Ole Jacob Sending
Biographic Data
| ID | 298532 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ole Jacob Sending |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ole Jacob |
| FAMILY NAME | Sending |
| SIGNATURE | SENDING O J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Norwegian Institute of International Affairs |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4456-4708 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 407 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
“Ambassador, you’re really spoiling us!” Diplomatic gifts and profligate autocrats
Qatar’s “unconditional” gift of a $400 million Boeing 747-8 to Donald Trump serves as a reminder that states have long used diplomatic gifts to impress others, forge bonds, and secure favorable treatment. However, in an age where citizens and media outlets routinely scrutinize public spending, there is good reason to think that not all governments are able to justify lavishing large sums on such interactions. In this paper, we test the claim that…
Governance by indicators and the re-politicisation of expertise
States are measured and ranked on an ever-expanding array of country performance indicators (CPIs). Such indicators are seductive because they provide actionable, accessible, and ostensibly objective information on complex phenomena to time-pressed officials and enable citizens to hold governments to account. At the same time, a sizeable body of research has explored how CPIs entail ‘black boxing’ and depoliticisation of political phenomena. This…
The Chinese are coming! US think tanks and the Belt and Road Initiative in the Middle East and North Africa
Wager upon wager: Assessing Iver B. Neumann’s contribution to International Relations
A key player in the Scandinavian rise in the International Relations discipline, Iver B. Neumann has made significant contributions to several research programs, from Russian and European identity politics to practice theory and discourse analysis, through longue durée analyses of governmentality and diplomacy. At the theoretical level, Neumann has borrowed multiple social-theoretical resources that have allowed him to make a variety of epistemol…
Global Health Expertise in the Shadow of Hegemony
What enables actors to shape norms in global health governance? Scholarship on global health has highlighted the role of experts and expertise in operationalizing norms across a variety of issues. The degree of expert consensus or dissensus and the negotiation processes between expert communities—for example, in international organizations, NGOs or academia—are commonly identified as centrally important for explaining these processes. In this art…
Norges klimaomdømme på Twitter
I denne artikkelen undersøker vi om olje- og gassproduksjonen har negativ innvirkning på Norges klimaomdømme. Dette gjør vi ved å kartlegge meldinger som ble lagt ut på Twitter i forbindelse med det 26. klimatoppmøtet (COP 26) i Glasgow. For å sette Norges omdømme i perspektiv, sammenlikner vi Twitter-meldingene om Norge og Sverige. Studien viser at det er liten forskjell mellom meldingene som omhandler Norge og Sverige når det gjelder negative h…
Consultancies in public administration
Public administrations increasingly rely on consultancies to acquire policy knowledge, assess stakeholder dynamics, and evaluate governance systems. In this symposium, we explore the drivers and effects of this trend. Consultants offer advisory services, articulate governance trends, provide technical and programming expertise, as well as evaluation functions. Historically consultancies were introduced to public administrations to prevent market …
Diplomacy and Grand Strategy
Grand strategy can be said to reflect a certain agentic hubris, as if states operate in an environment that is known and controllable. Diplomacy, by contrast, is typically associated with a set of tasks—negotiation, communication, representation—that reflect agentic constraints. Building on the editors’ reflection on grand strategy as an unattainable yet regulative ideal for the conduct of foreign policy, I discuss how grand strategy is integral …
Global Governance in a World of Change
Global governance has come under increasing pressure since the end of the Cold War. In some issue areas, these pressures have led to significant changes in the architecture of governance institutions. In others, institutions have resisted pressures for change. This volume explores what accounts for this divergence in architecture by identifying three modes of governance: hierarchies, networks, and markets. The authors apply these ideal types to d…
The Nordic Balance Revisited: Differentiation and the Foreign Policy Repertoires of the Nordic States
Nordic governments frequently broadcast their ambition to do more together on the international stage. The five Nordic states (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Norway) also share many basic goals as foreign policy actors, including a steadfast and vocal commitment to safeguarding the ‘rules-based international order.’ Why then, do we not see more organized Nordic foreign policy collaboration, for example in the form of a joint ‘grand strateg…
