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The United Nations is known to be the preeminent body to authorize and oversee international peacekeeping missions; however, new forms of African-led Peace Support Operations (PSO s) are increasingly common, innovative, and context-specific. This paper examines the evolution of African-led PSO s and argues that African-led PSO s are filling a vacuum and taking on responsibilities once assumed by the United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKO). The paper posits that the rise of African-led PSO s is due to the growing need for security and respond to the changing nature of conflict, the spread of insecurity and terrorism, and cross-border violence. Finally, the paper explores the implications of these operations for future missions in Africa, arguing that the future of African-led PSO s may be the preferred choice, with Regional Economic Communities and Ad-hoc Security Initiatives leading the way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies main path analysis to UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions as a novel way to identify what documents and themes have mattered most in the evolution of the organization. Three successive corpora containing all resolutions adopted by the UNGA during its first fifteen, thirty-five, and seventy-three years were analyzed. Results show that the theme of the main path of the first fifteen sessions was Palestine, and peacekeeping/budget for the other two corpora. Three concluding hypotheses are proposed as possible explanations for this finding. Main paths in networks of international norms might be understood as indicators of ongoing issues, as a sign of groundedness, or as residue from preferential attachment. This paper trail reconstructs relevant chapters of the UN's institutional development and reveals that texts of little fame can nonetheless be at the origin of large bodies of later works, and that jurisprudential density varies across UNGA topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Built on the exclusive funding of 1,000 large transnational corporations, the World Economic Forum is a not-for-profit Swiss foundation, aiming to shape the direction of globalization. Its events are characterized by low degrees of formality and transparency. Research on what this organization does is scarce. This article suggests the term discretionary governance to capture the precarious, yet existing, social order that the organization shapes. By discretionary governance, we mean a set of discreet practices based on the organization's judgement in ways that escape established democratic controls. Drawing on ethnographic data the paper demonstrates how selection, secrecy, and status form key components of this tenuous ordering. Selection processes and secrecy contribute to status elevation of the individuals and organizations chosen to participate. Upon them and the organization itself is bestowed a symbolic capital that is practical and possibly profitable in the world of global governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multilateral development banks (MDB s) are a growing source of development finance, with nearly two trillion dollars in assets. They have developed a wide array of governance structures, with implications for the distribution of members' control over those assets. This paper measures that power distribution in 28 MDB s using Penrose-Banzhaf and Shapley-Shubik power indices and members' relative voting power on MDB governance boards. It uses these calculations to create a typology of MDB governance structures: creditor-led MDB s distribute power among non-borrowers, core borrower-led MDB s distribute power among a few central borrowers, and mutual aid-oriented MDB s distribute power among a wide group of borrowers. Finally, it explores the impact of the creation of two new MDB s, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank, and finds that while they do not dramatically alter the global landscape they do allow significantly greater access to capital for some borrowers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do regime complexes as social orders affect relations among international organizations (IO s)? This article explores this question by studying the longitudinal development of interorganizational practices and the social meanings attached to these practices that constitute a regime complex. Adopting a practice lens, our analysis redirects scholarly attention from rationalist accounts of strategic interactions between IO s to the study of patterned "doings" among actors in regime complexes. The mixed-methods analysis of interorganizational practices between eight IO s in the global health regime complex shows that cooperation among IO s is not primarily the outcome of rational responses to problems of collective action. Rather, IO s engage in similar types of practices because they want to be considered "good" IO s that follow a repertoire of habitual and appropriate practices. In turn, interorganizational practices create social meanings that constrain IO s. The approach put forward in this paper demonstrates the ordering effect of practices on the global health regime complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power shifts leading to heightened conflict and negotiation deadlocks, as well as growing institutional fragmentation and informality, constitute major challenges for global economic governance. The