Thinking about Global Governance: Why People and Ideas Matter

by Weiss; Thomas G.

• ISBN13: 9780415781930
• ISBN10: 0415781930
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2011-09-08
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

What is the current state of thinking about global governance? Can the United Nations be reformed and modernized? Is it legal, ethical or desirable for states to invade other states in the name of humanitarian intervention?Thomas G. Weiss has been contemplating these significant issues throughout the course of his illustrious career. This collection presents his most important contributions to debates (which he has often helped to frame and shape) on UN Reform, non-state actors and global governance and humanitarian action in a turbulent world.A substantial new introduction brings these issues up-to-date and suggest fruitful new avenues for research. Thinking about Global Governance should be read by all graduate students in these areas and is an excellent resource for faculty and researchers.

Author Biography

Thomas G. Weiss is Presidential Professor of Political Science at The CUNY Graduate Center and Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, where he is co-director of the UN Intellectual History Project. He was President (2009-10) of the International Studies Association and chair (2006-9) of the Academic Council on the UN System (ACUNS). He has been a consultant for foundations and numerous inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations and was editor of Global Governance (2000-5) and research director of the International Commission on International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (2000-2). He co-edits the Routledge series Global Institutions.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. ix
Foreword	p. xii
Preface	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
The United Nations, Plus ca change	p. 23
Reinvigorating the international civil service	p. 25
How UN ideas change the world	p. 43
What happened to the idea of world government?	p. 66
Moving beyond North-South theater	p. 87
World politics: continuity and change since 1945	p. 101
An unchanged Security Council: the sky ain't falling	p. 120
Non-state actors and global governance	p. 125
The "third" United Nations	p. 127
Framing global governance, five gaps	p. 145
Governance, good governance, and global governance: conceptual and actual challenges	p. 168
Pluralizing global governance: analytical approaches and dimensions	p. 190
Humanitarian action in a turbulent world	p. 223
Political innovations and the responsibility to protect	p. 225
The fog of humanitarianism: collective action problems and learning-challenged organizations	p. 246
The humanitarian impulse	p. 264
The sunset of humanitarian intervention? The responsibility to protect in a unipolar era	p. 280
The politics of humanitarian ideas: few sovereign clothes	p. 297
Principles, politics, and humanitarian action	p. 309
A research note about military-civilian humanitarianism: more questions than answers	p. 329
Index	p. 353
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