Performing Statehood through Crises: Citizens, Strangers, Territory
This article applies the growing International Relations literature on state performance and performativity to the question of how practitioners categorize different kinds of crises. The aim is to add value to the crisis literature by paying more attention to how performances are staged for multiple audiences, how statehood is produced as a collective (as opposed to an individual) body, and how and why one and the same state actor performs stateh…
Contracting development: Managerialism and consultants in intergovernmental organizations
Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) are now managed with an eye to managerial trends associated with transnational professionals, a view that has ramifications for how IGOs govern their policies and processes. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with staff in IGOs, we trace how managerialism in IGOs is changing how staff perceive work practices. We find that IGOs increasingly rely on consultants to enact policy scripts and to evaluate progr…
Introduction: Making liberal internationalism great again
At a time when liberal internationalism and institutions of multilateral cooperation are being dealt almost daily blows, this special issue revisits the notion and practice of middle power liberal internationalism. The introduction suggests that while liberal internationalism is far from dead, the challenges are serious and multiple. Reflecting on the seven essays contained in the volume, it argues that the biggest challenge for a future liberal …
Norske svar på internasjonale utfordringer: Retorisk endring, stabilitet i tiltak
Norsk utenrikspolitikk omtales ofte som preget av konsensus og stabilitet, hvor kobling til NATO og USA, støtte til FN, og en aktiv europapolitikk er hovedelementer. Inspirert av innsikter fra institusjonell teori om «organisert hykleri» – altså hvordan organisasjoner ofte må frikoble tale og handling – analyserer vi norsk utenrikspolitikk. Vi finner at det er tendenser til slikt integrert flertydighet, som ikke er overraskende gitt de motstriden…
Introduksjon: Nordiske svar på geopolitiske utfordringer
I denne fokusspalten studerer vi hvordan de fem nordiske landene – Danmark, Finland, Island, Norge og Sverige – fremstiller og responderer på endringer i sine internasjonale omgivelser
States before relations: On misrecognition and the bifurcated regime of sovereignty
The symbolic structure of the international system, organised around sovereignty, is sustained by an institutional infrastructure that shapes how states seek sovereign agency. We investigate how the modern legal category of the state is an institutional expression of the idea of the state as a liberal person, dependent on a one-off recognition in establishing the sovereign state. We then discuss how this institutional rule coexists with the ongoi…
Frustrated sovereigns: The agency that makes the world go around
In this article, the introduction to this Special Issue, we underline the importance of the dynamics of misrecognition for the study of world politics. We make the case for shifting the focus from ‘recognition’, where it has long been cast in social, political and, more recently, International Relations theory, to mis recognition. We do so by returning to the original theorisation of misrecognition, Hegel’s dialectic of the master and servant. Ou…
Recognition and liquid authority
To analyze how authority emerges, become institutionalized, and may be transformed, we are best served with a concept of authority that highlights its dynamic features, and that captures the multiplicity of actors involved in producing and sustaining it. Extant accounts tend to operate with a view of ‘solid’ authority, but such a concept of authority is mainly descriptive, not explanatory. A turn to the liquid features of authority is not only be…
The Politics of Expertise: Competing for Authority in Global Governance
Experts dominate all facets of global governance, from accounting practices and antitrust regulations to human rights law and environmental conservation. In this study, Ole Jacob Sending encourages a critical interrogation of the role and power of experts by unveiling the politics of the ongoing competition for authority in global governance. Drawing on insights from sociology, political science, and institutional theory, Sending challenges theor…
Diplomacy and the Making of World Politics
This book examines world politics through the lens of diplomatic practice. It argues that many global phenomena of our time, from the making of international law to the constitution of international public power, through humanitarianism and the maintenance of global hierarchies, are made possible and shaped by evolving forms of diplomacy. The study of diplomacy is largely dominated by firsthand accounts and historical treaties, with little effort…
Diplomacy and the making of world politics
