Individual Agency and Policy Change at the United Nations

Individual Agency and Policy Change at the United Nations PDF Author: Ingvild Bode
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317615131
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
This book highlights how temporary international civil servants play a crucial role in initiating processes of legal and institutional change in the United Nations system. These individuals are the “missing” creative elements needed to fully understand the emergence and initial spread of UN ideas such as human development, sovereignty as responsibility, and multifunctional peacekeeping. The book: Shows that that temporary UN officials are an actor category which is empirically crucial, yet usually neglected in analytical studies of the UN system. Focussing on these particular individual actors therefore allows for a better understanding of complex UN decision-making. Demonstrates how these civil servants matter, looking at what their agency is based on. Offering a new and distinctive model, Bode seeks to move towards a comprehensive conceptualisation of individual agency, which is currently conspicuous for its absence in many theoretical approaches that address policy change Uses three key case studies of international civil servants (Francis Deng, Mahbub ul Haq and Marrack Goulding) to explore the possibilities of this specific group of UN individuals to act as agents of change and thereby test the prevailing notion that international bureaucrats can only act as agents of the status quo. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international organizations and the United Nations.

Individual Agency and Policy Change at the United Nations

Individual Agency and Policy Change at the United Nations PDF Author: Ingvild Bode
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317615131
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book highlights how temporary international civil servants play a crucial role in initiating processes of legal and institutional change in the United Nations system. These individuals are the “missing” creative elements needed to fully understand the emergence and initial spread of UN ideas such as human development, sovereignty as responsibility, and multifunctional peacekeeping. The book: Shows that that temporary UN officials are an actor category which is empirically crucial, yet usually neglected in analytical studies of the UN system. Focussing on these particular individual actors therefore allows for a better understanding of complex UN decision-making. Demonstrates how these civil servants matter, looking at what their agency is based on. Offering a new and distinctive model, Bode seeks to move towards a comprehensive conceptualisation of individual agency, which is currently conspicuous for its absence in many theoretical approaches that address policy change Uses three key case studies of international civil servants (Francis Deng, Mahbub ul Haq and Marrack Goulding) to explore the possibilities of this specific group of UN individuals to act as agents of change and thereby test the prevailing notion that international bureaucrats can only act as agents of the status quo. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international organizations and the United Nations.

Civilian Protective Agency in Violent Settings

Civilian Protective Agency in Violent Settings PDF Author: Jana Krause
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192866710
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
More than half the world's population live in violent settings, such as civil wars, communal conflicts, cities plagued by gang violence, and entire areas governed by criminal organizations. Living exposed to diverse forms of violence, individuals and communities have found innovative-and sometimes counterintuitive-ways to protect themselves and others. Civilian Protective Agency in Violent Settings establishes the study of civilian agency and its protective dimension across various violent settings as a systematic and unified field of research. It brings together researchers spanning several social science disciplines to study civilian protective agency in different violent settings, including civil war, genocide, communal violence, and organized crime, and in various geographical locations, from Syria to Mozambique, Sri Lanka to Mexico, Iraq to Colombia and Western Europe. The volume offers conceptual foundations, new theoretical insights, and detailed empirics that advance our understanding of civilian protective agency and promote future research on the topic that is comparable, tractable, and cumulative.

The United Nations

The United Nations PDF Author: Kent J. Kille
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
This key resource for anyone interested in the United Nations, global issues, or world politics provides accessible and comprehensive coverage of the history, growth, and development of ideas and institutions governing the globe. The United Nations has been an essential actor in world politics for 75 years. Its entities have eliminated smallpox, protected the ozone layer, promoted arms control, and helped to save the lives of over 90 million children. Yet, it is frequently criticized as ineffective and antiquated. This book provides a balanced and systematic overview of the UN's contributions and challenges, highlighting areas where it plays an essential role in global governance as well as areas of redundancy and needed reform. This book provides readers with a clear, well-organized reference resource to the entire UN system-its principal organs, specialized agencies, programs and funds, and key issues of engagement. Through individual entries, it examines the history of UN engagement, ranging from peace and security to migration and climate change. It moves beyond a simple description of UN entities as it assesses the development of ideas (such as that of sustainable development), as well as responses to changes in world politics. Finally, it presents both the significant successes of UN work and continued challenges.

Advocacy and Change in International Organizations

Advocacy and Change in International Organizations PDF Author: Kseniya Oksamytna
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192671987
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
How do international organizations change? Many organizations expand into new areas or abandon programmes of work. Advocacy and Change in International Organizations argues that they do so not only at the collective direction of member states. Advocacy is a crucial but overlooked source of change in international organizations. Different actors can advocate for change: national diplomats, international bureaucrats, external experts, or civil society activists. They can use one of three advocacy strategies: social pressure, persuasion, and 'authority talk'. The success of each strategy depends on the presence of favourable conditions related to characteristics of advocates, targets, issues, and context. Institutionalization of new issues in international organizations as a multi-stage process, often accompanied by contestation. This book demonstrates how the advocacy-focused framework explains the origins of three workstreams of contemporary UN peacekeeping operations: communication, protection, and reconstruction. The issue of strategic communications was promoted by UN officials through the strategy of persuasion. Protection of civilians emerged due to a partially successful social influence campaign by a coalition of elected Security Council members and a subsequent (and successful) persuasion efforts by Canada. Quick impact projects entered peacekeepers' practice as the result of 'authority talk' by an expert panel. The three issues illustrate the diversity of pathways to change in international organizations, representing the top-down, bottom-up, and outside-in pathways. Moreover, they have achieved different degrees of institutionalization in UN's policies, structures, and frameworks: protection of civilians is the most institutionalized, as evidenced by measures to hold peacekeepers accountable for non-implementation, while quick impact projects are the least institutionalized.