three books reviewed in this article provide innovative and unique explanations for these developments, through the lens of Southern countries (Shaffer and Narlikar) as well as the industrialized West (Roger). While the studies by Narlikar and Shaffer highlight changes in the negotiation strategies and the legal capacities of poor countries and emerging powers, Roger develops a theory explaining why economically advanced Western democracies increasingly rely on informal institutions. The article examines how and in what ways the three books complement conventional wisdom in economics, International Political Economy (IPE) and International Relations (IR) literature on global economic governance. It discusses the books' contributions to the theorizing of global (economic) governance, the advancements towards a Global IR (and IPE), the changing power relations in global economic institutions, the domestic and the transnational dimensions of global economic governance, and the role of informality in the design of global economic fora. The conclusion summarizes the main insights offered about the current crises of multilateralism and delineates avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of "BRICS Plus" indicates a more explicitly hierarchical world order. The putative equality of nation-states enshrined through the UN General Assembly's one state–one vote formula is increasingly being eroded by neglect or through the emergence of unequal multilateral formats where rising powers have accorded themselves greater primacy in the new structures because of failures to gain greater shares of power or responsibility in global institutions. However, a more explicitly power-based order that dispenses with putative sovereign equality will be more unstable as the primary power-sorting mechanism will tend toward conflict. This article therefore calls for urgent reform for sustaining the multilateral rules-based order underpinned by the United Nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For nearly half a century, negotiations in the context of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have sought to reduce pressures on nature without curtailing the North's wealth or thwarting the South's economic development. Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, science has become more granular, the global economy has grown phenomenally, greenhouse gas emissions and temperature rises have accelerated rather than slowed, the climate crisis and inequality have become more extreme, and the status quo interests have become more entrenched. After three lost (wasted, rather) decades, climate mitigation is terribly urgent, yet hugely contested. Choices are stark: financing mitigation and adaptation, or stomaching immense suffering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2022, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) released a Special Report on threats to human security in the Anthropocene, a year after UN Secretary-General António Guterres released his report Our Common Agenda. In anticipation of the 2024 Summit of the Future, both called for a reinvigoration of networked multilateralism and for solidarity to be adopted as a third human security pillar alongside protection and empowerment. This article explores those expectations against a deeper understanding of the UN history of human security and a cycle of declared concerns about human insecurity and precarity dating at least to UNDP's 1994 Human Development Report. It argues that there is little new in the "next-generation" model of networked multilateralism and that, as a global governance norm, solidarity for human security is underconceptualized and poorly operationalized. It points to the importance of reclaiming the local as a site of people-centered agency, care, and voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This vile paper-money and funding system; this system of Dutch descent, begotten by Bishop Burnet and born in hell; this system has turned everything into a gamble. There are hundreds of men who live by being the agents to carry on gambling ... many of the gamblers live in the country; they write up to their gambling agent, whom they call their stockbroker; he gambles according to their order; and they receive the profit or stand to the loss. Is it possible to conceive a viler calling than that of an agent for the carrying on of gambling! And yet the vagabonds call themselves gentlemen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of informal international institutions has been one of the most significant developments in institutional design and choice since the 1990s. While states have increasingly opted for informal governance, little is known about the character of intergovernmental relations in these settings. Scholars, for instance, debate whether great powers dominate such institutions, or whether influence can be exercised by a wider array of players. Drawing from the author's experience as a government representative within the Proliferation Security Initiative, a leading informal institution, this article provides a theory-driven analysis of intergovernmental interactions within such bodies. It demonstrates that diplomacy within informal institutions tends to assume a decentralized, networked quality that favors actors positioned at the center of intergovernmental networks. In doing so, the article highlights clear means through which central network positions confer