The aim of this study is not to explore all of the problems that arise today in security threats and conflict management, but to seek to understand the role of a particular institution--the Security Council--and the changes now affecting its modes of intervention and its interaction with international actors--great powers, regional organizations, non-state actors.
This text is a revised edition and contains new material documenting the extensive and rapid innovations in the UN Security Council's procedures of the past two decades. It provides insight into the inside workings of the world's pre-eminent body for the maintenance of international peace and security. Grounded in the history and politics of the Council, it describes the ways the Council has responded through its working methods to a changing world. It explains the Council's role in its wider UN Charter context and examines its relations with other UN organs and its own subsidiary bodies.
Phillip Y. Lipscy explains how countries renegotiate international institutions when rising powers such as Japan and China challenge the existing order. This book is particularly relevant for those interested in topics such as international organizations, such as United Nations, IMF, and World Bank, political economy, international security, US diplomacy, Chinese diplomacy, and Japanese diplomacy.
Security Council resolutions have undergone an important evolution over the last two decades. While continuing its traditional role of determining state-specific threats to peace and engaging accordingly in various peaceful or coercive measures, the Security Council has also adopted resolutions that have effectively imposed legal obligations on all United Nations member states. This book seeks to move away from the discussions of whether the Security Council – in the current composition and working methods – is representative, capable or productive. Rather it assesses whether legislative activity by the Security Council can be beneficial to international peace and security. The authors examine and critique the capacities of the Security Council to address thematic international threats - such as terrorism, weapons proliferations, targeting of civilians, recruitment of child soldiers, piracy – as an alternative to the traditional model of addressing country-specific situations on a case-by-case basis. Ultimately, the book seeks to assess the efficacy of the Security Council as global legislator in terms of complementing the Security Council’s mandate for the maintenance of international peace and security with a preventative and norm-setting capacity. The book presents views from a diverse range of Security Council stakeholders including academic scholars, political analysts, and international lawyers. This resource will be of great interest to students of international relations, international organizations and international security studies alike.
UN Security Council decisions impact billions of people and yet its formal rules are minimal and tell us little about how decisions are made. Instead, informal, and often unwritten practices, form the basis of negotiations. Inside the UN Security Council analyses informal practices within Security Council decision-making, both in general and focused on the case of Darfur in the west of Sudan, to pull back the curtain on decision-making. Security Council negotiations on Darfur are analyzed in depth across issue areas of agenda-setting, sanctions, referral to the International Criminal Court, and peacekeeping. One way of understanding these informal practices is via the lens of legitimation. This is a useful approach because it brings to the fore the ways in which states seek legitimacy for themselves, and for Security Council decisions, as part of the negotiation process. Inside the UN Security Council introduces and develops the concept of legitimation practices to analyse the UN Security Council's decision-making. Legitimation practices shape the process and outcome of negotiations in two different ways. Internal legitimation practices, which relate to the legitimation of Security Council decisions, such as prioritizing unanimity, constrain and enable the text of resolutions. External legitimation practices such as 'doing something', even when it is known that it cannot be implemented, relate to the legitimation of actors in the negotiations and shape whether decisions can be reached at all. Foregrounding legitimation practices sheds light on seemingly contradictory moments within Security Council decision-making, such as the United States enabling the referral of the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court, despite its longstanding objections to the court and the capacity to veto the decision. The book draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, including original interviews with key decision-makers, to show that legitimation practices are an integral aspect of Security Council negotiations.
The protection of civilians which has been at the forefront of international discourse during recent years is explored through harnessing perspective from international law and international relations. Presenting the realities of diplomacy and mandate implementation in academic discourse.
The Oxford Handbook on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations presents an innovative, authoritative, and accessible examination and critique of the United Nations peacekeeping operations. Since the late 1940s, but particularly since the end of the cold war, peacekeeping has been a central part of the core activities of the United Nations and a major process in global security governance and the management of international relations in general. The volume will present a chronological analysis, designed to provide a comprehensive perspective that highlights the evolution of UN peacekeeping and offers a detailed picture of how the decisions of UN bureaucrats and national governments on the set-up and design of particular UN missions were, and remain, influenced by the impact of preceding operations. The volume will bring together leading scholars and senior practitioners in order to provide overviews and analyses of all 65 peacekeeping operations that have been carried out by the United Nations since 1948. As with all Oxford Handbooks, the volume will be agenda-setting in importance, providing the authoritative point of reference for all those working throughout international relations and beyond.
This thoroughly revised and updated edition is the most comprehensive and detailed reference ever published on United Nations. The book demystifies the complex workings of the world's most important and influential international body.
