Skip to content
NUPI skole

Researcher

John Karlsrud

Research Professor
john_karlsrud_11.jpg

Contactinfo and files

jka@nupi.no
(+47) 934 52 444
Original image Download CV

Summary

Dr. John Karlsrud is a Research Professor in the Research group on peace, conflict and development.

Karlsrud earned his PhD at the University of Warwick. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of the journals Internasjonal Politikk and Contemporary Security Policy. Karlsrud has been a Visiting Fulbright Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the International Peace Institute

Topics of particular interests are norm change, peacekeeping, peacebuilding and humanitarian issues. He previously served as Special Assistant to the United Nations Special Representative in Chad and as part of the UN Development Programme’s leadership programme LEAD.

He has worked in Bosnia and Hercegovina, Chad, Palestine (West Bank), Norway and USA, and conducted field research and shorter missions to Haiti, Liberia, Mozambique, Serbia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Ukraine.

Expertise

  • Africa
  • Peace operations
  • Humanitarian issues
  • International organizations
  • United Nations

Education

2014 Senior Executive Course 13, Norwegian Defence University College, Aug-Nov 2014

2010-2014 Ph.D., Politics and Internationals Studies, University of Warwick. Title: Linked Ecologies and Norm Change in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations

2005 Master of Peace and Conflict Studies / International Affairs with Distinction Joint Master from Institute for Graduate Studies in International Affairs, Australian National University and the Peace Research Centre of Oslo

Work Experience

2020- Head of the Reserach group on peace, conflict and development

2015- External Associate, Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of Warwick 2015 Fulbright Visiting Fellow, Center on International Cooperation, New York University

2015 Visiting Fellow, International Peace Institute

2012 Lecturer, IR Master

2010- Programme Manager and Senior Research Fellow at Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI)

2010- Senior Research Fellow, NUPI

2008-2010 Special Assistant to the Special Representative of the Secretary General (SRSG), United Nations Mission in Chad and the Central African Republic (MINURCAT), Chad

2006-2008 Policy and Strategy Analyst, Strategic and Regional Initiatives Unit (SRIU), Regional Bureau for Africa (RBA), UNDP New York HQ

2005-2006 Researcher and Assistant to the Managing Director, Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies (AIS)

2002-2003 Liaison and Operations Officer for NATO in Bosnia and Hercegovina (BiH), seconded by the Norwegian Army

Aktivitet

Publications
Publications
Report
Jaïr van der Lijn, Linda Darkwa, Fiifi Edu-Afful, John Karlsrud, Natasja Rupesinghe

Assessing the Effectiveness of the United Nations Mission in Mali (MINUSMA)

Until 2016 MINUSMA managed to strengthen stability in northern Mali, decreasing the number of civilians killed in the conflict, and allowing large numbers of displaced persons to return home. MINUSMA also assisted the peace process, culminating in the 2015 Algiers Agreement. Many of these achievements are still standing. However, since 2016 MINUSMA’s effectiveness in terms of stabilisation and the protection of civilians has decreased. In the North, the signatory parties have been making slow progress in the implementation of the Algiers Agreement and the 2018 Pact for Peace. In addition, central Mali has destabilised significantly, as Jihadist activities have stoked a vicious cycle of inter-communal violence that has reached unprecedented levels. MINUSMA has only been mandated to help the Malian government address the situation since June 2018. As one of the largest multidimensional peacekeeping operations – currently including nearly 13,000 soldiers and 1,800 police officers from 57 contributing countries, and almost 750 civilians – MINUSMA has been provided with significant resources and an extraordinarily ambitious mandate. However, the Mission finds itself at a crossroads. It needs time to succeed, but this is valuable time Mali does not have. Civilians have come under increasing attack, and the US, in particular, is losing interest in supporting a costly UN peace operation that is not able to deliver quick results. This report considers the degree to which there is an alignment between the mission’s resources and its mandate. It also makes an assessment of the options available to the Mission to increase its effectiveness in the face of extremely challenging circumstances.

