Why International Organizations Hate Politics
Why International Organizations Hate Politics

Author: Marieke Louis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-04-05

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 0429883269

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Building on the concept of depoliticization, this book provides a first systematic analysis of International Organizations (IO) apolitical claims. It shows that depoliticization sustains IO everyday activities while allowing them to remain engaged in politics, even when they pretend not to. Delving into the inner dynamics of global governance, this book develops an analytical framework on why IOs "hate" politics by bringing together practices and logics of depoliticization in a wide variety of historical, geographic and organizational contexts. With multiple case studies in the fields of labor rights and economic regulation, environmental protection, development and humanitarian aid, peacekeeping, among others this book shows that depoliticization is enacted in a series of overlapping, sometimes mundane, practices resulting from the complex interaction between professional habits, organizational cultures and individual tactics. By approaching the consequences of these practices in terms of logics, the book addresses the instrumental dimension of depoliticization without assuming that IO actors necessarily intend to depoliticize their action or global problems. For IO scholars and students, this book sheds new light on IO politics by clarifying one often taken-for-granted dimension of their everyday activities, precisely that of depoliticization. It will also be of interest to other researchers working in the fields of political science, international relations, international political sociology, international political economy, international public administration, history, law, sociology, anthropology and geography as well as IO practitioners.

Gridlock
Gridlock

Author: Thomas Hale

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-07-11

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 0745670105

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The issues that increasingly dominate the 21st century cannot be solved by any single country acting alone, no matter how powerful. To manage the global economy, prevent runaway environmental destruction, reign in nuclear proliferation, or confront other global challenges, we must cooperate. But at the same time, our tools for global policymaking - chiefly state-to-state negotiations over treaties and international institutions - have broken down. The result is gridlock, which manifests across areas via a number of common mechanisms. The rise of new powers representing a more diverse array of interests makes agreement more difficult. The problems themselves have also grown harder as global policy issues penetrate ever more deeply into core domestic concerns. Existing institutions, created for a different world, also lock-in pathological decision-making procedures and render the field ever more complex. All of these processes - in part a function of previous, successful efforts at cooperation - have led global cooperation to fail us even as we need it most. Ranging over the main areas of global concern, from security to the global economy and the environment, this book examines these mechanisms of gridlock and pathways beyond them. It is written in a highly accessible way, making it relevant not only to students of politics and international relations but also to a wider general readership.

Democracies Divided
Democracies Divided

Author: Thomas Carothers

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2019-09-24

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 081573722X

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“A must-read for anyone concerned about the fate of contemporary democracies.”—Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die 2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Why divisions have deepened and what can be done to heal them As one part of the global democratic recession, severe political polarization is increasingly afflicting old and new democracies alike, producing the erosion of democratic norms and rising societal anger. This volume is the first book-length comparative analysis of this troubling global phenomenon, offering in-depth case studies of countries as wide-ranging and important as Brazil, India, Kenya, Poland, Turkey, and the United States. The case study authors are a diverse group of country and regional experts, each with deep local knowledge and experience. Democracies Divided identifies and examines the fissures that are dividing societies and the factors bringing polarization to a boil. In nearly every case under study, political entrepreneurs have exploited and exacerbated long-simmering divisions for their own purposes—in the process undermining the prospects for democratic consensus and productive governance. But this book is not simply a diagnosis of what has gone wrong. Each case study discusses actions that concerned citizens and organizations are taking to counter polarizing forces, whether through reforms to political parties, institutions, or the media. The book’s editors distill from the case studies a range of possible ways for restoring consensus and defeating polarization in the world’s democracies. Timely, rigorous, and accessible, this book is of compelling interest to civic activists, political actors, scholars, and ordinary citizens in societies beset by increasingly rancorous partisanship.

Routledge Handbook of International Organization
Routledge Handbook of International Organization

Author: Bob Reinalda

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-06-07

Total Pages: 817

ISBN-13: 1134113056

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This Handbook brings together scholars whose essays discuss significant issues with regard to international organization as a process and international organizations as institutions. Although the focus is on intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are discussed where relevant. The handbook is divided into six parts: Documentation, Data Sets and Sources International Secretariats as Bureaucracies Actors within International Bureaucracies Processes within International Bureaucracies Challenges to International Organizations, and Expanding International Architectures. The state-of-the-art articles are meant to encourage current and future generations of scholars to enjoy working in and further exploiting the field and are also of great interest to practitioners of international organization and global governance

Incentivizing Peace
Incentivizing Peace

Author: Jaroslav Tir

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0190699515

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Civil wars are among the most difficult problems in world politics. While mediation, intervention, and peacekeeping have produced some positive results in helping to end civil wars, they fall short in preventing them in the first place. In Incentivizing Peace, Jaroslav Tir and Johannes Karreth show that considering civil wars from a developmental perspective presents opportunities to prevent the escalation of nascent armed conflicts into full-scale civil wars. The authors demonstrate that highly-structured intergovernmental organizations (IGOs such as the World Bank, IMF, or regional development banks) are particularly well-positioned to engage in civil war prevention. When such IGOs have been actively engaged in nations on the edge, their potent economic tools have helped to steer rebel-government interactions away from escalation and toward peaceful settlement. Incentivizing Peace provides enlightening case evidence that IGO participation is a key to better predicting, and thus preventing, the outbreak of civil war.

