Thomas G. Weiss

Rorden Wilkinson

Rethinking Global Governance casts fresh eyes upon a once poignant but now languishing concept. Its purpose is to disrupt the simple association between global governance and the actions and activities of international organizations in the post-Cold War era and to focus instead on a set of questions that probe the intricate and multifaceted manner in which the world is governed. The book moves beyond the ubiquity and imprecision that has plagued the term and offers an intellectual framework with the potential to improve both thinking and practice. Building on the analytical insights of two of the leading scholars in the field, Rethinking Global Governance provides an antidote to simplistic usage and an authoritative yet readable attempt to grasp the governance of our globe — past, present, and future.

Rethinking Global Governance

Seven decades after its establishment, the United Nations and its system of related organizations and programs are perpetually in crisis. While the twentieth-century’s world wars gave rise to ground-breaking efforts at international organization in 1919 and 1945, today’s UN is ill-equipped to deal with contemporary challenges to world order. Neither the end of the Cold War nor the aftermath of 9/11 has led to the “next generation” of multilateral institutions. But what exactly is wrong with the UN that makes it incapable of confronting contemporary global challenges and, more importantly, can we fix it? In this revised and updated third edition of his popular text, leading scholar of global governance Thomas G. Weiss takes a diagnose-and-cure approach to the world organization’s inherent difficulties. In the first half of the book, he considers: the problems of international leadership and decision making in a world of self-interested states; the diplomatic complications caused by the artificial divisions between the industrialized North and the global South; the structural problems of managing the UN’s many overlapping jurisdictions, agencies, and bodies; and the challenges of bureaucracy and leadership. The second half shows how to mitigate these maladies and points the way to a world in which the UN’s institutional ills might be “cured.” Weiss’s remedies are not based on pious hopes of a miracle cure for the UN, but rather on specific and encouraging examples that could be replicated. With considered optimism and in contrast to received wisdom, he contends that substantial change is both plausible and possible.

What's Wrong with the United Nations and How to Fix It

Friends and foes of international cooperation puzzle about how to explain order, stability, and predictability in a world without a central authority. How is the world governed in the absence of a world government? This probing yet accessible book examines "global governance" or the sum of the informal and formal values, norms, procedures, and institutions that help states, intergovernmental organizations, civil society, and transnational corporations identify, understand, and address trans-boundary problems. The chasm between the magnitude of a growing number of global threats - climate change, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, financial instabilities, pandemics, to name a few - and the feeble contemporary political structures for international problem-solving provide compelling reasons to read this book. Fitful, tactical, and short-term local responses exist for a growing number of threats and challenges that require sustained, strategic, and longer-run global perspectives and action. Can the framework of global governance help us to better understand the reasons behind this fundamental disconnect as well as possible ways to attenuate its worst aspects? Thomas G. Weiss replies with a guardedly sanguine "yes".

Why? What? Whither?

Global Governance

Ramesh Thakur

In the 21st century, the world is faced with threats of global scale that cannot be confronted without collective action. Although global government as such does not exist, formal and informal institutions, practices, and initiatives—together forming "global governance"—bring a greater measure of predictability, stability, and order to trans-border issues than might be expected. Yet, there are significant gaps between many current global problems and available solutions. Thomas G. Weiss and Ramesh Thakur analyze the UN's role in addressing such knowledge, normative, policy, institutional, and compliance lapses. The UN's relationship to these five global governance gaps is explored through case studies of some of the most burning problems of our age, including terrorism, nuclear proliferation, humanitarian crises, development aid, climate change, human rights, and HIV/AIDS.

An Unfinished Journey

Global Governance and the UN

Richard Jolly

Louis Emmerij

Ideas and concepts have been a driving force in human progress, and they may be the most important legacy of the United Nations. UN ideas have set past, present, and future international agendas in many global economic and social arenas and have also led to initiatives and actions that have improved the quality of human life. This capstone volume draws upon findings of the other 14 books in the acclaimed United Nations Intellectual History Project Series. The authors not only assess the development and implementation of UN ideas regarding sustainable economic development and human security, but also apply lessons learned to suggest ways in which the United Nations can play a fuller role in confronting the challenges of human survival with dignity in the 21st century.

