Fredrik Söderbaum
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 347339 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Fredrik Söderbaum |
| NOMBRES | Fredrik |
| APELLIDO | Söderbaum |
| FIRMA | SÖDERBAUM F |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Gothenburg |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5264-4295 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 42 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 283 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 39 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 3 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2000 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
Problem‐Solving by Low‐Authority International Organizations
Dominant theories stipulate that high levels of authority are a prerequisite for effective problem‐solving by international organizations (IOs). How, then, can we explain that African health organizations possess relatively low levels of authority, yet their response to COVID‐19 has been touted as a remarkable success? In this article, we explain how low‐authority IOs can engage in effective problem‐solving. By rethinking the conventional zero‐su…
Comparative Regionalism beyond Europe versus the rest
What is the current state of Comparative Regionalism (CR) as a field of research? Since its inception, CR has suffered from a chasm between those who take European integration as the model for conceptualising, theorising, comparing, and designing regionalism worldwide, and the critics, who reject EU-centrism in favour of more contextualised approaches focusing on the Global South. This paper challenges this characterisation by showing how CR has …
Beyond exit
There is a widespread belief among scholars and policy-makers that populism has fuelled a unilateralist backlash because of its emphasis on nationalism, popular sovereignty and identity politics. Although a few populist governments have indeed withdrawn from some international institutions, this 'disengagement hypothesis' needs to be scrutinized and unpacked. In this article, we develop a framework that distinguishes between four types of institu…
Routledge Handbook of Water and Development
"Water is essential for human life and at the centre of political, economic and socio-cultural development. This Routledge Handbook on Water and Development offers a systematic, wide-ranging and state-of-the-art guide to the diverse links between water and development across the globe. It is organized into four parts: Part I explores the most significant theories and approaches to the relationship between water and development. Part II consists o…
“Something for everyone”
Legitimation struggles in international organizations
How do international organizations (IOs) and their proponents claim legitimacy, and how do their opponents undermine such legitimacy? This article develops a framework that accounts for the links between legitimation and delegitimation strategies and how they regularly produce 'legitimation struggles'. Drawing on the case of the African Union between 2015–2020, the study goes beyond existing research in three ways. First, legitimation struggles a…
Sovereignty scripts and regional governance
This article seeks to advance our understanding of the role of sovereignty for regional governance, with a focus on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). We argue that important insights into this issue can be gleaned by analyzing how ASEAN has responded to the Covid-19 pandemic. Most existing research on ASEAN considers sovereignty an obstacle to effective regional governance without further interrogating it conceptually. Such a mo…
European foreign aid to regional organisations in Africa
How do external actors promote regional international organisations (RIOs) through their regional foreign aid? Whereas most leading theories of regionalism stipulate that RIOs are designed and shaped by intra-regional actors from ‘within’, this study develops a novel framework for exploring donor involvement in RIOs during various stages of the foreign aid policy cycle. The research design is based on a comparison of the four largest European d…
Regional international organizations in Africa as recipients of foreign aid
Foreign aid to regional international organizations (RIOs) has increased tremendously in recent decades. The vast differences between RIOs give rise to the question of why some RIOs attract considerable amounts of aid while others attract much less, or even nothing at all. To address that question, this article sets out and examines a set of hypotheses that focus on various characteristics of RIOs that allow donors to reduce transaction costs. Em…
The origins of legitimation strategies in international organizations
How do international organizations (IOs) claim legitimacy, and why do they do so in different ways? Confronted with contestation and critique, IOs seek to enhance audiences' beliefs in their legitimacy by justifying their governance competence through public communication and the change of institutions and behaviour. This article serves as an introduction to a special section on 'Legitimizing international organizations'. It theorizes the origins…
Populist (de)legitimation of international organizations
The rise of populists to power in many states around the world has caused concern among defenders of multilateralism and the so-called liberal international order. Due to their frequent attacks on established international organizations (IOs), populists are often falsely portrayed as unilateralists. Our article addresses the apparent contradiction that populist leaders delegitimate certain IOs but actively legitimate others, and examines on what …
The Costs of Legitimacy for Political Institutions