influence. The article also sheds new light on the Proliferation Security Initiative and on counterproliferation cooperation more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the era of globalization, the international community has witnessed a rapid increase in the number of low-skilled workers migrating from developing countries to industrial countries. However, there remain competing approaches to the governance of lowskilled labor migration; that is, the economic theory and the rights-based approach. By utilizing the labor migration between Vietnam and Japan under the Technical Intern Training Program (TITP), this article reveals the limitations of these two approaches in governing the migration of low-skilled workers. Moreover, through examining the Memorandum of Cooperation on the Technical Intern Training Program signed by the Vietnamese and Japanese governments in 2017 and its contribution to the TITP, this article suggests that to regulate labor migration properly, it is essential to uphold the rights-based approach and consider labor migration as a transnational issue that should be addressed at the international level; that is, through the bilateral or multilateral instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informal intergovernmental organizations (IIGO s) are institutionally weak: they lack a legal foundation and a permanent secretariat, staff, or headquarters. Yet states' use of IIGO s like the Group of 7 (G7), Group of 20 (G20), and Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) group has grown from ad hoc crisis management to the ongoing governance of a variety of critical global issues. How do IIGO s support extensive state interaction without a permanent secretariat? Surprisingly, whereas existing work focuses on why states choose informality, how IIGO s function and adapt remains little explored. This article traces the changing organizational requirements and IIGO s' institutional design through an in-depth anatomy of the G20. It demonstrates that the G20 substituted for formal centralization through the development of three principal mechanisms: a troika rotating chair system, the designation of Sherpas, and the reliance on information technology. In doing so, the article highlights the institutional foundations of one of the most significant organizational reconfigurations in the post-Cold War multilateral system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the effect of delegation to an agreement executor, such as an international organization (IO), on the success of conventional arms control (CAC) agreements in Europe? Arms control agreements have taken different approaches to delegation. The extent of state delegation to treaty executors has ranged from nonexistent to substantial. Previous studies have not looked at delegation as an independent variable of CAC agreement success. This article applies a sum score methodology assessing nine variables in a dataset of nineteen CAC agreements in Europe over the past 100 years. There is a low correlation between delegation and CAC agreement success, though the data suggests that third-party state and IO involvement are the most significant variables related to success. This article proposes that high delegation to an IO with third-party state participation will increase the likelihood that a future CAC agreement between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Russia could succeed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the theoretical foundations of international security and regime theory that lay strict conditions for the creation of international regimes to explain the nature of the cyber conflict and the reasons that prevent the creation of a global regime for cybersecurity. This article analyzes the cybersecurity concerns and interests of the world's leading powers in cyberspace--China, Russia, the European Union, and the United States--based on some key cybersecurity issues in dispute, inter alia, information sovereignty, militarization of cyberspace, and their politics of cyber norms. The article suggests that the absence of a dominant hegemon in the international system, and the perception of cyberspace not only as a domain that increases vulnerabilities and threats, but also as a domain for gaining a strategic advantage, does not meet the theoretical premises for the creation of an international regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the response of the United Nations (UN) and other international organizations to the Covid-19 pandemic. It acknowledges the UN's ability to adapt and continue its work, but also highlights challenges caused by political disagreements among member states. The World Health Organization (WHO) faced criticism and diplomatic confrontations, while vaccine nationalism hindered global cooperation. The UN's response is seen as a success, but there is a need for reflection and potential changes to working methods in the future. [Extracted from the article]

The article shares origin of leadership and leadership style of Kofi Annan, secretary general of United Nations (UN), with his composure, optimism, and compassion for humankind. Topics includes discussion on the formatives influences of leaders by family, culture, and the historical context; use of security general position as moral authority to promote a vision of Kofi's passion for UN to serve their charters; and information of resolving of local disputes of Ghanaian tribal tradition.