Governing Globalization
Governing Globalization

Author: Anthony McGrew

Publisher: Polity

Published: 2002-12-20

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9780745627342

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Since the UN's creation in 1945 a vast nexus of global and regional institutions has evolved, surrounded by a proliferation of non-governmental agencies and advocacy networks seeking to influence the agenda and direction of international public policy. Although world government remains a fanciful idea, there does exist an evolving global governance complex - embracing states, international institutions, transnational networks and agencies (both public and private) - which functions, with variable effect, to promote, regulate or intervene in the common affairs of humanity. This book provides an accessible introduction to the current debate about the changing form and political significance of global governance. It brings together original contributions from many of the best-known theorists and analysts of global politics to explore the relevance of the concept of global governance to understanding how global activity is currently regulated. Furthermore, it combines an elucidation of substantive theories with a systematic analysis of the politics and limits of governance in key issue areas - from humanitarian intervention to the regulation of global finance. Thus, the volume provides a comprehensive theoretical and empirical assessment of the shift from national government to multilayered global governance. Governing Globalization is the third book in the internationally acclaimed series on global transformations. The other two volumes are Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture and The Global Transformations Reader: An Introduction to the Globalization Debate.

Global Health and International Relations
Global Health and International Relations

Author: Colin McInnes

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 0745663079

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The long separation of health and International Relations, as distinct academic fields and policy arenas, has now dramatically changed. Health, concerned with the body, mind and spirit, has traditionally focused on disease and infirmity, whilst International Relations has been dominated by concerns of war, peace and security. Since the 1990s, however, the two fields have increasingly overlapped. How can we explain this shift and what are the implications for the future development of both fields? Colin McInnes and Kelley Lee examine four key intersections between health and International Relations today - foreign policy and health diplomacy, health and the global political economy, global health governance and global health security. The explosion of interest in these subjects has, in large part, been due to "real world" concerns - disease outbreaks, antibiotic resistance, counterfeit drugs and other risks to human health amid the spread of globalisation. Yet the authors contend that it is also important to understand how global health has been socially constructed, shaped in theory and practice by particular interests and normative frameworks. This groundbreaking book encourages readers to step back from problem-solving to ask how global health is being problematized in the first place, why certain agendas and issue areas are prioritised, and what determines the potential solutions put forth to address them? The palpable struggle to better understand the health risks facing a globalized world, and to strengthen collective action to deal with them effectively, begins - they argue - with a more reflexive and critical approach to this rapidly emerging subject.

The End of Representative Politics
The End of Representative Politics

Author: Simon Tormey

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2015-05-19

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 0745690513

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Representative politics is in crisis. Trust in politicians is at an all-time low. Fewer people are voting or joining political parties, and our interest in parliamentary politics is declining fast. Even oppositional and radical parties that should be benefitting from public disenchantment with politics are suffering. But different forms of political activity are emerging to replace representative politics: instant politics, direct action, insurgent politics. We are leaving behind traditional representation, and moving towards a politics without representatives. In this provocative new book, Simon Tormey explores the changes that are underway, drawing on a rich range of examples from the Arab Spring to the Indignados uprising in Spain, street protests in Brazil and Turkey to the emergence of new initiatives such as Anonymous and Occupy. Tormey argues that the easy assumptions that informed our thinking about the nature and role of parties, and ‘party based democracy’ have to be rethought. We are entering a period of fast politics, evanescent politics, a politics of the street, of the squares, of micro-parties, pop-up parties, and demonstrations. This may well be the end of representative politics as we know it, but an exciting new era of political engagement is just beginning.

The Law of Global Governance
The Law of Global Governance

Author: Eyal Benvenisti

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2014-06-11

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 9004279121

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Also available as an e-book The book argues that the decision-making processes within international organizations and other global governance bodies ought to be subjected to procedural and substantive legal constraints that are associated domestically with the requirements of the rule of law. The book explains why law — international, regional, domestic, formal or soft — should restrain global actors in the same way that judicial oversight is applied to domestic administrative agencies. It outlines the emerging web of global norms designed to protect the rights and interests of all affected individuals, to enable public deliberation, and to promote the legitimacy of the global bodies. These norms are being shaped by a growing convergence of expectations of global institutions to ensure public participation and representation, impartiality and independence of decision-makers, and accountability of decisions. The book explores these mechanisms as well as the political and social forces that are shaping their development by analysing the emerging judicial practice concerning a variety of institutions, ranging from the UN Security Council and other formal organizations to informal and private standard-setting bodies.