Academic interests
- Judicial Politics
- Appointment of Judges
- Judicial Impact and Compliance with Judicial Decisions
- The European Court of Human Rights
- International Courts and Tribunals
- The Rule of Law
- Applied quantitative methods
Teaching
Background
Education
- PhD in Political Science, University of Oslo (2019)
- MPhil in Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Oslo(2013)
- BA in International Studies, University of Oslo (2011)
Employment History
- Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, 2022 - current.
- Senior Researcher, Peace Research Institute Oslo, 2022 - 2025
- Postdoctoral Fellow, PluriCourts, University of Oslo, 2019-2022
- Researcher, PluriCourts, University of Oslo, 2019.
- Visiting Researcher, Department of Government, Georgetown University, Spring 2017.
- PhD Candididate/Research Fellow, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, 2015-2019
Publications
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Stiansen, Øyvind
(2025).
The Courts.
In Kolltveit, Kristoffer; Allern, Elin Haugsgjerd; Braut-Hegghammer, Målfrid & Rasch, Bjørn Erik (Ed.),
Oxford Handbook of Norwegian Politics.
Oxford University Press.
ISSN 9780198888581.
p. 137–152.
doi:
10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198888581.013.0008.
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Abstract Courts frequently decide politically important cases in Norway. Yet, despite voicing concerns about the consequences of judicialization for representative democracy, scholars of Norwegian politics have, until recently, neglected judicial politics. In the past decade, this situation has changed: we now know much about how institutional changes have contributed to the Supreme Court’s increased policymaking role, how judicial decision-making is influenced by judges’ attitudes and backgrounds, and the (limited) degree to which Supreme Court appointments have been politicized. The view that judges merely apply law and should be considered outside politics has been replaced by an understanding that judges also make law and that their attitudes matter. However, even as scholars of Norwegian politics have discovered the judiciary’s political importance, they continue to pay little attention to questions concerning judicial power that animate much comparative scholarship. Future research should scrutinize the judiciary’s ability to shape policy when faced with political resistance.
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Stiansen, Øyvind; Gjerløw, Haakon & Rakner, Lise
(2025).
The politics of litigating and adjudicating electoral disputes: Evidence from Zambia.
Electoral Studies: an international journal on voting and electoral systems and strategy.
ISSN 0261-3794.
96.
doi:
10.1016/j.electstud.2025.102955.
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Elections are increasingly judicialized in many multiparty regimes. The ability to challenge flawed elections in independent courts can be crucial for democratization, may deter irregularities, and may prevent post-election violence. However, litigating against the elections of opposition candidates can also enable ruling parties to consolidate control following narrow electoral victories. In executive-dominated systems, such a strategy may be facilitated by how uneven access to resources may make litigation particularly attractive for ruling-party candidates and by how judges may feel pressured to nullify opposition victories, triggering by-elections that ruling parties are likely to win. We investigate these expectations using a novel dataset of electoral petitions from the 2011, 2016, and 2021 Zambian elections. We show that losing candidates from the party gaining or retaining control over the executive were more likely to litigate against their losses. However, we find no evidence that judges tended to favor these candidates relative to other petitioners.
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Stiansen, Øyvind; Naurin, Daniel; Michailidou, Asimina & Purzycka, Adriana
(2024).
Enforcing the rule of law in the EU: effects on public opinion.
Journal of European Public Policy.
ISSN 1350-1763.
32(2),
p. 522–549.
doi:
10.1080/13501763.2024.2351989.
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How does the European Union's enforcement of democracy and rule-of-law standards influence the domestic public's attitudes toward backsliding governments? On the one hand, enforcement actions by international organisations may increase the costs of supporting backsliding governments and provide informational cues about non-compliance with international norms. On the other hand, scholars and practitioners worry that enforcement actions create ‘rally-around-the-flag’ effects that inadvertently increase support for backsliding regimes. We report descriptive, experimental, and quasi-experimental results from a survey designed to assess the public-opinion effects of EU action in response to rule-of-law backsliding in Poland. The survey results suggest both that Polish citizens perceive the EU as a main critic of measures undermining judicial independence and that these perceptions are correlated with opposing the targeted measures. We find no evidence that additional information about EU actions turns public opinion against the targeted measures but there is also no evidence of any rally-around-the-flag effect. In diagnosing the null findings from our experimental and quasi-experimental designs, we also highlight important challenges associated with using survey-experimental methods to assess the effectiveness of EU interventions in ongoing and salient public debates.
