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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > International institutions
This book brings together African and European experts from a variety of disciplines to examine the origins and current state of the East African Community (EAC). Over the course of the book, the authors analyse the rich tapestry of intraregional relations in East Africa, the EAC's similarities with the European Union and the future challenges faced by the organisation. Widely regarded as the most advanced and successful regional integration scheme in Africa, the EAC is an intergovernmental organisation consisting of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda and, since 2016, South Sudan. It is the oldest among Africa's regional economic communities, and among the continent's most promising growth areas, with a long history of integration, punctuated by several false starts and traumas that have profoundly affected its body politics. When initially set up, the EAC model bore a striking resemblance to the process undergone by the European Union. Now, as the EAC continues to establish its own identity, this book argues that whilst Europe's history may provide useful insights for EAC member states, the EAC experience could in turn also offer lessons for the European Union. Covering key dimensions such as integration, co-operation, development, trade and investments, this book highlights the intricate and complex relationships between East African states, and it will be of interest to researchers working on economic development, international relations, peace and security and African studies.
Both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) practice periodic surveillance of members to ensure that countries are adopting appropriate economic policies. Despite the importance of these procedures, they remain understudied by scholars. The global economic crisis has tested both organizations and brought surveillance to the forefront of policy debates. Understanding how surveillance works, then, contributes to both theoretical and policy concerns. The world is paying increasing attention to issues of transparency and accountability, questioning whether these organizations are in part responsible for the global economic crisis, as well as assessing their responsiveness to the crisis. This comparative analysis of surveillance at the IMF and WTO fills a significant gap in the existing literature, drawing together a large range of empirical data and offering an extended critical analysis of this key issue. Examining how and in what contexts surveillance is influential and how variations in institutional design shape the effectiveness of surveillance, Edwards moves on to offer recommendations of how surveillance can be designed differently to make it more effective in the future. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of international organizations, international political economy and global governance.
The NEBI Yearbook 2001/2002 provides a balanced picture of integrationist developments in the North European and Baltic Sea area. For this purpose it brings together scholars from several countries and a wide range of scientific areas. The Yearbook emphasises all major aspects of integration, i.e. basic economic integration; environment and infrastructure; cross-border regional integration; and hard and soft security. The special focus of this volume is the impact of EU enlargement on developments in the North European and Baltic Sea area.
This book provides a detailed analysis of South Africa's actions on the UN Human Rights Council, examining the country's positions on civil and political rights, economic rights and development, social groups whose rights are frequently violated, and abuses in specific countries. The most detailed and comprehensive study of any country's record on the UN Human Rights Council to date, this book demonstrates that despite occasional support for human rights, South Africa's overall record ranged from opposing to failing to support human rights. This is compounded by an anti-Western or 'anti-imperial' edge to South Africa's positions on the UNHRC. Using South Africa as a study case of a liberal country consistently behaving illiberally, this book therefore challenges the widespread belief in international relations theory, typically found in liberal and constructivist thought, that there is an alignment of domestic political society and foreign policy values. Addressing ongoing debates since the presidency of Nelson Mandela about the place of human rights in South Africa's foreign policy, South Africa and the UN Human Rights Council will be useful to students and scholars of international relations, human rights, international law, and African politics.
The UN Military Staff Committee is a misunderstood organ, and never really worked as it was initially envisaged. This book charts its historic development as a means to explain the continuous debate about the reactivation of the Military Staff Committee and, more generally, the unsatisfied need for the Security Council to have a military advisory body so that it does not only depend on the Secretariat to make its decisions on military and security affairs. The author takes a clear stand for the establishment of a military committee with real weight in the decision-making process of the Security Council related to peace operations. The Security Council remains the only international body making decisions in peace and security, authorizing military deployment without advice from a collective body of military experts and advisers. Recreating such a body is the missing part of all UN reform structures undertaken in past years. As the number of UN troops deployed increases, this book will be an important read for all students and scholars of international organisations, security studies and international relations.