Can political institutions be too legitimate for their own good? The standard view of legitimacy treats it purely as a resource—political institutions that enjoy legitimacy can draw on voluntary cooperation among their subjects to reach their aims, which is believed to make them more effective than institutions that lack legitimacy and must instead use coercion or bribery to reach aims. We challenge this conventional wisdom by advancing a more ge…
Regionalism beyond state-centrism
Over the past few decades, regions and regional institutions have gained increased attention in both scholarly literature and policy debates. A fundamental weakness in both debates, however, is the simplified focus on state actors and the official goals and policies of regional international organizations and inter-state frameworks. This article addresses this extant weakness by opening up for a more diverse empirical reality. By drawing on the n…
Peace research meets implementation studies
In spite of a vibrant debate about the genesis, logic and effects of peace operations, peace research remains poorly equipped to account for how policies are implemented and 'translated into practice' - issues that have been the focus in implementation studies for nearly five decades. In response, we propose a merger of certain strands of peace research with bottom-up implementation studies, which forefronts the role of 'implementing actors', nam…
Swedish Development Cooperation and Ownership of African Regional Organizations
This article deals with the ownership of African regional organizations (ROs) in the context of an overreliance on foreign funding. It focuses specifically on whether and how Swedish development cooperation contributes to the ownership of ROs on the continent. Sweden constitutes a particularly pertinent case study for several reasons: it is one of the world’s largest and most important donors to African ROs, it places great emphasis on the owners…
A Changing Global Development Agenda
What is new and different about development as it goes more global today? The 2030 (post-2015) agenda has underlined the global character of contemporary development. The Sustainable Development Go
Rethinking Regionalism
Civil society participation in regional social policy
This article expands our knowledge about the role of civil society in the formulation and implementation of social policy at the regional level, and it focuses on the issue of HIV/AIDS in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The analysis critically examines the conventional view that the involvement of civil society organizations in regional social policy contributes to participatory processes and reduces the democratic deficit of r…
Introduction
Intersecting Interregionalism
The Limits of the EU as a Peace and Security Actor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
The European Union (EU) is increasingly aspiring to be a global peace and security actor. Using the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as a test case to analyse such ambitions, this article reveals that the EU's attempts to build peace and security are severely compromised by its bureaucratic and organizational complexity as well as by its ineffective policies. In fact, the EU's state-centred approach in the DRC has resulted in the EU's inabi…
EU Studies and the ‘New Regionalism’
This article explores what can be gained from increased dialogue between European Union studies and ‘new regionalism’ studies within International Relations, focusing on two crucial analytical dimensions: the link between globalisation and regionalism, and the link between regionalism and the state. First, globalisation is a universal process, and it provides the context for regionalism across the globe, which enhances the potential for cross‐fer…
The problem of comparison in comparative regionalism
There is virtually no systematic debate on the fundamentals of comparative research in the study of international regionalism. The field of research is very fragmented and there is a lack of interaction between EU studies and regionalism in the rest of the world. There is also a lack of communication between scholars from various theoretical standpoints and research traditions. Related to these two divides is the tension between idiographic and n…
Regional Organizations and African Security
This special volume addressed four issues concerning African Security (1) what are the advantages and disadvantages of African regional and sub-regional organizations vis-à-vis other security mechanisms, in particular UN peace operations?; (2) what are the official and unofficial reasons to intervene?; and (3) whose security is actually protected by the peace activities carried out by the regional organizations? The authors share some common conc…
Problematizing Regional Organizations in African Security
The African continent is plagued by some of the most brutal and violent conflicts in the world. At the same time that warfare is changing, so has the state's capacity to provide security and political stability to its citizens. In this context, what is the role of new conflict management actors, in particular regional organizations? This article starts out by situating conflicts and peace operations on the African continent. It then moves on to p…
Theorising the Rise of Regionness
2000). Theorising the Rise of Regionness. New Political Economy: Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 457-472
Introduction
This article introduces the topic of this special issue, namely the study of the EU as a global actor and the role of interregionalism. It starts with mapping out the general theme and the key questions that guide the issue, such as: to what extent are regions becoming ‘actors’ of world politics; what is the strength of interregionalism in the EU’s foreign policies towards regions and across sectors; why is interregionalism being pursued and who …
The problem of comparison in comparative regionalism
