Book Description
THE UNITED NATIONS: INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION AND WORLD POLITICS is a comprehensive guide to all that is relevant to the United Nations from its inception to these opening years of the millennium, analyzing the history, processes, structure and functions of the organization.While the thread of terror weaves its way through the text, the textbook discusses the United Nation's continuing role in assisting nations and peoples in distress from underdevelopment, from population overload, from pandemic disease, and political instability.
Customer Reviews:
completely worthless.......2007-05-21
this book was a long-winded aimless read that added nothing to how the U.N. operates. The author seemed to have written the book with the goal of demonstrating his vocabulary and sentence structure. Forgetting to give any analysis on the U.N. and its bodies.
UN informative.......2006-01-31
For those that are curious about the UN, this book is very informative about the duties and various sectors of the UN.
Subtle but pervasive pro-US bias.......2001-06-09
The revisions contained in the third edition are the work of Lawrence Ziring, professor at the University of Western Michigan. Ziring is a not an obvious candidate to be writing what is designed to be a textbook on the UN. He has publicly supported U.S. policies which are contrary to the spirit and the letter of U.N. principles, including the `humanitarian' bombings in Yugoslavia and U.S. attacks on alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan and the biological weapons plant (which later turned out to be a pharmaceuticals factory) in Sudan. Ziring is also a member of the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think-tank with people such as Robert McNamara and James A. Baker on its board of directors. The Atlantic Council focuses primarily upon supporting expanded roles for NATO.
As might be expected, in view of Ziring's credentials, the `textbook' is written with a consistently proUS, and generally anti-UN bias. It tends to downplay the UN's effectiveness, it attempts to demonstrate that all issues must be resolved within the context of political realism, and it implies on every occasion available that regional alternatives are to be preferred over the UN. These leitmotifs are pervasive throughout the book, with the exception of a few small patches of optimistic idealism, remnants no doubt of the second edition which Ziring failed to purge.
The biases of the book are nevertheless put forth with subtlety. When Ziring writes of the US refusal to pay its back dues to the UN, for instance, he refrains from ever using the word "refuse", opting instead for evasive locutions such as "reductions in the U.S. contributions were made necessary by subsequent congressional action...." Relative space allocations are used to forward the political agenda as much as the normative commentary: e.g. the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is given more space than on the UN Human Rights Commission, and in the entirety of this 552 page book, there are only about two or three pages-worth of information about UN environmental initiatives. In terms of security issues, the UN is portrayed as a last ditch recourse which should normally defer to `more effective' regional organizations such as NATO and the OAS.
As an example of sophisticated pro-American propaganda, this book is high quality; as a textbook for studying the UN, however, it can only be recommended to those in search of a tool for undermining the organization's legitimacy.
Book Description
Rules for the World provides an innovative perspective on the behavior of international organizations and their effects on global politics. Arguing against the conventional wisdom that these bodies are little more than instruments of states, Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore begin with the fundamental insight that international organizations are bureaucracies that have authority to make rules and so exercise power. At the same time, Barnett and Finnemore maintain, such bureaucracies can become obsessed with their own rules, producing unresponsive, inefficient, and self-defeating outcomes. Authority thus gives international organizations autonomy and allows them to evolve and expand in ways unintended by their creators.
Barnett and Finnemore reinterpret three areas of activity that have prompted extensive policy debate: the use of expertise by the IMF to expand its intrusion into national economies; the redefinition of the category "refugees" and decision to repatriate by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; and the UN Secretariat's failure to recommend an intervention during the first weeks of the Rwandan genocide. By providing theoretical foundations for treating these organizations as autonomous actors in their own right, Rules for the World contributes greatly to our understanding of global politics and global governance.
Customer Reviews:
Why International Organizations Fail.......2005-12-18
International relations theory has long ago identified a subfield that deals specifically with the existence of international organizations - IOs in the jargon. This field has yielded relatively few insights, and is of little use to the practitioner. Scholars have proposed complex theoretical constructs - "international regimes" - to explain cooperation among states, but they have tended to treat international organizations as mere servants of states' interests, not as actors in their own right. They have very seldom opened the black box to describe what IOs are really like.
Now Barnett and Finnemore want to revive the subject by going back to basic questions - what do international organizations do, how do they work - and by using the tools of another discipline, sociology, which has much to say about the behavior of organizations. They begin with an obvious starting point: international organizations are bureaucracies and, as such, they exhibit many of the pathologies that we associate with these large impersonal organizations - their lack of responsiveness, their taste for red tape, their tunnel vision, their mission creep. But bureaucracies also have qualities for which they do not always get credit but that make them an indispensable component of our modern world: their capacity to manage complex tasks in a rational way, their predictability and fairness in the application of general rules, their expertise in the use and production of knowledge, their legitimacy in the pursuit of the common interest.