Women and Gender Perspectives in the Military compares the integration of women, gender perspectives, and the women, peace, and security agenda into the armed forces of eight countries plus NATO and United Nations peacekeeping operations. This book brings a much-needed crossnational analysis of how militaries have or have not improved gender balance, what has worked and what has not, and who have been the agents for change. The country cases examined are Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Australia, and South Africa. Despite increased opportunities for women in the militaries of many countries and wider recognition of the value of including gender perspectives to enhance operational effectiveness, progress has encountered roadblocks even nearly twenty years after United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 kicked off the women, peace, and security agenda. Robert Egnell, Mayesha Alam, and the contributors to this volume conclude that there is no single model for change that can be applied to every country, but the comparative findings reveal many policy-relevant lessons while advancing scholarship about women and gendered perspectives in the military.
This book reveals why the UN is more successful than unilateral great powers in protecting civilians from violence, and focuses on the discourse, development and consequences of UN peacekeeping. Analysing statistics of state fragility and fatalities of violence, it reveals that the UN has managed to save tens of thousands of lives with its peacekeeping: a surprising statistic given the media consensus about the UN's powerlessness and inefficiency. Using computer-assisted discourse analysis of resolutions from the UN Security Council, 1993-2019, the book offers data that describe the character and development of UN approach to the protection of civilians from violence. It then links the data to the statistics of conflict fatalities and state fragility to reveal, by means of qualitative and quantitative analysis, when, where, how and why the UN has been successful at protecting civilians. Two reasons for the UN's success are highlighted in the book as being statistically most significant. First, the organization offers local ownership to peaceful solutions by considering conflicting parties as the primary agents of protection. Second, the UN approach is much less power-oriented than unilateral approaches by the great powers: protection for the UN does not mean deterrence or destruction, but rather, support for local protectors of civilians. However, strong great power influence on such operations tends to weaken UN's ability to save lives. This book will be of much interest to students of humanitarian intervention, peacekeeping, human rights and International Relations in general.
In the year 2000, European Union governments announced a long-term strategic commitment to transform the European economy into the most competitive, dynamic, knowledge-based economy in the world. Technology is an integral part of the new economy and of the EU's strategy for economic development. This book deals with the development of infrastructure in the mobile communications, transport, space and radio sectors. It sets out to explain the conditions under which the EU, and in particular the European Commission, makes policy choices to support large-scale technology infrastructures, and why EU political intervention in seemingly similar infrastructure projects varies. Answering this question will provide insights into the political economy underpinning the ambitions to transform the European economy into the most competitive in the world. This study of EU political intervention in support of advanced technology will be a fascinating read for advanced students and academic researchers of international political economy, international affairs and political science. Competition for Technological Leadership will also appeal to journalists, policymakers and analysts with a special interest in EU high technology policy.
This book, first published in 1973, analyses the European Community in a global perspective. It asks and answers two main questions: what does the European Community mean to the masses of the world, and what does it mean to the world community in general? Most critical studies of the EC were made from an internal point of view, and this book is rare in having an external perspective. The author discussed the EC with diverse audiences in 16 countries, and his analyses are invaluable in putting the European project in an international context.
Now in its third edition, this book is the authoritative text on one of the world's most important human rights treaties, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Covenant is of universal relevance. Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966 and in force from 1976, it commits the signatories and parties to respect the civil and political freedoms and rights of individuals. Monitored by the UN Human Rights Committee, the Covenant ratified by the majority of UN member states. The book meticulously extracts and analyzes the jurisprudence over nearly forty years of the UN Human Rights Committee, on each of the various ICCPR rights, including the right to life, the right to freedom from torture, the right of freedom of religion, the right of freedom of expression, and the right to privacy, as well as admissibility criteria under the First Optional Protocol. Key miscellaneous issues, such as reservations, derogations, and denunciations, are also thoroughly assessed. Comprehensively indexed and cross-referenced, this book offers elegant and straight-forward access to the jurisprudence of the Human Rights Committee and other UN human rights treaty bodies. Presented in a clear and illuminating manner, it will be of use to the judiciary, human rights practitioners, human rights activists, government institutions, academics, and students alike.
A comparative analysis of an old and new EU Member State's perceptions of and contributions to EU security and defence. This book focuses on change and continuity in both countries' defence policies and where convergence and divergence has occurred. This has important implications for the EU's effectiveness as an international security actor.