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Strain, Nicola Claire; Lie, Runar Hilleren; Chernykh, Yuliya; Espelid, Even; John, Taylor St & Langford, Malcolm
[Show all 20 contributors for this article]
(2024).
Compliance politics and international investment disputes: a new dataset.
Journal of international economic law.
ISSN 1369-3034.
27(1),
p. 70–92.
doi:
10.1093/jiel/jgae004.
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The ability to ensure compliance with investor-state arbitral awards is often regarded as one of the
strengths of the international investment regime. Yet, there have been few systematic studies of compli-
ance to assess the extent to which states have actually complied with adverse investor-state compensa-
tion awards. This paper presents a new dataset that enables empirical research on compliance with these
decisions; it is the first publicly available dataset to focus on what happens after awards are handed down,
and in this way complements other databases on international investment law. This paper explains the
data collection process (and its associated challenges), discusses the design choices made in selecting
inputs and variables, presents a descriptive overview of the data, and examines how variables can be
used in future research. Moreover, various cases are used as illustrations of the challenges of collecting
and coding data on post-award processes and we explore what missing data can tell us abou
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Stiansen, Øyvind & Tveit, Andreas Kokkvoll
(2024).
Hva kan vi vite om effekten av etablering av ungdomsklubb på Furuset?
Nordic Journal of Urban Studies.
4(2),
p. 1–18.
doi:
10.18261/njus.4.2.6.
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I en fersk NJUS-artikkel finner forfatterne ingen effekt av tilgang på fritidsklubb på ungdoms fornøydhet med eget lokalmiljø. Vi applauderer forsøket på å bruke moderne empiriske metoder til å besvare spørsmål av høy politisk og akademisk interesse, men påpeker i denne kommentarartikkelen vesentlige mangler i Tøge et al. (2024) sin anvendelse av forskjell-i-forskjeller-designet. Hovedårsaken til svakhetene er at deres datasett mangler presis informasjon om bosted. Resultatet er at forfatterne antar at en ungdomsklubbs eventuelle effekter vil ha påvirket ungdom i hele bydelen (Alna i Oslo), det vil si langt utenfor det lokalmiljøet hvor klubben ligger. Videre hadde mange av ungdommene i Alna bydel tilgang på ungdomsklubb før den aktuelle klubben ble åpnet. Vi bruker Monte Carlo-simuleringer til å diagnostisere Tøge et al. (2024) sitt design. Simuleringene illustrerer hvordan studien underestimerer årsakseffekten av den aktuelle ungdomsklubben, og at designet deres ofte med høy sannsynlighet vil resultere i nullfunn også i tilfeller der den reelle årsakssammenhengen er sterk. Dette understreker at holdbare undersøkelser av ungdomsklubber og andre nærmiljøtiltaks effekter krever presis geografisk informasjon.
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John, Taylor St; Langford, Malcolm; Chernykh, Yuliya; Stiansen, Øyvind; Berge, Tarald Gulseth & Puig, Sergio
(2024).
Bargaining in the Shadow of Awards.
European journal of international law.
ISSN 0938-5428.
35(3),
p. 603–622.
doi:
10.1093/ejil/chae053.
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International investment disputes occupy a curious place in the research programme on compliance. On the one hand, there is a widespread presumption that respondent states generally pay the compensation that they are ordered to pay because not doing so risks more litigation or less investment. On the other hand, these disputes frequently continue long after awards are handed down, there are visible instances of non-payment and there is little evidence about if or how most disputes are actually resolved. Compliance with investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) awards has also been difficult to study because much of what occurs after an arbitral decision falls outside traditional understandings of compliance processes. Therefore, in this article, we introduce a broader term – resolution – and look beyond payment at a wider landscape of post-award dynamics. We also introduce a framework to bring these dynamics into view. This framework places awards in the context of longer-term bargaining and articulates how bargaining is different when it occurs in the shadow of an award. We present three mechanisms through which awards can shape outcomes – as a legitimate outcome, as a coordinating focal point, or as a bargaining endowment – before arguing that the third mechanism is the most common in the context of ISDS.
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Tveit, Andreas Kokkvoll; Hovi, Jon & Stiansen, Øyvind
(2023).
Screening or constraining? The relationship between participation and target achievement in transboundary air pollution treaties.
Earth System Governance.
17(August 2023),
p. 1–9.
doi:
10.1016/j.esg.2023.100185.