The two authors then lead the reader through a crash course in organizational behavior, starting with scholarly debates about IOs' autonomy, power, dysfunction and change, then moving to the characteristics of modern bureaucracies (hierarchy, continuity, impersonality, expertise) and to the effects of bureaucratic rules (rules as operating procedures, rules as lenses through which problems are defined and classified, rules as creating a world amenable to the intervention of experts, rules as the basis of an organizational culture). Rules of experts "construct" the social world, they help create the world as it is: this is the basic tenet of the "constructivist" school of thought from which this book derives.
The authors distinguish between four types of authority that international bureaucracies can wield in their relations with states and other actors: delegated authority, when international organizations act on behalf of states; moral authority, when they represent the interests and values of the international community; expert authority, when knowledge yields power; and rational-legal authority, which is the hallmark of bureaucratic power. These four types of authority - delegated, moral, expert, and rational-legal - have the twin effects of putting IOs "in authority" and of making them "an authority": IOs are often the actors empowered to decide if there is a problem on a particular issue, what kind a problem it is, and whose responsibility it is to solve it.
After having developed this theoretical framework, Barnett and Finnemore then move on to present three case studies of international organizations, focusing on their autonomy from states, the way they exercise power, their change processes, and how they sometimes produce inefficient and self-defeating outcomes. They first examine the IMF and the way its economic expertise made ever-increasing intervention in domestic economies seem logical and even necessary to states that had explicitly barred such action in the organization's Articles of Agreements. They then describe how the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) used its authority to expand the concept of refugee and later developed a repatriation culture that led to violations of refugee rights. Finally, they look at the UN Secretariat, the bureaucratization of peacekeeping, and the development of a peacekeeping culture that led the institution to turn a blind eye when crimes against humanity were committed in Rwanda.
The book is not exempt from verbose jargon that sometimes makes it a hard read, and from approximations that lead the authors to couch some controversial statements without substantiating them (on the "failure" of IMF programs, for instance). They mostly keep a bird eye's view on the bureaucracies that they study, and fail to describe their inner workings in a meaningful way. They spend too much time discussing chicken-and-egg problems, such as the autonomy of international organizations vis-à-vis the states, and too little on important issues such as leadership or accountability. Their last proposition, that the promotion of democracies and liberalism is more and more dependent on organizations that are neither liberal nor democratic, would in itself have deserved a single volume. Despite its shortcomings, this book is a valuable addition to the field, and one hopes that it may spur further empirical studies on the bureaucracies that increasingly provide rules for the world.
Book Description
Why do states delegate certain tasks and responsibilities to international organizations rather than acting unilaterally or cooperating directly? Furthermore, to what extent do states continue to control IOs once authority has been delegated? Examining a variety of different institutions including the World Trade Organization, the United Nations and the European Commission, this book explores the different methods that states employ to ensure their interests are being served, and identifies the problems involved with monitoring and managing IOs. The contributors suggest that it is not inherently more difficult to design effective delegation mechanisms at international level than at domestic level and, drawing on principal-agent theory, help explain the variations that exist in the extent to which states are willing to delegate to IOs. They argue that IOs are neither all evil nor all virtuous, but are better understood as bureaucracies that can be controlled to varying degrees by their political masters.
Book Description
This book shows how the UN has proven inept at maintaining world peace and promoting human rights. The author proposes a smaller version of the organization, refocused on simpler aims.
Customer Reviews:
Deeply Flawed and Sharply Biased Study.......2007-04-09
Muravchik has written an inconsistent and contradictory work that masquerades as a serious study. He reviews the history of the UN's successes and purported failures, along with its well-known organizational inadequacies. He then proposes a preposterous set of "solutions" to the UN's problems. In a section that would be funny if it weren't so dangerous, he proposes the elimination of the UN Security Council and General Assembly. What does he propose to substitute in their place? He states, "The UN would continue as a gathering place for diplomats from all over, a high-level salon." Then, "If nations had issues on which they wished to express themselves, nothing would stop them from calling a meeting of whomever was interested." So much for scholarship the American Enterprise Institute.
Short but incisive.......2006-07-23
This slim but info-packed book explores the dismal history of the UN and offers some suggestions for reform. Muravchik is an expert on the behaviour of the organization, describing the waste, corruption and expedient vote trading in an illuminating but detached manner. Covering its history, he discusses both its overwhelming failure as peacekeeper and the limited success of its humanitarian efforts. Noting that the UN has failed utterly as a promoter of peace, he observes that it will always have its devotees because the concept of a "world parliament" sounds so noble.