This book examines world politics through the lens of diplomatic practice. We argue that many global phenomena of our time, from international law to world order, through humanitarianism, global hierarchies, and public power, are made possible by evolving forms of diplomacy. In that sense, this book is not about diplomacy per se, but rather about the constitution of world politics in and through diplomatic practice. In order to shed new light on …
The limits of global authority: World Bank benchmarks in Ethiopia and Malawi
Global benchmarks (re)shape political conversations and institutionalise authoritative languages. It does not necessarily follow, however, that benchmarks can exert a lasting or significant influence over policies and behaviour of benchmarked actors. We analyse how the World Bank uses benchmarks to manage its relations with both donors and recipient governments. We analyse the role of the World Bank's Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (…
The “humanitarianization” of urban violence
This paper describes how international humanitarian organizations (IHOs) are adapting their operations to working in the urban environment. When levels of armed violence in urban areas are sufficient to trigger international humanitarian law, organizations such as the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) may argue that they have an important contribution to make by offering a set of skills and experience gleaned in conflict and non-go…
The International Civil Servant
A key feature of transnationally organized governance elites is that their claim to authority is based on an already presumed universal validity. This is so, at least for those with a claim to authority that is epistemic in character, because there is a general belief that the institution of science produces findings that transcend national borders. Thus, for example, medical doctors from different countries can agree to engage in governance acti…
There is no global public: The idea of the public and the legitimation of governance
Scholars of global governance have made much use of the public–private distinction in their exploration of the power of non-state actors and the constitution of authority beyond the state. But is this distinction analytically adequate? We subject the public–private distinction to analytical scrutiny and argue that it does not hold when analysing phenomena beyond the domestic setting. State actors are universal at the domestic level, but they are …
Governance to Governmentality: Analyzing NGOs, States, and Power
Studies of global governance typically claim that the state has lost power to nonstate actors and that political authority is increasingly institutionalized in spheres not controlled by states. In this article, we challenge the core claims in the literature on global governance. Rather than focusing on the relative power of states and nonstate actors, we focus on the sociopolitical functions and processes of governance in their own right and seek…
The International' as Governmentality
In traditional power analysis, `the international' is a characteristic of the states system — an anarchic realm, qualitatively different from the domestic. To traditional norms analysis, the international is increasingly a realm of shared value allocation, akin to other political realms. Given this bifurcation in the literature, privileging power incurs the cost of not being able to study systemic change of the international, whereas privileging …
Constitution, Choice and Change: Problems with the `Logic of Appropriateness' and its Use in Constructivist Theory
The debate between a moderate version of constructivist theory and rationalist theory centres primarily on the rationality of individual action. The article consists of an in-depth analysis of the `logic of appropriateness' (LoA) invoked in constructivist theory. The analysis reveals that the LoA is a structural explanation and understanding of individual action. As such, it is untenable as a theory of individual action. The implications of this …
Contracting development: Managerialism and consultants in intergovernmental organizations
Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) are now managed with an eye to managerial trends associated with transnational professionals, a view that has ramifications for how IGOs govern their policies and processes. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with staff in IGOs, we trace how managerialism in IGOs is changing how staff perceive work practices. We find that IGOs increasingly rely on consultants to enact policy scripts and to evaluate progr…
The Future of Diplomacy: Changing Practices, Evolving Relationships
As we enter the 21st century, everybody seems to agree that is changing and yet few people can specify exactly how or where it is heading. Since its very inception, International Journal has been a key forum for such discussions. A 1998 exchange between Paul Sharp and Andrew Cooper, for example, gave new scholarly prominence to the ways in which, and degrees to which, state-to-state was being challenged by new actors.1 This has remained a core qu…