UN Ideas That Changed the World

Tatiana Carayannis

The Third UN is the ecology of supportive non-state actors-intellectuals, scholars, consultants, think tanks, NGOs, the for-profit private sector, and the media-that interacts with the intergovernmental machinery of the First UN (member states) and the Second UN (staff members of international secretariats) to formulate and refine ideas and decision-making at key junctures in policy processes. Some advocate for particular ideas, others help analyze or operationalize their testing and implementation; many thus help the UN 'think'. While think tanks, knowledge brokers, and epistemic communities are phenomena that have entered both the academic and policy lexicons, their intellectual role remains marginal to analyses of such intergovernmental organizations as the United Nations.

How a Knowledge Ecology Helps the UN Think

The "Third" United Nations

A singular development in the post-Cold War era is the use of military force to protect human beings. From Rwanda to Kosovo, Sierra Leone to East Timor, and Libya to Côte d'Ivoire, soldiers have rescued civilians in some of the world's most notorious war zones. But what about Syria? Why have we observed the Syrian slaughter and done nothing? Is humanitarian intervention in crisis? Is the so-called responsibility to protect dead or alive? In this fully revised and expanded third edition of his highly accessible and popular text, Thomas Weiss explores these compelling questions. Drawing on a wide range of case studies and providing a persuasive overview of the theory and practice of humanitarian intervention in the modern world, he examines its political, ethical, legal, strategic, economic, and operational dimensions to highlight key debates and controversies. Neither celebratory nor complacent, his analysis is an engaging exploration of the current quandaries and future challenges for robust international humanitarian action in the twenty-first century.

Humanitarian Intervention

Peter J. Hoffman

In the first book to systematically explore the linkages between war and emergency response, Hoffman and Weiss focus on the profound impact of new wars with non-state actors. The authors trace the evolution of the international humanitarian system from its inception in the 1860s through the current challenges cast by recent U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. By bringing historical perspective to bear on the mechanics of war and humanitarian action, Sword & Salve provides an essential analytical framework for grasping the nature of crises and how aid agencies can respond strategically rather than reactively to change. Students will find it a powerful tool for understanding the roles of state and non-state actors in international relations, as well as the panopoly of means and ends encompassed by contemporary humanitarianisms.

Confronting New Wars and Humanitarian Crises

Sword & Salve

People often refer to the 'United Nations' but without specifying which specific parts are responsible for success or failure. This book explores supportive the non-state actors that are essential players in developing global policies and norms, alongside the traditional categories of member states (first UN) and staff (second UN).

How a Knowledge Ecology Helps the Un Think

The 'Third' United Nations

James Cuno

The fourth volume of the J. Paul Getty Trust Occasional Papers in Cultural Heritage Policy series is the result of a multi-day discussion on the issue of cultural heritage under siege. It features an edited collection of papers and discussions by nineteen scholars and practitioners of different specialties in the field of cultural heritage. This paper, along with the other Occasional Papers, is free and downloadable online.

Laying the Foundation for a Legal and Political Framework to Protect Cultural Heritage at Risk in Zones of Armed Conflict

Cultural Heritage Under Siege

Nina Connelly

Cultural Cleansing and Mass Atrocities: Protecting Cultural Heritage in Armed Conflict Zones addresses the connection between cultural heritage and cultural cleansing, mass atrocities, and the destruction of cultural heritage. Pulling together various threads of discourse and research, Cultural Cleansing and Mass Atrocities outlines the issues, challenges, and options effecting change.

Protecting Cultural Heritage in Armed Conflict Zones

Cultural Cleansing and Mass Atrocities

Michael Barnett

Years of tremendous growth in response to complex emergencies have left a mark on the humanitarian sector. Various matters that once seemed settled are now subjects of intense debate. What is humanitarianism? Is it limited to the provision of relief to victims of conflict, or does it include broader objectives such as human rights, democracy promotion, development, and peacebuilding? For much of the last century, the principles of humanitarianism were guided by neutrality, impartiality, and independence. More recently, some humanitarian organizations have begun to relax these tenets. The recognition that humanitarian action can lead to negative consequences has forced humanitarian organizations to measure their effectiveness, to reflect on their ethical positions, and to consider not only the values that motivate their actions but also the consequences of those actions. In the indispensable Humanitarianism in Question, Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines to address the humanitarian identity crisis, including humanitarianism's relationship to accountability, great powers, privatization and corporate philanthropy, warlords, and the ethical evaluations that inform life-and-death decision making during and after emergencies.

