This is the first comprehensive treatment of the reasons why international organizations have engaged in territorial administration. The book describes the role of international territorial administration and analyses the various purposes associated with this activity, revealing the objectives which territorial administration seeks to achieve.

There is growing recognition of the need for new approaches to the ways in which donors support accountability, but no broad agreement on what changed practice looks like. This publication aims to provide more clarity on the emerging practice.

Publisher Description

There has been intense debate in recent times over the legitimacy or otherwise of international law. This book contains fresh perspectives on these questions, offered at an international and interdisciplinary conference hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Law and International Law. At issue are questions including, for example, whether international law lacks legitimacy in general and whether international law or a part of it has yielded to the facts of power.

At the end of the Cold War, international law scholars engaged in furious debate over whether principles of democratic legitimacy had entered international law. Many argued that a 'democratic entitlement' was emerging. Others were skeptical that international practice in democracy promotion was either consistent or sufficiently widespread and many found the idea of democratic entitlement dangerous. Those debates, while ongoing, have not been comprehensively revisited in almost twenty years. Together with an original introduction, this volume collects the leading scholarship of the past two decades on these and other questions. It focuses particular attention on the normative consequences of the recent 'democratic recession' in many regions of the world.

Douglas M. Gibler argues that threats to homeland territories force domestic political centralization within the state. Using an innovative theory of state development, he explains patterns of international conflict and democracy in the world over time.

Identifies the major weaknesses in the current United Nations system and proposes fundamental reforms to address each. This title is also available as Open Access.