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311. Overcoming the Security Council Reform Impasse: The Implausible versus the Plausible

Author:
Thomas G. Weiss
Publication Date:
01-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, City University of New York
Abstract:
Anniversaries are a typical time to take stock and think about change. The United Nations (UN) roller coaster ride has been severe in the post-Cold War era – from the euphoria surrounding Security Council decision-making to use military force against Iraq in 1990-1991 when "renaissance" was the common multilateral refrain, to the current morass after severe divisions over the decision by the United States (U.S.) and United Kingdom (UK) to go to war in Iraq in 2003 with a return to the "dark ages" of unilateralism.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Development, and International Organization
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and United Kingdom

312. Institutions, Restoration, and Revolution

Author:
Leon Aron
Publication Date:
03-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
In its pursuit of an authoritarian recentralization of Russian politics and a greater state presence in the economy, the Putin government is increasingly steering Russia away from the liberalizing course that has characterized the previous decade and a half.
Topic:
Economics, International Organization, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Asia

313. Putin's Risks

Author:
Leon Aron
Publication Date:
01-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
Western and Russian observers alike have watched with mounting concern for slightly more than a year as President Vladimir Putin has tried to consolidate the Kremlin's control over Russia's politics and economy. From the campaign against the YUKOS oil company to the elimination of regional elections, Putin—a growing chorus of critics argues—is leading the country toward authoritarianism.
Topic:
Economics, International Organization, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Asia

314. The Powers and Pathologies of Military Networks: Insights from the Political Cybernetics of Karl W. Deutsch and Norbert Wiener

Author:
Hayward R. Alker
Publication Date:
04-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
Probably best known nowadays as a distinguished political scientist, a scholar of nations, nationalism and the formation of international security communities, Karl W. Deutsch also wrote a lot about networks before they were popular subjects for strategic analysis Indeed, Deutsch's title for The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control explicitly parallels Norbert Wiener's specificational subtitle of his subject-defining book on cybernetics: Cybernetics: or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. One of Deutsch's greatest passions was the development and application of cybernetic theories to the “nerves” or “neural networks” of social, including governmental and inter-governmental, entities and processes, including the development and disintegration of nations and international communities. So conceived, they can have important human-like capacities. For example, “will may be defined in any sufficiently complex net, nervous system or social group [e.g. a nation] as the set of … internally labeled decisions and anticipated results, proposed by the application of results from the system's past and by the blocking of incompatible impulses or data from the system's present or future.” Indeed, Deutsch defined a nation as a special kind of people -- “a large, general-purpose communication net of human beings.” Like some states, pluralistic, multi-national security communities -- whose prevalence in the modern North Atlantic Area is perhaps the most often noted discovery of Deutsch's collaborative work on international community formation -- develop in adaptive, feedback-governed “learning nets,” “networks” or in part anticpatory “communication grids” with multiple, interdependent nodes. Perhaps, he argues in rather cybernetic language, such developments require “the development and practice of habits and skills of mutual attention, communication, and responsiveness, so as to make possible the preservation of the autonomy and substantial sovereignty of the participating units, and the preservation of stable expectations of peace and peaceful change among them”, all processes taking place within networks of human social communication.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Organization, Politics, and War

315. Peacekeeping and the Peackept: Where Peacekeepers Go

Author:
Virginia Page Fortna
Publication Date:
03-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
Because peacekeeping is not distributed to conflicts at random, to understand its effects, we need to understand where it tends to be used. This chapter investigates the question of where peacekeepers get sent – what distinguishes conflicts that receive international peacekeeping from those that do not? Why were peacekeepers sent to El Salvador and Namibia but not to the Philippines or Palestine? Why no peacekeeping in Northern Ireland, monitors to South Africa, traditional peacekeepers to Papua New Guinea, a multidimensional mission to Cambodia, and an enforcement mission to Liberia? Why peacekeeping in Mozambique and, eventually in Sierra Leone, but not in Bangladesh? What explains this variation across civil war cases?
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Organization, Politics, and War
Political Geography:
Bangladesh, South Africa, Philippines, Palestine, Cambodia, Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Ireland, and Papua

316. CERI: Human Security: Concepts and Implications - with an Application to Post-Interventions Challenges in Afghanistan