The limits of global authority: World Bank benchmarks in Ethiopia and Malawi
Global benchmarks (re)shape political conversations and institutionalise authoritative languages. It does not necessarily follow, however, that benchmarks can exert a lasting or significant influence over policies and behaviour of benchmarked actors. We analyse how the World Bank uses benchmarks to manage its relations with both donors and recipient governments. We analyse the role of the World Bank's Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (…
Frustrated sovereigns: The agency that makes the world go around
In this article, the introduction to this Special Issue, we underline the importance of the dynamics of misrecognition for the study of world politics. We make the case for shifting the focus from ‘recognition’, where it has long been cast in social, political and, more recently, International Relations theory, to mis recognition. We do so by returning to the original theorisation of misrecognition, Hegel’s dialectic of the master and servant. Ou…
There is no global public: The idea of the public and the legitimation of governance
Scholars of global governance have made much use of the public–private distinction in their exploration of the power of non-state actors and the constitution of authority beyond the state. But is this distinction analytically adequate? We subject the public–private distinction to analytical scrutiny and argue that it does not hold when analysing phenomena beyond the domestic setting. State actors are universal at the domestic level, but they are …
The “humanitarianization” of urban violence
This paper describes how international humanitarian organizations (IHOs) are adapting their operations to working in the urban environment. When levels of armed violence in urban areas are sufficient to trigger international humanitarian law, organizations such as the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) may argue that they have an important contribution to make by offering a set of skills and experience gleaned in conflict and non-go…
Consultancies in public administration
Public administrations increasingly rely on consultancies to acquire policy knowledge, assess stakeholder dynamics, and evaluate governance systems. In this symposium, we explore the drivers and effects of this trend. Consultants offer advisory services, articulate governance trends, provide technical and programming expertise, as well as evaluation functions. Historically consultancies were introduced to public administrations to prevent market …
Performing Statehood through Crises: Citizens, Strangers, Territory
This article applies the growing International Relations literature on state performance and performativity to the question of how practitioners categorize different kinds of crises. The aim is to add value to the crisis literature by paying more attention to how performances are staged for multiple audiences, how statehood is produced as a collective (as opposed to an individual) body, and how and why one and the same state actor performs stateh…
Recognition and liquid authority
To analyze how authority emerges, become institutionalized, and may be transformed, we are best served with a concept of authority that highlights its dynamic features, and that captures the multiplicity of actors involved in producing and sustaining it. Extant accounts tend to operate with a view of ‘solid’ authority, but such a concept of authority is mainly descriptive, not explanatory. A turn to the liquid features of authority is not only be…
Introduction: Making liberal internationalism great again
At a time when liberal internationalism and institutions of multilateral cooperation are being dealt almost daily blows, this special issue revisits the notion and practice of middle power liberal internationalism. The introduction suggests that while liberal internationalism is far from dead, the challenges are serious and multiple. Reflecting on the seven essays contained in the volume, it argues that the biggest challenge for a future liberal …
States before relations: On misrecognition and the bifurcated regime of sovereignty
The symbolic structure of the international system, organised around sovereignty, is sustained by an institutional infrastructure that shapes how states seek sovereign agency. We investigate how the modern legal category of the state is an institutional expression of the idea of the state as a liberal person, dependent on a one-off recognition in establishing the sovereign state. We then discuss how this institutional rule coexists with the ongoi…
United by Difference: Diplomacy as a Thin Culture
The last two decades of research on globalization is replete with claims about the power of nonstate actors and the implied demise or transformation of diplomacy.1 Posing the question in these terms, however, begets a more fundamental question: what characterizes diplomacy as a social practice? Answering this question is important if we want to know how diplomacy may be changing as other actors become more active in representing and governing bet…
Global Health Expertise in the Shadow of Hegemony
