This timely book investigates the role of the UN Secretariat in an era of significant global power shifts. It demonstrates that UN staff have some ability to shape political outcomes towards their own ideals and the UN’s institutional mission, and also that their powers are limited by member states seeking to influence and control the Secretariat. It puts new focus on the UN staff as variables here. Using a novel theoretical model of the role of global civil servants in world politics, this book analyses the interaction between rising and declining powers, and the UN Secretariat. Contributors explore a wide range of case studies, examining UN interactions with a diverse range of states, UN agencies, and other global secretariats such as the WHO and WTO. The book considers both the ethical and practical questions facing UN staff, revealing the tension between political pragmatism and institutional idealism. Advancing the debate on institutions and global change, it argues that Secretariat staff play a complicated but active role in managing power transitions and shaping international politics. Global Institutions in a Time of Power Transition will be an invaluable resource for scholars of political geography, international relations, regulation and governance, and the United Nations. It will also be essential reading for staff at international organisations who wish to understand their role in world politics.

Drawing on years of research and direct experience in Bangladesh, Stiles pulls together theoretical strands from economics, sociology, and anthropology to help explain an emerging social structure in the Third World. These structures, which he calls intermestic development circles, bring together international donor agencies with various domestic community and private organizations. In Bangladesh not-for-profit agencies are dramatically transforming their operation and organizational cultures, while in turn Western NGOs are themselves changing in subtle ways. Scholars of development will find Stiles's intriguing account of the reciprocating effects of extensive interaction, cooperation, and tensions between international donors and domestic recipients informative and provocative.

Moving through three discernable phases, each one explainable by resort to different theories, these development circles grow from mere trading arrangements to a coherent social structure, separate from the rest of civil society in Bangladesh. While in the process of the not-for-profits receiving assistance become wealthier and more effective, they lose much of their local identity and become part of a transnational network. At the same time, donors must recast themselves in order to work effectively with these agencies, which often creates tension between local and home offices. The book closes with some recommendations that might attenuate some of the more troubling effects of this transformation.

This book explores a new way of thinking about diplomacy, warfare, trade, and collective goods that begins with the notion that key international actors project their domestic institutions onto the regional or global arena. Exploring the emergence, consolidation, and decay of international norms, the author puts forward a general argument designed to identify patterns across time and space, combining key insights from constructivist, liberal, classical realist, English School, and feminist thinking. By moving from institution to institution, each chapter presents a coherent story ranging from antiquity to the contemporary world allowing us to see not only the patterns, but also to begin to develop conjectures about other causal stories implicit in the narrative. The book will be used by scholars and students of international relations, international organization and law, security studies, political economy, historical sociology, regionalism, and a wide range of specific topics such as arms control, trade, migration, identity, and collective goods.

This book explores a new way of thinking about diplomacy, warfare, trade, and collective goods that begins with the notion that key international actors project their domestic institutions onto the regional or global arena. Exploring the emergence, consolidation, and decay of international norms, the author puts forward a general argument designed to identify patterns across time and space, combining key insights from constructivist, liberal, classical realist, English School, and feminist thinking. By moving from institution to institution, each chapter presents a coherent story ranging from antiquity to the contemporary world allowing us to see not only the patterns, but also to begin to develop conjectures about other causal stories implicit in the narrative. The book will be used by scholars and students of international relations, international organization and law, security studies, political economy, historical sociology, regionalism, and a wide range of specific topics such as arms control, trade, migration, identity, and collective goods.

Do countries keep their promises to the international community? When they sign treaties or learn about new expectations, do they take them seriously and implement them? Since we already know intuitively that not all countries do, the next question and the topic of this book is: who complies? By considering a wide range of different rules each precise enough to allow one to measure state compliance and a variety of methods, we hope to answer this question once and for all.

Including a systematic analysis of 8 different countries selected for the variety of regime type, international engagement and economic development they represent, the work caps a five-year research program and represents the culmination of twenty years worth of work in the disciplines of international relations and international law on legalization and compliance. Stiles highlights the importance of systematic study of compliance in order to move further towards solving truly global issues, such as terrorism, human trafficking, air pollution and collective goods provision. With international laws generally designed to improve the human condition and current levels of compliance inconsistent at best, it is vital to gain a better understanding of who complies and why.

This detailed study will be of interest to students of Politics, International Law and International Relations. "