Author:
Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh
Publication Date:
09-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Abstract:
Is the concept of human security, which has been discussed and debated in international organizations and academic circles since 1994, simply hot air, as its critics claim? Or does it provide a suitable framework for proposing multi-sectoral, integrated solutions in a world that is increasingly interconnected? While there is no consensus as to the exact definition of the term, human security goes beyond traditional notions of security to focus on such issues as development and respect for human rights. To some the concept is attractive, but analytically weak since it introduces too many variables that are not necessarily linked together. To others, human security concerns should be limited to situations marked by the threat or outbreak of violence. For those who favour a broad definition (as does this author), the human security agenda provides the means to assess the root causes of conflict (whether intra-state or inter-state), to propose adequate policies for resolving crises, and to provide the means for sustainable peace-building. In so doing human security policies focus on social and economic issues as they affect the individual, arguing that security (in the narrow sense of the term) is dependent on a wide-ranging network of factors that require a comprehensive approach to be effective. The paper introduces the various documents on the subject produced by international organizations, takes up the problem of the relation between academic research and policy-making, and points to a certain number of cases in which nations or regional organizations have included human security as a foreign policy option. Throughout the paper reference is made to the case of Afghanistan that is treated in the study reproduced in annex.
Topic:
Security, Development, and International Organization
Political Geography:
Afghanistan and Middle East

317. Angels and Dragons: Asia, the UN, reform and the next Secretary-General

Author:
Michael Fullilove
Publication Date:
07-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Lowy Institute for International Policy
Abstract:
The relationship between the UN and Asia can seem unfamiliar and distant. Most of New York's energy is consumed by the Middle East and Africa rather than Northeast, South and Southeast Asia; the international organisation can seem Atlanticist in orientation. On the other side of the Pacific Ocean the strict view of state sovereignty adopted by many Asian capitals leads them to keep the UN at arm's length. As always, however, the story is more complex: we need to differentiate between the UN's work in Asia on the one hand, and Asian behaviour at the UN on the other. Since 1945, the UN has contributed to the Asian security order but only at the margins, its security role circumscribed by power politics and Asian approaches to security. By contrast, Asian states have always been keen to exercise their prerogatives in New York, viewing their UN activities as a marker of sovereignty and a source of prestige. The Brief reviews this history and sets out the current stances of the three major regional powers — China, India, and Japan — towards the UN.
Topic:
International Relations, International Organization, and United Nations
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, India, and Asia

318. Politicians of Global Governance

Author:
Philip Sebastian Mller
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
CONfines de Relaciones Internacionales y Ciencia Política
Abstract:
Global governance offers an alternative perspective from which to imagine world order and is becoming a serious contender for explaining how we see the world and it is guiding us in legitimizing our actions in the world. Who are the politicians of global governance? What can we expect from them? What is their agenda? In order to address these questions, two things are necessary: We need to look at the structural and generative logic of global governance, identify its politics, and question the real people that are the politicians of global governance that have real-world impacts in a world order conceptualized as global governance.
Topic:
Development, Government, International Organization, and Politics

319. Can NEPAD succeed without prior reform?

Author:
Ian Taylor
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The New Partnership for Africa's Development or Nepad has been enthusiastically pushed by a select number of countries in Africa, as well as by the G-8, as a means to stimulate what has been termed the "African Renaissance" (see www.uneca.org/nepad/nepad.pdf). Nepad was launched in Abuja, Nigeria, in October 2001; it arose from the mandate granted to five African heads of state (Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa) by the then Organization of African Unity (OAU) to work out a development program to spearhead Africa's renewal.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and International Organization
Political Geography:
Africa, Egypt, Senegal, and Nigeria

320. The Regime Theories: Useful Frameworks for Analysing Human Rights Issues?

Author:
Sevilay Z. Aksoy
Publication Date:
03-2005
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
International regimes have come to occupy an increasing space and importance within both politics among nations and the literature on international relations. This is so simply because of the ever-increasing need for fruitful international cooperation in the face of increasing and urgent problems facing the whole humanity. However, the related academic debate is in a state of major dissent regarding the conceptualisation of regimes, including their formation, maintenance and effectiveness. Human rights area is not immune from this state of dissent and confusion, and even more so because of the seeming resistance of human rights issues to international cooperation. This article addresses these issues and does so in three parts. First, I review the major theoretical approaches to the conceptualisation of regimes. Second, I explain the implications of this review for human rights regimes. And finally, I explore the motivations of international actors to cooperate under the dominant and competing regime theories, and examine their relevance to human rights issues.
Topic:
International Relations, Human Rights, International Cooperation, and International Organization