It is perhaps understandable that during the Cold War the UN could not achieve much. But its record since 1991 has been equally, if not more, disgraceful. That is because the members are mostly totalitarian regimes representing ruling cliques and not the citizens of their countries. Muravchik chronicles the long list of failures and the UN's complicity in human rights abuses and corruption on a breathtaking scale. The tragic failures include Darfur, Kosovo, Rwanda, Somalia and Bosnia. Then there is the Oil For Food scandal and the abuse of children by UN peacekeepers in places like Sierra Leone and Liberia. In addition, the organization has become a model of hypocrisy in its antisemitism and bashing of Israel.
The author does not believe that any current reform proposals will improve matters. He argues instead for political bodies like the Security Council to be done away with, while specialized agencies like the World Health Organization deserve to survive. He also thinks that the organization's role as an informal diplomatic forum might serve a useful purpose. In the interim, regional alliances like NATO are far more effective at keeping the peace. Other valuable books dissecting the United Nations include The UN Gang by Pedro Sanjuan, Tower Of Babble by Dore Gold and The UN Exposed by Eric Shawn.
A sober analysis of the United Nations.......2006-03-19
This book does a fine job of summarizing the performance of the United Nations during the past sixty years. The UN has not been too good at preserving peace. And as the author points out, in the case of the Sinai in 1967, it actually helped to precipitate a conflict! There were some successes, but there were huge failures in Bosnia, Serbia, and Rwanda that make one wonder if the UN is of any value at all.
Perhaps the UN is at its worst in the field of human rights. Muravchik explains one reason is that roughly half of the most oppressive governments on Earth are members of the UN's commission on human rights! That's why the world's worst human rights offenders ordinarily get away without mention. Still, as the author explains, each year about a dozen less powerful states do actually get criticized, always with just one mildly worded resolution. The one exception is Israel, which gets a big bunch of harsh (and totally absurd) resolutions every year. Muravchik says of this that "in a thousand ways, the UN acts as a kind of permanent pogrom against the Jewish state."
The author includes four excellent appendices, showing (among other things) the freedom score and frequency of voting the way the United States does for the 190 UN nations other than the US, and the amount of money each nation pays to support the UN.
Well, what recommendations does Muravchik have? I would like to outlaw the UN, but Muravchik is far more moderate than I: he merely wants to abolish the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Commission on Human Rights, and other useless or pernicious agencies. He'd keep the building, and he'd let folks meet there.
Muravchik explains that we Americans often view government as a necessary evil. That's true. On the other hand, he says that world government is an unnecessary evil. I agree. I also agree with his suggestion to replace the political bodies by ad hoc ones that would command respect by their own actual merits. I think that would indeed be helpful, given that the agencies we now see have been so horribly perverted.
I recommend this book.
Average customer rating:
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NATO's Eastern Agenda in a New Strategic Era {2003}
F. Stephen Larrabee
Manufacturer: RAND Corporation
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ASIN: 0833034677 |
Book Description
Examines four critical areas in NATO's changing security agenda: Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltic region, Ukraine, and Russia.
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The Holy See and the United Nations 1945-1995
Edward J. Gratsch
Manufacturer: Vantage Press
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ASIN: 0533122066 |
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Forced to Choose: France, the Atlantic Alliance, and NATO -- Then and Now
Charles G. Cogan
Manufacturer: Praeger Publishers
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ASIN: 0275957047 |
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Post-World War II France was to disappoint the hopes of such American statesmen as Dean Acheson and George Kennan, who looked to it to take the lead in Western Europe in the face of a growing Soviet threat. Dogged by the humiliation of the wartime occupation, obsessed by fear of a resurgent Germany, jealous of the British ascendancy gained during the war, and dominated by an intellectual class almost wholly given over to the prevailing antifascism (and, therefore, philo-sovietism) of the postwar, France would take 20 years to live up to its promise as the "motor" of Western Europe. Though it was perhaps inevitable that France, falling on the western divide of the Iron Curtain, would join the U.S. camp, it did so with a loss of sovereignty, symbolized in NATO's integrated command. This was a situation which Charles de Gaulle, after his return to power in 1958, would seek to undo. His successors have continued this quest to this day. Cogan explores the Gaullist argument that the North Atlantic Alliance and NATO are two distinct movements against a background of ever-increasing threats--or perceived threats--by the Soviet Union, culminating in the North Korean invasion of 1950. The French, desperate to emerge from a position of wartime inferiority, willingly abandoned hopes of building a defense of Europe by Europeans alone. France threw itself into the arms of the United States, partly to escape the onerous tutelage of Great Britain. In 1951, when the NATO integrated command was put in place, the French wound up with very little--not even a major subordinate command. Frustration and, ultimately, withdrawal from the NATO military structure were the results. This is a major examination of contemporary international relations and Western European defense policy for scholars and researchers alike.