In 2015, the United Nations agreed on seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDG s). These SDG s are not legally binding and lack strict enforcement mechanisms. International organizations that seek to implement these goals therefore rely on soft tools to influence governments and other actors, which is often described as "orchestration." This article focuses on regional governance and studies the yet unexplored role of the five UN Regional Commissions. These commissions seek to link the global ambitions of the SDG s with regional actors, contexts, and priorities. Drawing on extensive document analysis and a series of semistructured expert interviews, the article analyzes the orchestration efforts of all five Regional Commissions, focusing on agenda setting, coordination, and support. It concludes that instead of a unified orchestrating role, Regional Commissions play in practice a balancing role for agenda setting, a sharing role when it comes to coordination, and a conforming role in terms of support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional wisdom dictates the ten elected members (E10) operate within the predominance of the five permanent members (P5) in the UN Security Council. Often also constrained by limited internal resources, many of the E10 need to ensure external support to promote their interests. In research, however, limited theoretical disaggregation exists on E10 strategies and conditions affecting their maneuvering to obtain influence. To address this gap, this article draws on existing research to form a framework and further inform this by using material from Sweden's term (2017–2018) related to how Sweden sought to contribute to the progress of Women, Peace and Security. The article uses qualitative empirical material from thirty semistructured interviews of Swedish diplomats, other Member States of the Council, UN officials, scholars, and civil society advocates. The utility of this framework demonstrates the efficacy of E10 power, thereby opening up new avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article maps the evolution of the Chinese activities within the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), with a focus on the Chinese standard-setting experience. It analyzes three different moments of the ITU-China standard-setting history: Audio Video Coding Standards (AVS) from 2002 to 2007; TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE standards from 1998 to 2013; and 5G standards from 2012 to 2013. The study contributes to the literature, first, by demonstrating that China-ITU relations have been useful to China to support the shift from norm taker to norm maker into the standard-setting process through techno-nationalism in the case of AVS, techno-globalism in the case of TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE, and neo-techno-globalism in the case of 5G. Second, it highlights how China benefited from its ITU presence to improve its abilities in lobbying for promoting new standards globally. Third, it highlights the ITU's role as actor, arena, and antenna in the field of techno-diplomacy and standards' definition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019, the Second High-Level UN Conference on South-South Cooperation was held, revitalizing South-South and triangular cooperation. It was intended to incorporate the principal advances in the international agenda on the effectiveness of aid, financing, and the 2030 Agenda, which is the framework of this article. From an analytical perspective, the aim is to identify the main challenges posed by the conference for the private sector in its connection with South-South and triangular cooperation in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals, which require multistakeholder approaches in a postpandemic context of international crisis. Three levels of challenges are identified: programmatic, operational, and general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fifteen countries recently signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and formed the world's largest trade bloc between some of the globe's largest and fastest-growing economies. Employing a text-as-data analysis, this article systematically compares the text of the RCEP to the previous agreements of its members to determine the sources of language in the RCEP and investigate why particular treaty text is replicated more frequently relative to others. The results indicate that language derived from the multiparty and multicontinental trade agreements of the United States, a state not involved in the RCEP negotiations, accounted for a disproportionate share of the finalized text. These findings highlight the temporal dimension of power asymmetries as well as the importance of treaty design itself in the diffusion of regulatory norms and suggest that specific trade agreements serve as reference points for subsequent agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effectiveness of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) international regime to govern anti-money laundering (AML) and counterterrorist financing (CTF) has been questioned since its establishment. In theory, the FATF's network of multilevel actors should protect the integrity of the international financial system. The empirical evidence in this article shows that the FATF has made a difference in ensuring states' (official) compliance with its measures, using extrinsic motivation tools; for example, ranking noncompliant states. However, it argues that such motivation only ensures actors' minimum compliance, meaning that the regime's effectiveness is suboptimal, while fostering intrinsic motivation would improve actors' performance. Therefore, it is essential to understand why actors comply with the FATF approach and how they could be persuaded to achieve better compliance so that the regime's effectiveness is feasible. This article explores these questions, using interviews with thirty practitioners in three locations, supported by a qualitative analysis of documentary data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines briefly the changing nature of conflict from the end of the Cold War until the present "post-post Cold War" era. Against the backdrop of Secretary-General António Guterres's forthcoming (June 2023) New