  • Africa
  • Peace operations
  • United Nations
MINUSMA 2019 report cover 2.png
  • Africa
  • Peace operations
  • United Nations
Publications
Publications
Scientific article
John Karlsrud, Malte Brosig

How Ad Hoc Coalitions Deinstitutionalize International Institutions

As ad hoc coalitions (AHCs) proliferate, particularly on the African continent, two questions crystallize. First, what consequences do they bring about for the existing institutional security landscape? And second, how can the trend of AHCs operating alongside instead of inside regional organizations be captured and explored conceptually? To answer these questions, we closely examine the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) fighting Boko Haram and its changing relationship to the African Union (AU). Through the case study and a review of policy and academic literatures, the article launches the concept of deinstitutionalization and how it can be characterized. We identify three features of deinstitutionalization – AHCs can bypass standard procedures for decision-making processes; whittle down established institutional scripts, and shift resource allocations. We detail how the AHCs contribute to changing practices of financing international peace and security operations, with an examination of EU and UN policies and practices. In sum, the paper unwraps the processes of deinstitutionalization and identifies three forms of rationales for this process – lack of problem-solving capacity, limited adaptability and path dependency.

  • Africa
  • Peace operations
  • Humanitarian issues
  • Conflict
  • Fragile states
  • Migration
  • Nation-building
  • Insurgencies
  • United Nations
  • AU
International_Affairs_87(5).jpg
  • Africa
  • Peace operations
  • Humanitarian issues
  • Conflict
  • Fragile states
  • Migration
  • Nation-building
  • Insurgencies
  • United Nations
  • AU
Publications
Publications
Policy brief

Is liberal internationalism worth saving? Ad hoc coalitions and their consequences for international security

Slow responses and blocked decision-making of international organizations provide opportunities for ad hoc coalitions to fill functional and political gaps. Compared to UN peace operations, ad hoc coalitions avoid gridlock and high transaction costs, they are fast to set up, can be task and time specific, flexible and easily dissolved. However, they also have much lighter human rights and financial accountability frameworks, a patchy record of longer-term impact and can contribute to a more fragmented response to armed conflicts and threats to international peace and security.

  • Security policy
  • Africa
  • Humanitarian issues
  • Conflict
  • Fragile states
  • Insurgencies
Screenshot 2024-02-12 at 09.48.42.png
  • Security policy
  • Africa
  • Humanitarian issues
  • Conflict
  • Fragile states
  • Insurgencies
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

UN Peacekeeping Operations in a Multipolar Era

How is multipolarity impacting on UN peacekeeping operations? This article sets out to answer this question by examining the ongoing decline in UN peacekeeping operations and the concurrent rise of regional and ad hoc coalitions in an era of increasing geopolitical competition. The article argues that coalitions have significantly less focus on human rights, international humanitarian law, and the protection of civilians. They thus represent a shift away from the liberal values that have marked UN peacekeeping operations, and are coherent with current geopolitical shifts where China is chipping away at human rights at the UN and African states are increasingly voicing a need for more robust operations. The article concludes that the likely outcome of these trends is a continued decline of UN multidimensional peacekeeping, but that coalitions may receive logistical and administrative support from the UN peace operations machinery.

  • Peace operations
  • United Nations
Screenshot 2023-06-19 at 13.50.41.png
  • Peace operations
  • United Nations
Articles
New research
Articles
New research

Ad hoc coalitions are increasingly charged to tackle international crises

How does this impact on international organisations?
  • Diplomacy and foreign policy
  • Peace operations
  • Global governance
  • Governance
  • International organizations
  • United Nations
  • AU
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Ad hoc coalitions in global governance: short-notice, task- and time-specific cooperation

Ad hoc coalitions (AHCs) are an indispensable but scantly conceptualized part of global governance. In recent years, several typologies and classifications of global governance arrangements have been provided, mostly differentiating them based on their organizational design features of degree of formality and membership composition. These do not capture AHCs and the role they play in global governance. In this article, we not only provide a conceptualization of AHCs, but also propose ways in which AHCs fit within the broader global governance architecture. We argue that what sets AHCs apart is not so much their (in)formality or membership, but rather their short-notice creation, their task-specific purpose and their temporarily circumscribed existence. We therefore define AHCs as autonomous arrangements with a task-specific mandate established at short notice for a limited time frame. We then develop a research agenda on the nature and future of AHCs, including their short- and long-term relationship with other multilateral arrangements in the global governance architecture. This is important, as we do yet not know how AHCs complement, compete and impact on international organizations and international crisis response.

