in industrial performance in a number of Western countries results from the l...

Hegemonic theories of Third World regional development maintain that growth in rural small-scale industries can originate in growth linkages from modernized agriculture or in entrepreneurship development within the non-farm sector with growth linkages to export-oriented industries. In this context, the article discusses whether small-scale industri...

One of several important changes that have taken place in Anglo-American human geography over the last two decades is the development of a radical political geography (Clark & Dear 1984, Harvey 1985, Johnston 1986, 1989, Short 1989, Taylor 1993a, b). This ‘new’ political geography has been largely confined to analyses of the role of the state in ca...

Hegemonic theories of Third World regional development maintain that growth in rural small-scale industries can originate in growth linkages from modernized agriculture or in entrepreneurship development within the non-farm sector with growth linkages to export-oriented industries. In this context, the article discusses whether small-scale industri...

There is a growing interest today in the topic of nonfarm activities such as small industries and construction located in rural areas of the Third World. These activities are viewed as a means for alleviating rural poverty and reducing income inequality in poor, densely populated agricultural areas. Much current research on the topic centers around...

Thesis (doctoral)--Universitetet i Bergen, 1992. Includes bibliographical references (p. 197-213).