This insightful book investigates the role of the UN Secretariat in an era of significant global power shifts. It argues that though UN staff can shape political outcomes towards their own ideals and the UN’s institutional mission, their powers are limited by member states seeking to influence and control the Secretariat.

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.

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.

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.

Ayse Kaya analyses the relationship between states' economic power and their political power in key multilateral economic institutions.

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West? - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions? Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.

This book examines the strategic interactions among China, the United States, Japan, and Southeast Asian States in the context of China’s rise and globalization after the cold war. Engaging the mainstream theoretical debates in international relations, the author introduces a new theoretical framework—institutional realism—to explain the institutionalization of world politics in the Asia-Pacific after the cold war. Institutional realism suggests that deepening economic interdependence creates a condition under which states are more likely to conduct a new balancing strategy—institutional balancing, i.e., countering pressures or threats through initiating, utilizing, and dominating multilateral institutions—to pursue security under anarchy. To test the validity of institutional realism, Kai He examines the foreign policies of the U.S., Japan, the ASEAN states, and China toward four major multilateral institutions, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN Plus Three (APT), and East Asian Summit (EAS). Challenging the popular pessimistic view regarding China’s rise, the book concludes that economic interdependence and structural constraints may well soften the "dragon’s teeth." China’s rise does not mean a dark future for the region. Institutional Balancing in the Asia Pacificwill be of great interest to policy makers and scholars of Asian security, international relations, Chinese foreign policy, and U.S. foreign policy.