International Organizations A Comparative Approach to the Management of Cooperation

This new edition of a classic text, comprehensively revised throughout, focuses on the role of international organizations in the context of emerging challenges to the centrality of the nation-state in the international system, such as humanitarianism, environmentalism, new legal standards and regimes, and controversial concepts such as "civil society" and "globalism." As inter-governmental and international non-governmental activities are increasingly being merged, for example in the area of peace-keeping, this erodes the sanctity of the territorial state as the primary political unit. Similarly, technological and social changes such as the Internet, encourage "borderless" activities (legal and illegal) by non-state actors. This book provides the basis for students to consider international organizations against the backdrop of a thorough rethinking of our international system and its prospects for the future in the face of these fundamental and unprecedented developments.