In cultural and intellectual terms, one of the EU's most important objectives in pursuing unification has been to develop a common historical narrative of Europe. Across ten compelling case studies, this volume examines the premises underlying such a project to ask: Could such an uncontested history of Europe ever exist? Combining studies of national politics, supranational institutions, and the fraught EU-Mideast periphery with a particular focus on the twentieth century, the contributors to History and Belonging offer a fascinating survey of the attempt to forge a post-national identity politics.
This book concerns the United Nations' peacemaking, peacekeeping, peace-building, and post-conflict reconstruction efforts in Africa from 1960 to 2021. Succinctly discussed are historic and contemporary peace, security, and economic engagements within 18 countries spanning eight African regions: the Great Lakes; the Economic Community of Central African States; East Africa; the Horn of Africa; North Africa; the Sahel Region; West Africa; and Southern Africa. The book develops a neo-realist and imperialist critique that discusses how resource-rich, conflict-ridden states have become easy targets for capitalists, terrorists, and transnational crime, aligned to geostrategic parochial interests. Critically argued is that endogenous economic growth factors, if applied effectively, can achieve both peace and security, and meet the Global Sustainable Development Goals. Such efforts require constructive engagement with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US. However, the book contends that the cornerstone of multilateral engagement involves Africa's 55 states and the African Union's three major pillars: the Peace and Security Council, the African Governance Architecture, and the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Development Centre, which have the ability to move resource-rich, conflict-ridden states out of transnational crime and poverty. This book offers wide-ranging analyses of contemporary African diplomacy and a compelling critique of UN peacekeeping efforts in Africa, which resonates to scholars of international relations, peace and conflict studies, and African politics.
The euro crisis, several sovereign debt crises, the Great Recession, the refugee crisis, and Brexit have all challenged Europeans' willingness to show solidarity with other European citizens and member states of the European Union. European Solidarity in Times of Crisis provides a clear theoretical framework to understand European solidarity for the first time. It offers a systematic empirical approach to determine the strength and causes of European solidarity. The authors distinguish between four domains of solidarity and test a set of theoretically derived criteria with a unique dataset to investigate European solidarity. Based on a survey conducted in thirteen EU member states in 2016, the empirical analysis leads to some unanticipated results. Europeans display a notably higher degree of solidarity than many politicians and social scientists have presumed so far. This especially applies to the support of people in need (welfare solidarity) and the reduction of territorial disparities between rich and poor EU countries (territorial solidarity), but also to the domain of fiscal solidarity (financial support of indebted EU countries). This optimistic view is less true for the domain of refugee solidarity. While citizens of western and southern EU countries accept the accommodation of refugees and their allocation between European countries, the majority of people in eastern European countries do not share this point of view. The book will appeal to students and scholars in fields such as comparative sociology, political science, social policy and migration research, and European studies. It is also relevant to a non-academic audience interested in the development of the European project.
Citizens' Solidarity in Europe systematically dissects the manifestations of solidarity buried beneath the official policies and measures of public authority in Europe. This critical book provides a comparative analysis of eight European countries, illustrating the scale of support for cross-national solidarity from both individuals and civic organizations. Contributors offer comprehensive and original data, analysing opinion polls, organizational fields and media content, to unpack the thoughts, opinions and attitudes of civil society. Chapters highlight the detrimental factors that tend to inhibit or annihilate solidarity, and those that are beneficial for the nurturing of solidarity. Offering innovative ideas and fresh data, this book will be crucial reading for researchers and students of sociology and political science, particularly those focused on European and comparative studies. Journalists, NGOs, public authorities and politicians will also benefit from its unique insight into public opinion. Contributors include: S. Baglioni, V.K. Brandle, M. Cinalli, O. Eisele, V. Federico, M. Grasso, M. Kousis, C. Lahusen, A. Loukakis, T. Montgomery, M. Paschou, H.-J. Trenz
Why do international peacebuilding organizations sometimes succeed and sometimes fail, even within the same country? Bridging the gaps between the peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and global governance scholarship, this book argues that international peacebuilding organizations repeatedly fail because they are accountable to global actors, not to local institutions or people. International peacebuilding organizations can succeed only when country-based staff bypass existing accountability structures and empower local stakeholders to hold their global organizations accountable for achieving local-level peacebuilding outcomes. In other words, the innovative, if seemingly wayward, actions of individual country-office staff are necessary to improve peacebuilding performance. Using in-depth studies of organizations operating in Burundi over a fifteen-year period, combined with fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nepal, South Sudan, and Sudan, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of international relations, African studies, and peace and conflict studies, as well as policymakers.
