You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Armed groups operating beyond the state have become the most important actors in most contemporary wars and violent conflicts, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Colombia and Somalia. They come in a dizzying array of forms: some informally linked to the state and state power, others in opposition to the state; some pursuing classic political goals, others primarily predatory and large-scale criminal enterprises. All groups, however, challenge the state’s Weberian monopoly of the legitimate use of force, yet their origins, evolution, violent dynamics, and relations with state power are poorly understood. This interdisciplinary collection includes both conceptual and empirical studies of contempor...
The case studies of this volume examine how and when cultural factors affect the elaboration and implementation of arms control and security-building policies.
Monitoring and Evaluation Systems are a critical component of evidence-based policymaking. This book aims to help governments and civil society organizations design, implement and use M and E information drawing from best practice experiences.
This book examines the role of technology in the core voices for International Relations theory and how this has shaped the contemporary thinking of ‘IR’ across some of the discipline’s major texts. Through an interview format between different generations of IR scholars, the conversations of the book analyse the relationship between technology and concepts like power, security and global order. They explore to what extent ideas about the role and implications of technology help to understand the way IR has been framed and world politics are conceived of today. This innovative text will appeal to scholars in Politics and International Relations as well as STS, Human Geography and Anthropology.
The 1990s saw a constant increase in international peace missions, predominantly led by the United Nations, whose mandates were more and more extended to implement societal and political transformations in post-conflict societies. However, in many cases these missions did not meet the high expectations and did not acquire a sufficient legitimacy on the local level. Written by leading experts in the field, this edited volume brings together ‘liberal’ and ‘post-liberal’ approaches to peacebuilding. Besides challenging dominant peacebuilding paradigms, the book scrutinizes how far key concepts of post-liberal peacebuilding offer sound categories and new perspectives to reframe peacebuil...
This book examines the effectiveness of multilateralism in ensuring collective security and, in particular, the EU's role in this process. In 1992, shortly after the end of the Cold War, a Security Council Summit in New York reaffirmed the salience of the system of collective security and stated the determination of the Heads of State to maintain it as the prime international instrument for preserving peace. Twenty years later, however, the record of collective security as well as of multilateralism has not been very encouraging. The system of collective security, as enshrined in the United Nations (UN) Charter, failed repeatedly to accomplish its mandate in the 1990s and has led to controve...
This book examines the strategic implications of Iran’s nuclear programme, providing an inventory of the negotiations and a discussion of possible solutions to this pressing international security issue. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear programme has been the cause of one of the most extended international crises of the past decade. Multilateral institutions have been unable to resolve the issue, which has the potential to derail the global nuclear non-proliferation regime. Recent failures of diplomatic offers for an extended Iran-EU cooperation and projected US arms sales to Iran’s neighbours suggest an imminent escalation of the issue, which has been simmering since first repor...
This edited volume examines the impact of globalisation on the economies, security policies and military-industrial complexes of the Asia-Pacific region. The work is structured into three main parts. The first explores globalization and its general effects on the policy-making of the nation-state; the second section looks at how globalisation affects a country's threat perception and defence posture within the specific context of the Asia-Pacific region; while the third explores how it impacts on a state's allocation of resources to defence, and how economic globalization affects the defence industry, with specific reference to the procurement policies and practices of different states across the Asia-Pacific.
This title was first published in 2001: Japan has a long history of being isolated from multilateral diplomacy. With its increasing economic power, Japan has become more concerned with external foreign relations and hence more involved in multilateral diplomacy. This coherent and interrelated text, brings together studies of the central issues involved, written by prominent Japanese and Western scholars, analyzing the emergence of Japan in multilateral fora from historical, domestic and international perspectives. Those concerned with international relations will find this text an essential guide for courses and research.
This book examines the emergence of new international norms to govern the spread of small arms, and the extent to which these norms have been established in the policies and practices of states, regions and international organizations. It also attempts to establish criteria for assessing norm emergence, and to assess the process of norm development by comparing what actually happens at the multilateral level. If norm-making on small arms and related multilateral negotiations have mostly dealt with ‘illicit arms’, and most of the norms examined here fall on the arms supplier side of the arms equation, the author argues that the creation of international norms and the setting of widely agreed standards amongst states on all aspects of the demand for, availability, and spread of both legal and illegal small arms and light weapons must become central to the multilateral coordination of policy responses in order to tackle the growing violence associated with small arms availability. Small Arms and Security will be of interest to researchers and professionals in the fields of peace and conflict studies, global governance, international security and disarmament.