There is virtually no systematic debate on the fundamentals of comparative research in the study of international regionalism. The field of research is very fragmented and there is a lack of interaction between EU studies and regionalism in the rest of the world. There is also a lack of communication between scholars from various theoretical standpoints and research traditions. Related to these two divides is the tension between idiographic and n…
EU Studies and the ‘New Regionalism’
This article explores what can be gained from increased dialogue between European Union studies and ‘new regionalism’ studies within International Relations, focusing on two crucial analytical dimensions: the link between globalisation and regionalism, and the link between regionalism and the state. First, globalisation is a universal process, and it provides the context for regionalism across the globe, which enhances the potential for cross‐fer…
The EU as a Global Actor and the Dynamics of Interregionalism
This article presents a comparative analysis of the role of interregionalism in the European Union’s foreign policies and external relations, with a particular focus on some of the most important regions around the world: Africa, Asia, South America, North America and Central and Eastern Europe. After a brief comparative assessment of the EU’s interregional relationships, the article provides three partly overlapping and intersecting accounts of …
Modes of Regional Governance in Africa
Regionalisation and Civil Society
The author is grateful for the valuable comments by two anonymous reviewers, Andreas Godsäter, Björn Hettne and Jan Aart Scholte. The research funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) is gratefully acknowledged. Notes 1. SADC member countries are: Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Z…
A Changing Global Development Agenda
What is new and different about development as it goes more global today? The 2030 (post-2015) agenda has underlined the global character of contemporary development. The Sustainable Development Go
The Costs of Legitimacy for Political Institutions
Can political institutions be too legitimate for their own good? The standard view of legitimacy treats it purely as a resource—political institutions that enjoy legitimacy can draw on voluntary cooperation among their subjects to reach their aims, which is believed to make them more effective than institutions that lack legitimacy and must instead use coercion or bribery to reach aims. We challenge this conventional wisdom by advancing a more ge…
Populist (de)legitimation of international organizations
The rise of populists to power in many states around the world has caused concern among defenders of multilateralism and the so-called liberal international order. Due to their frequent attacks on established international organizations (IOs), populists are often falsely portrayed as unilateralists. Our article addresses the apparent contradiction that populist leaders delegitimate certain IOs but actively legitimate others, and examines on what …
Regional international organizations in Africa as recipients of foreign aid
Foreign aid to regional international organizations (RIOs) has increased tremendously in recent decades. The vast differences between RIOs give rise to the question of why some RIOs attract considerable amounts of aid while others attract much less, or even nothing at all. To address that question, this article sets out and examines a set of hypotheses that focus on various characteristics of RIOs that allow donors to reduce transaction costs. Em…
The UN and Regional Organizations in Global Security
Beyond exit
There is a widespread belief among scholars and policy-makers that populism has fuelled a unilateralist backlash because of its emphasis on nationalism, popular sovereignty and identity politics. Although a few populist governments have indeed withdrawn from some international institutions, this 'disengagement hypothesis' needs to be scrutinized and unpacked. In this article, we develop a framework that distinguishes between four types of institu…
Legitimation struggles in international organizations
How do international organizations (IOs) and their proponents claim legitimacy, and how do their opponents undermine such legitimacy? This article develops a framework that accounts for the links between legitimation and delegitimation strategies and how they regularly produce 'legitimation struggles'. Drawing on the case of the African Union between 2015–2020, the study goes beyond existing research in three ways. First, legitimation struggles a…
The origins of legitimation strategies in international organizations
How do international organizations (IOs) claim legitimacy, and why do they do so in different ways? Confronted with contestation and critique, IOs seek to enhance audiences' beliefs in their legitimacy by justifying their governance competence through public communication and the change of institutions and behaviour. This article serves as an introduction to a special section on 'Legitimizing international organizations'. It theorizes the origins…
Transmission belt for transnational capital or facilitator for development? Problematising the role of the state in the Maputo Development Corridor
This article problematises the role of the state in what is claimed to be the 'flagship' of the South African Spatial Development Initiative (SDI) programme, the Maputo Development Corridor (MDC). The purpose is to assess to what extent the state is best understood as a 'transmission belt' for transnational capital or as a 'facilitator' for development. The study reveals several flaws in the MDC which reinforce the role of the state as a transmis…
Regionalism beyond state-centrism
