This was awarded by NorFA in connection with PRIO's successful application for a 3-year Nordic Network on the Political Economy of Governance and Conflict (PEGC), based at CSCW. We will coordinate the PEGC network and doctoral course together with 8 leading Nordic university departments.
This course is the first step in an effort to integrate contributions from political science, economics, and peace and conflict research, and to improve graduate training for students in the field. It aims at providing an overview of the studies on political institutions from the conflict prevention point of view. The theoretical background is provided by the social choice and mechanism design theory. These theories open a perspective to problems of representation, referenda and parliamentary forms of government. The course assembles lecturers of high international standard.
The topic of the course, to be held in Oslo in June 2004, is 'Responsive Institutions and Conflict Prevention'. It will be directed by Hannu Nurmi and Kaare Strøm and we aim to attract representation from all the participating institutions. As far as the teaching format is concerned, this course will be run along the same lines as our successful methodology course in June 2002.
For 2005 we plan a course on 'The Political Economy of the Resource Curse', directed by Karl Ove Moene at the University of Oslo and Ragnar Torvik at NTNU. The theme for the 2006 course will be determined in 2004 based on our experience with the 2004 course. Applications to NorFA for 2005-2006 will be filed in 2004.
In addition to our own courses, we will advertise on our webpage courses offered by the participating departments. Students who receive our mobility stipends will be encouraged to use them in a way that makes it feasible to participate in these courses. We will also facilitate applications to our funding sources for students who wish to spend a semester at a participating institution in order to enroll in a semester-long course.
Stipends are calculated at the NorFA rate of NOK 9,500 per month + NOK 3,500 for travel, totaling NOK 13,000/month for one-month stipends. For multi-month stipends the rate will be somewhat lower. We have calculated with 8 stipend-months in 2004.