Handbook on Governance in International Organizations

Handbook on Governance in International Organizations PDF Author: Alistair D. Edgar
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1800884931
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Required for peace and security, economic governance, sustainable development and humanitarian support, International Organisations (IOs) are central to the structure of global governance. Introducing the importance of governance in IOs, this Handbook addresses the collective challenges and synthesises the expertise of global or regional representativeness for international cooperation.

Routledge Handbook of International Organization

Routledge Handbook of International Organization PDF Author: Bob Reinalda
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040225535
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 974

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Book Description
This completely revised and rewritten handbook gives an overview of international organization (IO) as a dynamic field of research that adds to our understanding of global and regional relations and related domestic politics. Bringing together international scholars from a range of disciplines, it considers both IO as a process and multilateral organizations as institutions. This handbook is divided into five parts: I. Documentation, sources and perspectives II. International secretariats as bureaucracies III. Actors within and beyond international bureaucracies IV. Processes within and beyond international bureaucracies V. Challenges to international organizations Containing new chapters on topics such as the anthropological perspective, IO secretariats in several continents outside of Europe, feminization, the digital turn and challenges to IO legitimacy, the contributors reflect on the progression of IO studies from a burgeoning field to a well‐established subfield of international relations and the move away from scholarship based mainly in North‐Western Europe and the United States. This book will be of particular interest to scholars and students of IOs, global governance, diplomacy and foreign policy, as well as practitioners of multilateral cooperation.

United Nations peace operations and International Relations theory

United Nations peace operations and International Relations theory PDF Author: Kseniya Oksamytna
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526148862
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
United Nations peace operations have undergone multiple transformations over the more than seventy years of their existence. Multidimensional peace operations have organised elections, helped deliver humanitarian assistance, advised on army and police reform, and fought rebel groups. Such operations not only represent a core pillar of the multilateral peace and security architecture but also fundamentally reshape lives of millions of people around the world. This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of multiple theoretical perspectives on UN peace operations. It offers practical examples of how International Relations theories apply to specific policy issues and simultaneously demonstrates how major debates on UN peace operations - on civilian protection, local ownership, or gender mainstreaming - benefit from theoretical exploration. With insightful contributions from a range of international academics, UN peace operations and International Relations theory is an essential book for scholars, students, and experts working on peace and security and the broader issue of international cooperation.

Global Governance on the Ground

Global Governance on the Ground PDF Author: Nele Kortendiek
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198889143
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Global Governance on the Ground offers a new approach to how international organizations govern. Through an in-depth look at the case of migration and asylum, the book argues that international organizations (IOs) not only govern global challenges through rules, standards, expertise, and numbers but also through practice on the ground. Much scholarship has been devoted to the question of how IOs become autonomous agents and exercise authority to shape governance outcomes. Far less attention has been given to the way IOs use their field access to govern global issues on the ground-without first going through formal policy channels or renegotiating their authority. The book demonstrates that through field-based practice, IOs directly regulate global issues in the spaces where they become virulent, in different locations across the globe. The book draws on ethnographic fieldwork at the European external border, comprising interviews at the headquarters of seven organizations, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and three humanitarian NGOs. This, combined with an extensive document analysis, shows that field staff improvise to organize collective action on under-regulated issues and that headquarter staff consolidate and diffuse their operational knowledge. The book conceptualizes this governance mode that operates at a low institutional threshold but largely determines the de facto governance of contested or crisis-ridden global problems.

Intrusive Impartiality

Intrusive Impartiality PDF Author: Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science Marion Laurence
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197747574
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Impartiality is a central norm in United Nations peace operations that has long been associated with passive monitoring of cease-fires and peace agreements. In the twenty-first century, however, its meaning has been stretched to allow for a range of forceful, intrusive, and ideologically prescriptive practices. In Intrusive Impartiality, Marion Laurence explains how these new ways of being "impartial" emerge, how they spread within and across missions, and how they become institutionalized across UN peace operations. In doing so, Laurence sheds light on controversial changes in peacekeeping practice and provides an innovative framework for studying authority and change in global governance.

Transnational Expertise

Transnational Expertise PDF Author: Andrea Schneiker
Publisher: Nomos Verlag
ISBN: 3845291273
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Der Sammelband widmet sich der Analyse transnationaler Expertise - eines Themas, das in jüngerer Zeit beträchtliche Aufmerksamkeit in der Sozial- und Geschichtswissenschaft auf sich gezogen hat. Ihren Ausdruck fand die Forschung in der Entwicklung von Konzepten über transnationale Expertennetzwerke, Epistemische Gemeinschaften oder Gemeinschaften von Praktikern. Dennoch mangelt es bislang weiterhin an systematischem Wissen über die Funktionsweise transnationaler Expertengruppen und die Wechselbeziehungen, die es zwischen ihnen und Akteuren und Organisationen der transnationalen Politik gibt. Vor dem Hintergrund, dass transnationale Expertise bereits seit geraumer Zeit eine wichtige Rolle in der öffentlichen Politik spielt, nimmt dieser Band eine interdisziplinäre Perspektive ein und präsentiert Beiträge aus der Politikwissenschaft, der Soziologie und der Geschichtswissenschaft. Mit Beiträgen von Ingvild Bode, Christian Henrich-Franke, Robert Kaiser, Christian Lahusen, Alexander Reinfeld, Lukas Schemper, Andrea Schneiker und Carola Maria Westermeier.