Over the past few decades, regions and regional institutions have gained increased attention in both scholarly literature and policy debates. A fundamental weakness in both debates, however, is the simplified focus on state actors and the official goals and policies of regional international organizations and inter-state frameworks. This article addresses this extant weakness by opening up for a more diverse empirical reality. By drawing on the n…
Regional Organizations and African Security
This special volume addressed four issues concerning African Security (1) what are the advantages and disadvantages of African regional and sub-regional organizations vis-à-vis other security mechanisms, in particular UN peace operations?; (2) what are the official and unofficial reasons to intervene?; and (3) whose security is actually protected by the peace activities carried out by the regional organizations? The authors share some common conc…
Problematizing Regional Organizations in African Security
The African continent is plagued by some of the most brutal and violent conflicts in the world. At the same time that warfare is changing, so has the state's capacity to provide security and political stability to its citizens. In this context, what is the role of new conflict management actors, in particular regional organizations? This article starts out by situating conflicts and peace operations on the African continent. It then moves on to p…
Sovereignty scripts and regional governance
This article seeks to advance our understanding of the role of sovereignty for regional governance, with a focus on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). We argue that important insights into this issue can be gleaned by analyzing how ASEAN has responded to the Covid-19 pandemic. Most existing research on ASEAN considers sovereignty an obstacle to effective regional governance without further interrogating it conceptually. Such a mo…
European foreign aid to regional organisations in Africa
How do external actors promote regional international organisations (RIOs) through their regional foreign aid? Whereas most leading theories of regionalism stipulate that RIOs are designed and shaped by intra-regional actors from ‘within’, this study develops a novel framework for exploring donor involvement in RIOs during various stages of the foreign aid policy cycle. The research design is based on a comparison of the four largest European d…
Peace research meets implementation studies
In spite of a vibrant debate about the genesis, logic and effects of peace operations, peace research remains poorly equipped to account for how policies are implemented and 'translated into practice' - issues that have been the focus in implementation studies for nearly five decades. In response, we propose a merger of certain strands of peace research with bottom-up implementation studies, which forefronts the role of 'implementing actors', nam…
Swedish Development Cooperation and Ownership of African Regional Organizations
This article deals with the ownership of African regional organizations (ROs) in the context of an overreliance on foreign funding. It focuses specifically on whether and how Swedish development cooperation contributes to the ownership of ROs on the continent. Sweden constitutes a particularly pertinent case study for several reasons: it is one of the world’s largest and most important donors to African ROs, it places great emphasis on the owners…
Civil society participation in regional social policy
This article expands our knowledge about the role of civil society in the formulation and implementation of social policy at the regional level, and it focuses on the issue of HIV/AIDS in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The analysis critically examines the conventional view that the involvement of civil society organizations in regional social policy contributes to participatory processes and reduces the democratic deficit of r…
The Limits of the EU as a Peace and Security Actor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
The European Union (EU) is increasingly aspiring to be a global peace and security actor. Using the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as a test case to analyse such ambitions, this article reveals that the EU's attempts to build peace and security are severely compromised by its bureaucratic and organizational complexity as well as by its ineffective policies. In fact, the EU's state-centred approach in the DRC has resulted in the EU's inabi…
The Role of the Regional Factor in West Africa
The contemporary international system is characterized by a deep transformation process. The end of the bipolar Cold War structure has given rise, directly or indirectly, to a tremendous amount of changes all over the world at all levels. In this regard, the mosaic of countries commonly referred to as West Africa constitutes no exception, and the region is characterized by a complex mixture of various, partly reinforcing and partly contradictory,…
Theorising the Rise of Regionness
2000). Theorising the Rise of Regionness. New Political Economy: Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 457-472
Networking and Capacity Building
Transmission belt for transnational capital or facilitator for development? Problematising the role of the state in the Maputo Development Corridor
This article problematises the role of the state in what is claimed to be the 'flagship' of the South African Spatial Development Initiative (SDI) programme, the Maputo Development Corridor (MDC). The purpose is to assess to what extent the state is best understood as a 'transmission belt' for transnational capital or as a 'facilitator' for development. The study reveals several flaws in the MDC which reinforce the role of the state as a transmis…
Den nya regionalismens politiska ekonomi i södra Afrika
Theories of New Regionalism