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Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, Volume XXXIII: Organization and Management of U.S. Foreign Policy; United Nations
Manufacturer: Bur. Public Affairs, Office of the Hist.
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ASIN: 0160513960 |
Book Description
State Department Publication 11041.
Editor, Kent Sieg. GeneralEditor, Edward C. Keefer.
Part of a subseries of volumes which document the most important issues in the foreign policy of the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Includes memoranda and records of discussions that set forth policy issues and options and show decisions or actions taken.
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The Four World Food Agencies in Rome
Ross B. Talbot
Manufacturer: Iowa State Pr
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ASIN: 081380177X |
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- SOLDIERS SPEAK
- An interesting series of first hand accounts by IFOR troops
- A unique account
|
Ifor on Ifor: NATO Peacekeepers in Bosnia-Herzegovina
Ifor (Organization)
Manufacturer: Combined Publishing
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ASIN: 1901205002 |
Customer Reviews:
SOLDIERS SPEAK.......2000-09-20
Bosnia has pretty much faded into the background of American concern. When the American Division of the NATO Implementation Force (IFOR) rolled in on December 1995, the spotlight was on Bosnia and Americans became aware of the military role that their forces would play in the Balkans. Out of the tragedy and confusion of war came a book entitled "Cry Bosnia" by Paul Harris which chronicled the war in Bosnia itself through words and pictures.
Inspired by the success of Cry Bosnia, Ruppert Murray decided to write a similar book which would focus on the peacekeepers themselves rather than the political elements of Bosnia. His idea was merely to write minimal text with pictures but as he began to interview the soldiers and have them share their opinions, backgrounds and experiences the book began to take a life of its own. IFOR on IFOR is the soldiers' stories of their perceptions of why and how they came to Bosnia and what they feel their presence will accomplish.
The book is divided into three sectors representing the United States of America Division, the British Division and the French Division. He interviews the men and women of the armed forces who candidly share their views with him. Listen to these young warriors as they share their apathy, hope, and naivite in sharing their views of their deployment. The voices are diverse within each division and you can see the differences of opinions that run from nation to nation. The insights you get are extraordinary.
On a personal note, I was deployed to Bosnia and stayed there for a year. Everything that you have read, heard and seen in these interviews are what I experienced with this group of international soldiers. I highly recommend this book to you in getting the story of the soldier. Six copies returned home with me and many more were purchased for friends and relatives. This is an excellent chronicle in pictures and words.
An interesting series of first hand accounts by IFOR troops.......1998-10-06
This book offers a valuable insight into the attitudes of military personnel who were stationed in Bosnia to implement the Dayton Accord. I have read many books on Bosnia which have fuelled my indignation at how the international community stood by and let the Serbs mount what is tantamount to a genocidal war against Bosnian Muslims. This book gives an idea of how military people felt about the Bosnian issue. Their attitudes range from the idealistic and noble to short-sighted and complacent ( in fact some will fill you with rage at their indifference). It is rare that one encounters a book dealing with a major historical issue which allows the ordinary person, albeit a soldier, to articulate their views so openly. The photographs are excellent and Mr Wolfe Murray's introduction is very insightful. It would, however, have been even more interesting to have a similar book which gives voice to those UN troops who were there at the height of the conflict.
A unique account.......1998-07-08
The book was given to me by the author himself with dedication and as soon as I read it it became my absolute favourite. IFOR on IFOR has the largest accumulation of reviews, interviews and facts as well as interesting thoughts not only by the author himself but by the interviewed soldiers as well. As the author is in Bosnia from 1993, he knows the situation so if you need a close-up look on our rugged country check this book out.
Books:
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- Travels in Kashmir and the Panjab (Oxford in Asia Historical Reprints)
- We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance
- William S. Burroughs At the Front: Critical Reception, 1959 - 1989
- Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Heart of Hitler's Bayreuth
- Your Life Is Worth Mine: How Polish Nuns Saved Hundreds of Jewish Children in German-Occupied Poland, 1939-1945
- A Boy Called Slow (Paperstar Book)
- A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People: From the Time of the Patriarchs to the Present
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