Joint school-boat. Banjarmasin

Recent teaching and related supervision

1. BA course on ‘Politics and Development’ with the Department of Political Science   

    and the Social Science Faculty’s unit for Development Studies.

 This popular basic course on Politics and Development for BA-students focused on (i) general theories of politics and development, (ii) state and society relations, (iii) weak and strong state in the Global South, (iv) cleavage and collective action, (v) problems and options of democratisation and equal citizenship, (vi) politics and development cooperation, (vii) empirical cases from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

 The course was terminated by the Department of Political Science in the mid-2010s in conjunction with my sabbatical leave. The structure, or individual lectures, may be reinvented in other frameworks.

2.  MA and PhD courses with the Department of Political Science.

The following well-attended courses were terminated in the mid-late-2010s by the Department of Political Science when losing interest in contextual studies of Global South politics, thus also concluding its international student and research exchange with Indonesia and India. The courses, or individual lectures, may be reinvented in other frameworks. For example, the first course on social democratic development was transformed into a two-day staff development course at the Olof Palme International Center in 2017.

'Democracy and Social Democratic Development in the Global South', http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/sv/statsvitenskap/STV4352B/

http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/sv/statsvitenskap/STV9352/

These courses engaged in three basic discussions in the study of politics and development. The first question is under what conditions democracy of various standards is possible in developing countries. The courses provided an historical review of theories and actual outcomes, with special emphasis on the character and problems of the third wave of democratisation. The second question is about the causes for current stagnation of democracy. Main attention was drawn to the roots of depoliticisation, poor governance and elitist representation. To overcome these challenges, the research behind the course suggests that more social democratic oriented development is needed. Hence, the third question is whether and how this would be possible. A number of historical and current experiences were interrogated in the largest democracies of India, Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa but also in Burma and Scandinavia. The results are fundamental for local priorities but also within international cooperation. The courses were based on the research carried out in a leading international network of scholars, co-directed from Oslo.

'Welfare Regimes in Asia and Scandinavia in Comparative Perspective: Changes and Challenges'

http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/sv/statsvitenskap/stv9363/

The global economy is undergoing rapid change; the centre of gravity is moving eastward; and increasing worries are expressed over the future of the established welfare state in Europe. In Asia, at the same time, new ambitions and new forms of welfare regimes are emerging. The reading of efforts at Social Democracy in quite different contexts against each other remains important, but this course broadens the geographical spectra and focus more specifically on citizen rights and welfare policies. Our research so far indicates that these issues are crucial in the development of more unified counter movements, especially in the Global South. The course followed up on the book ‘Reinventing Social Democratic Development – Insights from Indian and Scandinavian Comparisons’ (Lead Editors Olle Törnquist and John Harriss) and a doctoral students’ course and a scholarly workshop on the same theme organised jointly by the JNU and UiO, in Delhi in March 2015. This subsequent course was arranged in conjunction with an international scholarly workshop aimed at a comprehensive survey, based on comparative materials, of models of welfare from Scandinavia to South Africa, and India to South Korea. The focus was on four themes:

1. New welfare policy regimes: theoretical and comparative perspectives. How might we rethink extant classifications of the welfare state to better grasp both trends in the Global North and new efforts in the Global South?
2. Are European welfare regimes being undermined after the financial crisis, further complicated by migration and the refugee crisis?
3. Working life and welfare provisioning. It is often maintained that, in the Scandinavian model, generous welfare allowances generate economic growth. Investigating the mechanisms between these factors makes it possible to understand whether and how such a happy coincidence can be repeated in other parts of the world.
4. Transformative rights and welfare policies. Our results so far suggest that while the current conditions in the Global South differ from those that enabled social and political forces to fight for the combination of equity and growth during late industrialisation in the North. Counter movements might now converge behind citizen and labour rights and welfare agendas as well as improved governance to implement such reforms – but how?