What enables actors to shape norms in global health governance? Scholarship on global health has highlighted the role of experts and expertise in operationalizing norms across a variety of issues. The degree of expert consensus or dissensus and the negotiation processes between expert communities—for example, in international organizations, NGOs or academia—are commonly identified as centrally important for explaining these processes. In this art…
The Nordic Balance Revisited: Differentiation and the Foreign Policy Repertoires of the Nordic States
Nordic governments frequently broadcast their ambition to do more together on the international stage. The five Nordic states (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Norway) also share many basic goals as foreign policy actors, including a steadfast and vocal commitment to safeguarding the ‘rules-based international order.’ Why then, do we not see more organized Nordic foreign policy collaboration, for example in the form of a joint ‘grand strateg…
Wager upon wager: Assessing Iver B. Neumann’s contribution to International Relations
A key player in the Scandinavian rise in the International Relations discipline, Iver B. Neumann has made significant contributions to several research programs, from Russian and European identity politics to practice theory and discourse analysis, through longue durée analyses of governmentality and diplomacy. At the theoretical level, Neumann has borrowed multiple social-theoretical resources that have allowed him to make a variety of epistemol…
Global helse
Liberia og fredsbygging: En institusjonell forskningsagenda
The New Agenda for International Relations
Bokspalte
Constitution, Choice and Change: Problems with the `Logic of Appropriateness' and its Use in Constructivist Theory
The debate between a moderate version of constructivist theory and rationalist theory centres primarily on the rationality of individual action. The article consists of an in-depth analysis of the `logic of appropriateness' (LoA) invoked in constructivist theory. The analysis reveals that the LoA is a structural explanation and understanding of individual action. As such, it is untenable as a theory of individual action. The implications of this …
Bokspalte
The New Agenda for International Relations
Bokspalte
Governance to Governmentality: Analyzing NGOs, States, and Power
Studies of global governance typically claim that the state has lost power to nonstate actors and that political authority is increasingly institutionalized in spheres not controlled by states. In this article, we challenge the core claims in the literature on global governance. Rather than focusing on the relative power of states and nonstate actors, we focus on the sociopolitical functions and processes of governance in their own right and seek…
The International' as Governmentality
In traditional power analysis, `the international' is a characteristic of the states system — an anarchic realm, qualitatively different from the domestic. To traditional norms analysis, the international is increasingly a realm of shared value allocation, akin to other political realms. Given this bifurcation in the literature, privileging power incurs the cost of not being able to study systemic change of the international, whereas privileging …
Security, Development and UN Coordination
Governing the Global Polity: Practice, Mentality, Rationality
Globalisering pulveriserer ansvar
Liberia og fredsbygging: En institusjonell forskningsagenda
United by Difference: Diplomacy as a Thin Culture
The last two decades of research on globalization is replete with claims about the power of nonstate actors and the implied demise or transformation of diplomacy.1 Posing the question in these terms, however, begets a more fundamental question: what characterizes diplomacy as a social practice? Answering this question is important if we want to know how diplomacy may be changing as other actors become more active in representing and governing bet…
The Future of Diplomacy: Changing Practices, Evolving Relationships
As we enter the 21st century, everybody seems to agree that is changing and yet few people can specify exactly how or where it is heading. Since its very inception, International Journal has been a key forum for such discussions. A 1998 exchange between Paul Sharp and Andrew Cooper, for example, gave new scholarly prominence to the ways in which, and degrees to which, state-to-state was being challenged by new actors.1 This has remained a core qu…
Global helse
There is no global public: The idea of the public and the legitimation of governance
Scholars of global governance have made much use of the public–private distinction in their exploration of the power of non-state actors and the constitution of authority beyond the state. But is this distinction analytically adequate? We subject the public–private distinction to analytical scrutiny and argue that it does not hold when analysing phenomena beyond the domestic setting. State actors are universal at the domestic level, but they are …
The “humanitarianization” of urban violence