It is generally accepted that collective identity among member states in regional organizations strengthens peace, yet the process of constructing a collective identity can also reproduce conflict. Focusing on the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, this book demonstrates how collective identity depends on the construction of outsider states, such as Morocco, Turkey, and Australia, as different, and in some instances, as threatening. It then analyzes how these regional organizations can consequently aggravate conflicts involving outsider states.
Rethinking the Future of Europe has brought together three contrasting collections of contributions: the incrementalist perspective concerning the step by step development of Europe, the more radical reform/restructuring approach to the future of Europe, and a view of Europe from the outside.
This two-volume book provides an important overview to EU economic and policy issues related to the development of the bioeconomy. What have been the recent trends and what are the implications for future economic development and policy making? Where does EU bioeconomy policy sit within an international context and what are the financial frameworks behind them? Volume I explores the economic theory of bioeconomy policy, as well as European integration, European agriculture, EU budget and future developments in EU agriculture policies.
The social agenda of the European Union is shifting towards broad social initiatives that align social and economic objectives with the promotion of employment. This calls for an action framework that allows social dialogue and political deliberation to inform and complement legislative action at all levels. The debate however has been dominated by advocates of market-based solutions and their opponents, the supporters of traditional welfare states. This book, to break with this sterile stalemate, demonstrates how an employment-oriented social policy in Europe can develop from a new, different set of policy principles, specifically 'a capability approach'. Taking inspiration from the work of Amartya Sen, this book focuses on the effective freedom people need to achieve their goals in life and work. The result of ongoing collaboration between researchers and social actors, it will appeal to social scientists, students, policy makers and all those concerned with the building of Europe.
Africa has been the source of some of the international community's most devastating failures and important successes in conflict management. The purpose of this book is to examine the issues and experiences associated with the increased level of activity between the United Nations and regional organizations in their efforts to address conflict in Africa. Using nine case studies and an overview of recent changes at the institutional level this book assesses what these experiences tell us about the United Nations, about African regional organizations, and about conflict management processes.
The book reinterprets the role of the UN during the Congo crisis from 1960 to 1964, presenting a multidimensional view of the organisation. Through an examination of the Anglo-American relationship, the book reveals how the UN helped position this event as a lightning rod in debates about how decolonisation interacted with the Cold War. By examining the ways in which the various dimensions of the UN came into play in Anglo-American considerations of how to handle the Congo crisis, the book reveals how the Congo debate reverberated in wider ideological struggles about how decolonisation evolved and what the role of the UN would be in managing this process. The UN became a central battle ground for ideas and visions of world order; as the newly-independent African and Asian states sought to redress the inequalities created by colonialism, the US and UK sought to maintain the status quo, while the Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjoeld tried to reconcile these two contrasting views. -- .
First published in 1933, this title explores the inner workings and diplomatic culture of the League of Nations in Geneva, at a time when the increasing strain of international relations was beginning to take its toll and disillusionment towards the League was growing. Written as a series of short sketches, Max Beer communicates a variety of insights into the League of Nations. Delving into the machinations and bewildering configurations of diplomatic relations that predominated, while at the same time maintaining a very human perspective, this volume represents a unique resource for students of this period in European politics.
Following the disintegration of the Soviet bloc, many Central and Eastern European Countries launched a vigorous "return to Europe" campaign, which primarily focused on accession to NATO and the European Union. By 2007, ten countries became members of the Euro-Atlantic community, personifying the long-awaited reunification and reconciliation of Europe. The book argues that the EU and NATO eastern enlargements represent a settlement of historical-psychological accounts for countries affected by the "black trinity" the Munich Agreement, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and the Yalta-Potsdam Conferences.
The Charter of the United Nations was signed in 1945 by 51 countries representing all continents, paving the way for the creation of the United Nations on 24 October 1945. The Statute of the International Court of Justice forms part of the Charter. The aim of the Charter is to save humanity from war; to reaffirm human rights and the dignity and worth of the human person; to proclaim the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small; and to promote the prosperity of all humankind. The Charter is the foundation of international peace and security. |
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