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Enforcement and management scholars alike expect that countries participating in an international agreement will more likely achieve predetermined targets than nonparticipating countries will. The management school ascribes this expected association to a constraining effect of the treaty; the enforcement school ascribes it to a screening effect. If the latter conjecture is correct, the association between participation and target achievement should significantly weaken (or even vanish) when controlling for targets' ambition level and other confounding factors. We test this hypothesis on a new dataset comprising three protocols under the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP). Our results suggest that the positive association between participation and target achievement is robust to controlling for confounding factors; hence, our data suggests that these CLRTAP protocols have indeed constrained participating states.
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Stiansen, Øyvind
(2022).
(Non)renewable Terms and Judicial Independence in the European Court of Human Rights.
Journal of Politics.
ISSN 0022-3816.
doi:
10.1086/715253.
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Do renewable terms compromise judicial independence? Scholars of various courts have demonstrated relationships between judges' voting patterns and the interests of actors responsible for their (re)appointment. However, it is typically unclear if such relationships are (at least partially) explained by judges acting strategically to achieve reappointment or if they are (fully) attributable to selection effects. I exploit a 2010 reform of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to estimate the casual effect of removing reappointment opportunities on judges' independence. The ECtHR bench consists of one judge from each member state and judges sit ex officio on cases involving their nominating state. Prior to 2010, terms were renewable. Judges seeking reappointment were therefore incentivized to favor their nominating states. In 2010, the terms were made nonrenewable with immediate effect for judges on the Court. I show that removing reappointment opportunities signifficantly reduced judges' tendency to favor their nominating states.
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Berge, Tarald Gulseth & Stiansen, Øyvind
(2022).
Bureaucratic capacity and preference attainment in international economic negotiations.
The Review of International Organizations.
ISSN 1559-7431.
doi:
10.1007/s11558-022-09475-z.
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What determines states’ ability to influence the contents of international institutions? Extant scholarship on international economic negotiations highlights the importance of political and economic capacity in negotiations. In this article, we argue that another structural source of negotiating power has been overlooked: bureaucratic capacity. Building on in-depth interviews with a large sample of international economic negotiators, we develop a theory of how differences in bureaucratic capacity can give states advantages in bilateral negotiations. We test our theory on a dataset of bilateral investment treaties. To measure preference attainment, we combine a unique repository of states’ public negotiating mandates called model treaties and the texts of finalized investment treaties to compute the verbatim distances between states’ stated preferences and the treaties they negotiate. We then show that states with greater bureaucratic capacity than their counterparts tend to achieve higher preference attainment in investment treaty negotiations. Our results have important implications for scholarship on international negotiations and for policy-makers engaged in investment policy reform.
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Larsson, Olof; Squatrito, Theresa; Stiansen, Øyvind & John, Taylor St
(2022).
Selection and Appointment in International Adjudication: Insights from Political Science.
Journal of International Dispute Settlement.
ISSN 2040-3585.
14(2),
p. 134–148.
doi:
10.1093/jnlids/idac014.
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Abstract This article summarizes insights from political science and empirical legal scholarship concerning selection and appointment of adjudicators to permanent international courts (ICs). This scholarship suggests that designers of ICs face challenging trade-offs in balancing judicial independence and accountability, as well as in promoting descriptive representation and necessary qualifications on the bench. The article considers different institutional design features related to appointment procedures: representation, reappointment, screening procedures and procedures for removing judges. Representation is discussed in a series of sections considering full or selective representation, voting rules and geographic and gender quotas and aspirational targets. Throughout, we draw on data on 24 ICs to illustrate the different appointment procedures and institutional features.
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Pavone, Tommaso & Stiansen, Øyvind
(2021).
The Shadow Effect of Courts: Judicial Review and the Politics of Preemptive Reform.
American Political Science Review.
ISSN 0003-0554.
116(1),
p. 322–336.
doi:
10.1017/S0003055421000873.
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We challenge the prevalent claim that courts can only influence policy by adjudicating disputes. Instead, we theorize the shadow effect of courts : policy makers preemptively altering policies in anticipation of possible judicial review. While American studies imply that preemptive reforms hinge on litigious interest groups pressuring policy makers who support judicial review, we advance a comparative theory that flips these presumptions. In less litigious and more hostile political contexts, policy makers may instead weaponize preemptive reforms to preclude bureaucratic conflicts from triggering judicial oversight and starve courts of the cases they need to build their authority. By allowing some preemptive judicial influence to resist direct judicial interference, recalcitrant policy makers demonstrate that shadow effects are not an unqualified good for courts. We illustrate our theory by tracing how a major welfare reform in Norway was triggered by a conflict within its Ministry of Labor and a government resistance campaign targeting a little-known international court.
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Stiansen, Øyvind & Voeten, Erik
(2020).
Backlash and Judicial Restraint: Evidence from the European Court of Human Rights.