This paper describes how international humanitarian organizations (IHOs) are adapting their operations to working in the urban environment. When levels of armed violence in urban areas are sufficient to trigger international humanitarian law, organizations such as the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) may argue that they have an important contribution to make by offering a set of skills and experience gleaned in conflict and non-go…
The International Civil Servant
A key feature of transnationally organized governance elites is that their claim to authority is based on an already presumed universal validity. This is so, at least for those with a claim to authority that is epistemic in character, because there is a general belief that the institution of science produces findings that transcend national borders. Thus, for example, medical doctors from different countries can agree to engage in governance acti…
The Politics of Expertise: Competing for Authority in Global Governance
Experts dominate all facets of global governance, from accounting practices and antitrust regulations to human rights law and environmental conservation. In this study, Ole Jacob Sending encourages a critical interrogation of the role and power of experts by unveiling the politics of the ongoing competition for authority in global governance. Drawing on insights from sociology, political science, and institutional theory, Sending challenges theor…
Diplomacy and the Making of World Politics
This book examines world politics through the lens of diplomatic practice. It argues that many global phenomena of our time, from the making of international law to the constitution of international public power, through humanitarianism and the maintenance of global hierarchies, are made possible and shaped by evolving forms of diplomacy. The study of diplomacy is largely dominated by firsthand accounts and historical treaties, with little effort…
Diplomacy and the making of world politics
This book examines world politics through the lens of diplomatic practice. We argue that many global phenomena of our time, from international law to world order, through humanitarianism, global hierarchies, and public power, are made possible by evolving forms of diplomacy. In that sense, this book is not about diplomacy per se, but rather about the constitution of world politics in and through diplomatic practice. In order to shed new light on …
The limits of global authority: World Bank benchmarks in Ethiopia and Malawi
Global benchmarks (re)shape political conversations and institutionalise authoritative languages. It does not necessarily follow, however, that benchmarks can exert a lasting or significant influence over policies and behaviour of benchmarked actors. We analyse how the World Bank uses benchmarks to manage its relations with both donors and recipient governments. We analyse the role of the World Bank's Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (…
Recognition and liquid authority
To analyze how authority emerges, become institutionalized, and may be transformed, we are best served with a concept of authority that highlights its dynamic features, and that captures the multiplicity of actors involved in producing and sustaining it. Extant accounts tend to operate with a view of ‘solid’ authority, but such a concept of authority is mainly descriptive, not explanatory. A turn to the liquid features of authority is not only be…
Norske svar på internasjonale utfordringer: Retorisk endring, stabilitet i tiltak
Norsk utenrikspolitikk omtales ofte som preget av konsensus og stabilitet, hvor kobling til NATO og USA, støtte til FN, og en aktiv europapolitikk er hovedelementer. Inspirert av innsikter fra institusjonell teori om «organisert hykleri» – altså hvordan organisasjoner ofte må frikoble tale og handling – analyserer vi norsk utenrikspolitikk. Vi finner at det er tendenser til slikt integrert flertydighet, som ikke er overraskende gitt de motstriden…
Introduksjon: Nordiske svar på geopolitiske utfordringer
I denne fokusspalten studerer vi hvordan de fem nordiske landene – Danmark, Finland, Island, Norge og Sverige – fremstiller og responderer på endringer i sine internasjonale omgivelser
States before relations: On misrecognition and the bifurcated regime of sovereignty
The symbolic structure of the international system, organised around sovereignty, is sustained by an institutional infrastructure that shapes how states seek sovereign agency. We investigate how the modern legal category of the state is an institutional expression of the idea of the state as a liberal person, dependent on a one-off recognition in establishing the sovereign state. We then discuss how this institutional rule coexists with the ongoi…
Political science (34 works) · Law (22 works) · Politics (21 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Law (15 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (12 works) · Political economy (10 works) · Law and economics (9 works) · Global Peace and Security Dynamics (8 works) · International Development and Aid (8 works)