As indicated in the overview (Section 2.3), Norwegian development research is quite widely distributed across themes. Although the scope is wide-ranging, some research areas receive more emphasis than others, notably governance, natural resource management, the marginalisation of people, and gender issues. More specifically, Norwegian development researchers excel in research on human rights, armed conflict, the displacement of people and natural resource issues. Areas that may be regarded as overlooked, given their
prominence as policy problems, include the informalisation of the urban economies in Africa and Latin America, the full and varied effects of globalisation, as well as an independent research on critical aid issues. The Committee also notes that several individual researchers in anthropology, economics and political science have brought international recognition and visibility to their respective disciplines..
Moreover, the Evaluation Committee formed the impression that Norwegian development researchers have built up particular expertise in research on certain regions of the world, such as the African region and countries as well as other countries that have been
traditional aid recipients. Domains of less extensive focus have been Latin America and Central Asia (cf. Table 6.5.). This scope is not considered a matter of concern but rather a reflection of research strengths and concentrations developed over time within the research community. However, the pressures of globalisation entail a problematisation of the
‘space’ or ‘location’ of development and bring the challenges of development to the doorstep of the OECD countries. In tandem, this complicates the conceptual scope of development research beyond an area or country focus (see Section 6.3 and Box 6.2).
5.4
Summary of main observations
Summarised by thematic areas, there are only small differences in average scores for the publications reviewed in this evaluation. The comments from reviewers can be used to point out some different concerns:
- Resource Management: The general impression is that the strength of this thematic area is that it offers some very good examples of research efforts which combine themes within the broader spectrum of development research in an interdisciplinary effort. However, it also presents research which emerges from relatively small research groups hosted by institutions where development-related research is a minor part of the overall activities.
- Rights, Security and Democracy: The more specialised research institutions tended to score best within this thematic area. Units with a broader research profile outside development research tended to fare less well in the evaluations, albeit all units were seen as meeting acceptable international standards.
- Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction: The top quality work within
development economics in Norway is concentrated in a few places, all of which are academic departments. Norwegian development economists are also well
connected with the rest of the discipline of economics, which is important for the scientific quality of the work.
- Culture, Education and Gender: The strength of the research reviewed within this thematic group is the solid anchoring in fieldwork and the use of anthropological methods. One weakness may be identified as not sufficiently being able to go beyond the localised, and addressing or scaling up research results in a wider perspective.
- Research in multiple areas:29 The reviewed development research that spans more than one category fared quite well in comparison with those that tend to be more focused on a single category – and especially the larger units within this group score well. This indicates some merit of the larger units in trying to have a broad perspective on development, a larger group of senior-level staff in the field and possible cross-fertilisation of studies in different areas of development research. - In conclusion, the basis for good research varies somewhat among the thematic
areas. Whereas research in development economics is best conducted in university economics departments, much of the other research seems to profit from being conducted in larger, more broad-based groups/units devoted to development research.
There is merit in trying to conduct inter-disciplinary research, especially in fields such as resource management, because it often broadens the perspective on a given issue, it allows for an examination of underlying factors in development, and it hones
conceptual, theoretical, and methodological skills.
29
The research units above a certain minimum size – in terms of the number of senior- level staff members who devote more than half of their time to development research – on average obtained better scores than the smaller units.
The general impression is that Norwegian development research provides high quality, although with significant variations among the research units as well as individual
researchers. The publications reviewed in this evaluation scored quite high on originality, solidity and scholarly relevance. From a comparative international perspective, however, there is still room for improvement, including a larger number of publications in peer- reviewed international journals.
6
Relevance and use
This chapter first describes the relevance and use of Norwegian development research as reported in the self-assessment reports and by the informants (Sections 6.1-6.2.4). Section 6.2.5 reports the results of the citation analysis, and Section 6.3 offers some more overall reflections on the conditions for the relevance and use of development research.