Politics, Power, Ethics

Humanitarianism in Question

Completely revised and updated for the second edition, this textbook continues to offer the most comprehensive resource available for all interested in international organization and global governance. The book offers: In-depth and accessible coverage of the history and theories of international organization and global governance. Discussions of the full range of state, intergovernmental, and non-state actors. Examinations of key issues in all aspects of contemporary world politics. New additions to this edition include: New and revised chapters on theories of international organization and global governance. New substantive chapters on global corporations, China, financial markets, terrorist organizations, governing global energy, and the Internet. Updated contributions to reflect the changing nature of world politics. The book comprises fifty-four chapters arranged in seven parts and woven together by a comprehensive introduction to the field, along with separate introductions to each part to guide students and faculty, and helpful pointers to further reading. International Organization and Global Governance is a self-contained resource enabling readers to comprehend more fully the role of myriad actors in the governance of global life as well as to assemble the many pieces of the contemporary global governance puzzle.

International Organization and Global Governance

A study commissioned by the World Peace Foundation and the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies, Brown University. Updates a similar work published in 1991, to account for the increased strength of the United Nations as apparent in the war against Iraq, and the official demise of the Soviet Union. Primarily recommends how the US government can work with other governments to keep restless natives in line. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Collective Security in a Changing World

Sam Daws

This major new handbook provides the definitive and comprehensive analysis of the UN and will be an essential point of reference for all those working on or in the organization.

The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations

"Featuring a strikingly diverse and impressive team of authors, this is the most comprehensive textbook available for courses on international organizations and global governance. This book covers the history, theories, structure, activities and policies of both state-centred institutions, and non-state actors in global politics"--

Do we need the United Nations? Where would the contemporary world be without its largest intergovernmental organization? And where could it be had the UN’s member states and staff performed better? These fundamental questions are explored by the leading analyst of UN history and politics, Thomas G. Weiss, in this hard-hitting, authoritative book. While counterfactuals are often dismissed as academic contrivances, they can serve to focus the mind; and here, Weiss uses them to ably demonstrate the pluses and minuses of multilateral cooperation. He is not shy about UN achievements and failures drawn from its ideas and operations in its three substantive pillars of activities: international peace and security; human rights and humanitarian action; and sustainable development. But, he argues, the inward-looking and populist movements in electoral politics worldwide make robust multilateralism more not less compelling. The selection of António Guterres as the ninth UN secretary-general should rekindle critical thinking about the potential for international cooperation. There is a desperate need to reinvigorate and update rather than jettison the United Nations in responding to threats from climate change to pandemics, from proliferation to terrorism. Weiss tells you why and how.

Would the World Be Better Without the UN?

Professor of Political Science Michael Barnett

Presidential Professor and Director Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies Thomas G Weiss

This book provides a succinct but sophisticated understanding of humanitarianism and insight into the on-going dilemmas and tensions that have accompanied it since its origins in the early nineteenth century. Combining theoretical and historical exposition with a broad range of contemporary case studies, the book: provides a brief survey of the history of humanitarianism, beginning with the anti-slavery movement in the early nineteenth century and continuing to today’s challenge of post-conflict reconstruction and saving failed states explains the evolution of humanitarianism. Not only has it evolved over the decades, but since the end of the Cold War, humanitarianism has exploded in scope, scale, and significance presents an overview of the contemporary humanitarian sector, including briefly who the key actors are, how they are funded and what they do with their money analyses the ethical dilemmas confronted by humanitarian organization, not only in the abstract but also, and most importantly, in real situations and when lives are at stake examines how humanitarianism poses fundamental ethical questions regarding the kind of world we want to live in, what kind of world is possible, and how we might get there. An accessible and engaging work by two of the leading scholars in the field, Humanitarianism Contested is essential reading for all those concerned with the future of human rights and international relations.

Where Angels Fear to Tread

Humanitarianism Contested

This Handbook provides in one volume an authoritative and independent treatment of the UN's seventy-year history, written by an international cast of more than 50 distinguished scholars, analysts, and practitioners. It provides a clear and penetrating examination of the UN's development since 1945 and the challenges and opportunities now facing the organization. It assesses the implications for the UN of rapid changes in the world - from technological innovation to shifting foreign policy priorities - and the UN's future place in a changing multilateral landscape. Citations and additional readings contain a wealth of primary and secondary references to the history, politics, and law of the world organization. This key reference also contains appendices of the UN Charter, the Statute of the International Court of Justice, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Thomas G. Weiss

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