International Studies Quarterly.
ISSN 0020-8833.
64(4),
p. 770–784.
doi:
10.1093/isq/sqaa047.
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How does backlash from consolidated democracies affect the behavior of liberal international institutions? We argue that liberal international institutions have incentives to appease their democratic critics. Liberal institutions rely on democratic support for their continued effectiveness and can accommodate democratic critics at a lower legitimacy cost than non-democratic challengers. We examine this theory in the context of the European Court of Human Rights using a new dataset of rulings until 2019 and a coding of government positions during multiple reform conferences. Combining matching and a difference-in-differences design, we find strong evidence that the Court exercises restraint towards consolidated democracies that have criticized the Court in multilateral reform conferences by rendering fewer violation judgments against these states. We find some evidence that governments have also recently appointed more deferential judges. The findings suggest that backlash can affect liberal international institutions even without membership exit.
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Stiansen, Øyvind; Naurin, Nils Daniel & Bøyum, Live Standal
(2020).
Law and Politics in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. A New Database on Judicial Behavior and Compliance in the IACtHR.
Journal of Law and Courts.
ISSN 2164-6570.
8(2),
p. 359–379.
doi:
10.1086/709914.
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Naurin, Nils Daniel & Stiansen, Øyvind
(2019).
The Dilemma of Dissent: Split Judicial Decisions and Compliance With Judgments From the International Human Rights Judiciary.
Comparative Political Studies.
ISSN 0010-4140.
53(6),
p. 959–991.
doi:
10.1177/0010414019879944.
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The mutual dependence between courts and their compliance constituencies is a fundamental feature of judicial power. Actors whose rights and interests are reinforced by court decisions may use these as legal ammunitions while contributing to ensuring that court decisions are effectively implemented. We argue that judgments that contain dissenting opinions are less powerful in this regard, compared with unanimous decisions. The reason is that dissent reduces the perceived legal authority of the judgment. Using data from the international human rights judiciaries in Europe and the Americas, we provide evidence of a negative relationship between judicial dissent and compliance. Our findings have important implications for questions relating to the institutional design of courts, for courts’ ability to manage compliance problems, and for understanding the conditions for effective international judicial protection of human rights.
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Stiansen, Øyvind
(2019).
Delayed but not derailed: legislative compliance with European Court of Human Rights judgments.
International Journal of Human Rights.
ISSN 1364-2987.
doi:
10.1080/13642987.2019.1593153.
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Legislative changes can be crucial for implementing human rights. This article investigates how the need for legislative changes influences compliance with European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) judgments. I argue that the need for legislative changes might influence compliance politics in two ways. First, ECtHR interference with the will of elected parliaments is controversial in several European states. Such controversy might increase the risk of defiance of judgments requiring legislative changes. Second, the greater number of veto players needed to pass legislative is likely to delay compliance. Using original implementation data, I show that the need for legislative changes tends to delay compliance, but does not increase the risk of long-term defiance. The ECtHR's ability to eventually prompt legislative changes is not smaller than its ability to induce other reforms. I also find that delays associated with the need for legislative changes are greater in states with greater numbers of ideologically diverse veto players, in states with a proportional electoral system, and in states without domestic judicial review.
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Makszimov, Vlagyiszlav; Naurin, Daniel & Stiansen, Øyvind
(2025).
The Impact of EU Enforcement Actions on Domestic Media Debates on Judicial Independence in Hungary.
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John, Taylor St; Langford, Malcolm; Chernykh, Yuliya; Stiansen, Øyvind; Berge, Tarald Gulseth & Puig, Sergio
(2023).
Bargaining in the Shadow of Awards.
SSRN Electronic Journal.
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Stiansen, Øyvind
(2020).
Silje Synnøve Lyder Hermansen: Lær deg R. En innføring i statistikkprogrammets muligheter.
Tidsskrift for samfunnsforskning (TfS).
ISSN 0040-716X.
61(2),
p. 190–193.
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Naurin, Nils Daniel & Stiansen, Øyvind
(2017).
Judicial Dissent and Compliance with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
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Naurin, Nils Daniel & Stiansen, Øyvind
(2017).
Judicial Dissent and Compliance with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
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Naurin, Nils Daniel & Stiansen, Øyvind
(2017).
Judicial Dissent and Compliance with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
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Naurin, Daniel & Stiansen, Øyvind
(2016).
Judicial Dissent and Compliance with Inter-American Court of Human Rights Judgments.
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Published
May 4, 2022 8:52 PM
- Last modified
June 10, 2025 12:31 PM
