This volume offers a comprehensive evaluation of the concept of global order, with a particular emphasis on the role of regional organisations within global governance institutions such as the United Nations. Building from a solid theoretical base it draws upon the expertise of numerous leading international scholars offering a broad array of timely and relevant case studies. These all take into consideration the historical setting, before analysing the contemporary situation and offering suggestions for potential realignments and readjustments that may be witnessed in the future. The volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach when addressing some of the most pressing issues of global governance which our global community must tackle. This presents the readers an opportunity to understand related topics such as political economy, international law, institutions of global governance, in conjunction with the academic field of International Relations (IR). It further helps students and interested readers understand the theoretical and practical foundations to the changing nature of global affairs.

Explores the ways nations, international organizations, and individuals have sought to bring order to an inherently disorderly phenomenon - potential and actual violent conflict among organized political entities. This title presents an analysis that identifies incongruities between international needs and capabilities.

This book provides a critical examination of the foreign policy choices of one typical small state, New Zealand, as it faces the changing global balance of power. New Zealand’s foreign policy challenges are similar with those faced by many other small states in the world today and are ideally suited to help inform theoretical debates on the role of small states in the changing international system. The book analyses how a small state such as New Zealand is adjusting to the changing geopolitical, geo-economic, environment. The book includes perspectives from some of New Zealand's leading as well as emerging commentators on New Zealand foreign policy.

This volume examines the new, the changing, and the enduring features of international security in the post-Cold War era. In so doing, it examines the extent to which present state structures and institutions have been able to adapt and accommodate themselves to the diversity of security threats.

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.

This book is a study of the future of international law as well as the future of the United Nations. It is the first study ever bringing together the laws, policies and practices of the UN for the protection of the earth, the oceans, outer space, human rights, victims of armed conflicts and of humanitarian emergencies, the poor, the vulnerable and the disadvantaged world-wide. It reviews unprecedented dangers and challenges facing humanity such as climate change and weapons of mass destruction, and argues that the international law of the future must become an international law of security and of protection. It submits that the concept of international security in the UN Charter can no longer be restricted to situations of armed conflict but must be given its natural meaning: whatever threatens the security of humanity. It calls for the Security Council to perform its role as the guardian of the security of humankind and sees a leadership role for the UN Secretary-General in analysing and presenting challenges of international security and protection to the Security Council for its attention. Written by a seasoned scholar / practitioner of international law and the United Nations, who has served in key policy, peacemaking, peacekeeping and human rights positions in the United Nations, this book offers indispensable new vistas of international law and policy, and the future role of the United Nations.

The benefits of the U.S-led order and the many international agreements that the United States has championed to open up the world to the free flow of goods, services, ideas, and people, no longer look so promising. This shift has caused a public backlash against globalization not only in the United States but also in many Western countries. The major powers either do not comprehend the risks of the current transitional period or they do not have a clear vision for a new international order that will be broadly acceptable and thus considered legitimate by most other states. With these concerns in mind, the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations asked leading scholars from major power countries to address a common set of questions about the current international order.