  • Security policy
Screenshot 2023-01-31 at 10.58.11.png
  • Security policy
Event
09:00 - 10:30
NUPI
Engelsk
090323-Ian Martin-Libya.png
Event
09:00 - 10:30
NUPI
Engelsk
9. Mar 2023
Event
09:00 - 10:30
NUPI
Engelsk

Libya after Gaddafi: What went wrong, and what role did Norway play?

Ian Martin, the UN’s former representative in Libya, critically reflects on the international intervention in 2011, and subsequent events.

Articles
New research
Articles
New research

Big EU project to NUPI

From March 2023 NUPI will lead a large EU-funded project on how the EU should navigate multinational cooperation in times of global uncertainty.
  • Foreign policy
  • Europe
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Ad Hoc Crisis Response and International Organisations (ADHOCISM)

International organisations (IOs) are created with the aim of solving collective action problems when a crisis arises. Yet, member states have repeatedly established ad hoc crisis responses in situations where IOs might be expected to play a central role. ADHOCISM asks what is the impact of ad hoc crisis responses on international organisations? In this way, ADHOCISM wants to contribute to filling this knowledge gap through a systematic study of ad hoc crisis responses in two policy domains: security and health. With this paired comparison, ADHOCISM wants to tap into a broader empirical governance phenomenon. Ad hoc crisis responses are here understood as loose groups of actors that agree to solve a particular crisis at a given time and location outside of an existing international organisation in the same policy domain. Ad hoc crisis reponses can, in the short-term, lead to more rapid and effective crisis responses among like-minded states, but if international organisations are no longer seen as the principal instruments to confront global challenges, the risk is also that the relevance of these international organisations will diminish, and similar trends may unfold in other domains.

  • Defence and security
  • Security policy
  • Terrorism and extremism
  • NATO
  • Diplomacy and foreign policy
  • Regions
  • The Middle East and North Africa
  • Africa
  • Peace, crisis and conflict
  • Fragile states
  • Insurgencies
  • Global governance
  • International organizations
  • The EU
  • United Nations
  • AU
Screenshot-2021-11-26-at-15.21.46_large.png
  • Defence and security
  • Security policy
  • Terrorism and extremism
  • NATO
  • Diplomacy and foreign policy
  • Regions
  • The Middle East and North Africa
  • Africa
  • Peace, crisis and conflict
  • Fragile states
  • Insurgencies
  • Global governance
  • International organizations
  • The EU
  • United Nations
  • AU
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

UN Peacekeeping and the Kindleberger Trap

I nærmere et tiår har FN vært under press på grunn av et stort antall fataliteter, samt press fra medlemsstater om å kutte kostnader, særlig fra USA. Siden 2013 har ikke FN iverksatt noen nye store fredsbyggingsprosjekter, mens større prosjekter har blitt avsluttet i Côte d’Ivoire, Darfur, Haiti, Liberia og Sierra Leone. På det afrikanske kontinentet gjenstår fire store prosjekt - i Den sentralafrikanske republikk (SAR, MINUSCA), Den demokratiske republikken Kongo (DR Kongo, MONUSCO), Mali (MINUSMA) og Sør-Sudan (UNMISS). Også disse er under press for å kutte kostnader.

  • Defence and security
  • Security policy
  • Terrorism and extremism
  • Regions
  • Africa
  • Peace, crisis and conflict
  • Peace operations
  • Conflict
  • Global governance
  • International organizations
  • United Nations
UNpeacekeepingAndTheKindlebergerTrap.png
  • Defence and security
  • Security policy
  • Terrorism and extremism
  • Regions
  • Africa
  • Peace, crisis and conflict
  • Peace operations
  • Conflict
  • Global governance
  • International organizations
  • United Nations
1 - 10 of 143 items