Theories of New Regionalism represents the first systematic attempt to bring together leading theories of new regionalism. Major theorists from around the world develop their own distinctive theoretic
Theories of New Regionalism
Modes of Regional Governance in Africa
Civilian Power or Soft Imperialism? The EU as a Global Actor and the Role of Interregionalism
Global Politics of Regionalism
This book explores the phenomenon of regionalism. In a seeming contradiction to globalization, there is a growing tendency for countries to enter into regional arrangements as a response to the pressures of operating in a global marketplace. But regionalism is also emerging as a phenomenon in its own right, serving distinct purposes and taking different forms in different areas. The contributors explore how these patterns impact on wider issues s…
Intervening in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies
Introduction
This article introduces the topic of this special issue, namely the study of the EU as a global actor and the role of interregionalism. It starts with mapping out the general theme and the key questions that guide the issue, such as: to what extent are regions becoming ‘actors’ of world politics; what is the strength of interregionalism in the EU’s foreign policies towards regions and across sectors; why is interregionalism being pursued and who …
The EU as a Global Actor and the Dynamics of Interregionalism
This article presents a comparative analysis of the role of interregionalism in the European Union’s foreign policies and external relations, with a particular focus on some of the most important regions around the world: Africa, Asia, South America, North America and Central and Eastern Europe. After a brief comparative assessment of the EU’s interregional relationships, the article provides three partly overlapping and intersecting accounts of …
The UN and Regional Organizations in Global Security
State, Region And Space In Africa
Dynamic regionalist processes are globally unfolding, not least the formation of micro-regions. The African continent is filled with a multitude of cross-border micro-regions. The projects known as Spatial Development Initiatives (SDIs) and development corridors have emerged as the most distinct form of policy driven micro-regionalism in eastern and southern Africa. This chapter seeks to move such analysis forward by using a greater sample of Afr…
Regionalisation and Civil Society
The author is grateful for the valuable comments by two anonymous reviewers, Andreas Godsäter, Björn Hettne and Jan Aart Scholte. The research funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) is gratefully acknowledged. Notes 1. SADC member countries are: Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Z…
Unlocking the Relationship Between the WTO & Regional Integration Arrangements (RIAs)
The relationship between the World Trade Organization (WTO) and regional integration arrangement (RIAs) is problematic. Although RIAs need to comply with WTO rules, there is no fruitful interaction
Regional Organizations and African Security
This special volume addressed four issues concerning African Security (1) what are the advantages and disadvantages of African regional and sub-regional organizations vis-à-vis other security mechanisms, in particular UN peace operations?; (2) what are the official and unofficial reasons to intervene?; and (3) whose security is actually protected by the peace activities carried out by the regional organizations? The authors share some common conc…
Problematizing Regional Organizations in African Security
The African continent is plagued by some of the most brutal and violent conflicts in the world. At the same time that warfare is changing, so has the state's capacity to provide security and political stability to its citizens. In this context, what is the role of new conflict management actors, in particular regional organizations? This article starts out by situating conflicts and peace operations on the African continent. It then moves on to p…
EU Studies and the ‘New Regionalism’
This article explores what can be gained from increased dialogue between European Union studies and ‘new regionalism’ studies within International Relations, focusing on two crucial analytical dimensions: the link between globalisation and regionalism, and the link between regionalism and the state. First, globalisation is a universal process, and it provides the context for regionalism across the globe, which enhances the potential for cross‐fer…
The problem of comparison in comparative regionalism
There is virtually no systematic debate on the fundamentals of comparative research in the study of international regionalism. The field of research is very fragmented and there is a lack of interaction between EU studies and regionalism in the rest of the world. There is also a lack of communication between scholars from various theoretical standpoints and research traditions. Related to these two divides is the tension between idiographic and n…
The Limits of the EU as a Peace and Security Actor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
The European Union (EU) is increasingly aspiring to be a global peace and security actor. Using the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as a test case to analyse such ambitions, this article reveals that the EU's attempts to build peace and security are severely compromised by its bureaucratic and organizational complexity as well as by its ineffective policies. In fact, the EU's state-centred approach in the DRC has resulted in the EU's inabi…
Introduction
Intersecting Interregionalism
Rethinking Regionalism
Political science (38 obras) · Law (27 obras) · Politics (26 obras) · International Development and Aid (25 obras) · Economics (20 obras) · Sociology (20 obras) · Political economy (19 obras) · Law (17 obras) · Geography (12 obras) · European Union Policy and Governance (10 obras)