Agenda for Peace in response to the changing nature of warfare, alongside waning demand for certain UN conflict management tools, the article offers concrete recommendations for advancing peacekeeping (a New Civilian Response Capability, investing in hybrid and partnership-oriented peacekeeping, and revisiting the idea of standing peacekeeping forces) and disarmament (enhanced Arms Trade Treaty transparency, aligning the interests of nuclear armed states and non–nuclear weapons states, and establishing global norms on the illegality of specific types of cyber behavior) through the world body. Reform proposals privilege the development of multilateral and local capacities for peace. The article concludes with some thoughts on the research agenda ahead for scholars and policy analysts dedicated to studying and pursuing peace through more effective approaches to global governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To protect people under attack, what kinds of tools do peacekeepers need? The United Nations is gradually gaining valuable experience with sophisticated technologies for protection of civilians (POC). However, most remain underused and underevaluated, especially attack helicopters, night vision devices, and nonlethal weapons. This article presents case studies of these three crucial tools to examine their utility and to identify their shortcomings. Attack helicopters are demonstrated as a powerful through ironic symbol and an important means of robust peacekeeping in Central African Republic. Night vision devices proved essential for POC in protecting Haitians from gangs in 2007. Nonlethal weapons, like those developed on the spur of the moment in the Democratic Republic of Congo, helped the UN deal with civilian threats without recourse to lethal force. All these proven technologies have helped peace operations save lives and thus need detailed study to gain lessons. Some novel but untested technologies are also introduced, including laser signaling and digital simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the institutional collaboration between the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) on the Dushanbe-Uzbekistan Border Road Improvement Project in Tajikistan. It argues that AIIB's adoption of the EBRD's environmental and social safeguard norms and project management norms facilitates the provision of infrastructure-related public goods in Tajikistan in three ways. First, the harmonization between the governance norms of these two banks facilitates their cofinancing which fills the financing gap of the project. Second, the policy coherence enables the two institutions to implement environmental and social safeguard norms that the Tajikistan government is unable to fully practice. Third, it paves the way for the transfer of project management experience from the EBRD to AIIB. Through this learning process, AIIB is able to provide additional infrastructure-related public goods in Tajikistan by acting as an independent provider of project monitoring services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about the role social media can play in support of peacekeeping missions, especially in times of crisis. Looking at the use of Facebook by the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) before and during the Covid-19 pandemic, this article reconstructs social media practices of a peacekeeping mission in a global crisis. To assess how UNMISS used Facebook, it first connects research on discursive legitimation efforts by international organizations with work on strategic communication. Second, it provides a content analysis on Facebook posts published by UNMISS between 2018 and 2022 to determine how the mission engaged with its audience, how it framed its engagement, what topics were being addressed, and how the Covid-19 pandemic changed these communication patterns. Results show a conscious "propaganda for peace" strategy of the peacekeeping mission as UNMISS framed itself as a positive force for the peace process, using tailored communication strategies that rarely engaged in two-way communication, even in times of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting stability is a core component of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) surveillance's mandate. The Covid-19 pandemic hit almost every country worldwide. This article evaluates whether and how the IMF surveillance documents in the aftermath of the health and economic crisis have identified risks and mitigation measures to improve health outcomes, protect vulnerable people and firms, and address climate change. Through the IMF COVID-19 Surveillance Monitor, a textual analysis index, the authors found that these issues received relatively little attention in Article IV consultations in 2019, with fiscal issues dominating the discussion. However, the consultations conducted in 2020 show some timely incremental shifts and more attention toward health systems and protecting vulnerable matters. While climate change has become a key part of senior IMF official narratives, it has not had a significant presence in surveillance activities. The techniques and indices developed here can help the IMF improve its surveillance policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study reported in this article aimed to find the extent to which the mutual accountability mechanism is applicable in fragile states where state capacity and legitimacy are insufficient. Donors provide foreign aid to fragile states even when there is no firm-standing counterpart to be held accountable. This is done to meet short-term development needs that are heavily focused on humanitarian relief. Based on an examination of the discursive evolution of fragility and donors' categorization of fragile states based on the capacity-legitimacy configuration, this found that development needs in fragile states can be met through mutual accountability relations with partnership platforms. Represented by the g7+, partnership platforms channel the development needs in a collective form and enable their Member States to gain a certain level of legitimacy. Individual approaches to these countries may be challenging, but seeking strategic responses to development needs through such partnership platforms can create new opportunities for development effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Article VII of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) requires states to provide emergency assistance in the case of a deliberate bioweapons attack on any state party to the convention. Since no operational mechanism defining how to request or provide such assistance has yet been established, the painful lessons of the 2014–2016 West African Ebola crisis returned this topic to the agenda of the BWC. This study uses multiple streams analysis to investigate the impact of the Ebola crisis on the considerations of Article VII. While it revived the three streams of the debate—problem, policy, and politics—and opened a policy window, nevertheless, no political entrepreneur was able to couple the streams to produce policy output. As this window of opportunity begins to close, the Covid-19 pandemic seems to be the next focusing event shaping the BWC discourse on emergency assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Providing high-level policy advice to developing countries with the purpose to shape national policies is a key function of the UN. Yet no official UN definition of policy advice exists and little is known on how much weight the UN gives to this support modality in contrast to capacity-building and implementation work. To address this gap, this article first articulates the case for the UN's role in policy change. It then presents an empirical analysis of the policy advice landscape of the UN, providing a numerical estimate of the share of resources dedicated to policy advice and identifying five practical constraints on the UN's policy advice function. Results suggest that, despite high expectations, the UN's fieldwork is not strategically focused on policy advice. This article contributes to the underresearched field of UN development work and how it is, or should be, shaped by the UN's multilateralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do Southeast Asian states use regional mechanisms for disaster relief? From a conventional functionalist perspective, inadequate domestic-level responses to emergencies create a demand for scaled-up governance. This article offers an alternative interpretation of disaster cooperation in Southeast Asia. Drawing on theoretical insights from comparative regionalism and critical disaster studies, it argues that the raison d'être of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA Centre) is to empower ASEAN states vis-à-vis extraregional humanitarian actors. The AHA Centre works to enable Member States to gatekeep intrusive extraregional aid and, ultimately, to transform authority relations in the international humanitarian system in favor of state actors that have traditionally found themselves in a peripheral and passive role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In international politics, governments may tend to favor countries with which they share some degree of cultural affinity. Moreover, international organizations can strengthen solidarity among their members. Not surprisingly, Muslim countries, which came together under the umbrella of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), frequently state that they pursue Muslim solidarity in international politics. By looking at voting preferences of OIC member Muslim countries in the UN General Assembly about the selection of nonpermanent UN Security Council members, this article aims to understand Muslim solidarity in international politics. For this, the article uses newspaper reports, political statements, secret intelligence reports, and interviews regarding the votes of Muslim countries in contested elections in which a Muslim country competed with its non-Muslim rival for the same Security Council seat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Credibility has been used to explain theories of deterrence and cooperation in international relations. In the peacekeeping environment, for what purposes should credibility be built and how can it be signaled? Despite being listed by the UN as a success factor in peace operations, our understanding of credibility in peacekeeping remains limited and focused on deterrence. This article argues that credibility in peace operations must be built for both deterrence and cooperation purposes. Drawing on the international relations, civil war, and peacekeeping literatures, it conceptualizes credibility in peacekeeping by identifying the purposes for which credibility must be built and signaled: deterrence and cooperativeness. It contends that while a peace operation's ability to deter is limited, signaling cooperativeness - credibility in cooperation—enables a force to cultivate cooperation with national and subnational audiences. This helps to create a more predictable security environment by enabling the force to function on a daily basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

5 The Urgent and Continuing Need for UN Security Council Reform A mainstay of the Security Council told me, just before SVG officially joined, that I would surely change my mind about Security Council reform once I saw how the Council really functioned. SVG is the smallest country - by far - to ever sit on the Security Council, in terms of geographical size and population. SVG saw Haiti, our Caribbean Community (CARICOM) sister state and first free black nation in the Western Hemisphere, as the top country-specific agenda item to address on the Security Council. "Unconventional" is the word that may come to the mind of an outsider looking at the term of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (hereinafter SVG) on the UN Security Council. [Extracted from the article]

This article analyzes the role of UN sanctions in the context of peace negotiations in South Sudan from the outbreak of the civil war in December 2013 until the signing of the peace agreement in August 2015. Drawing on the literature regarding third-party intervention in civil wars, it explores whether the UN sanctions regime—established in March 2015—was conceived as an instrument of leverage to get the parties to agree to a settlement. The article asks two questions: Have sanctions and mediation been coordinated? Has the interlink between sanctions and mediation been successful? First, there has been little coordination between sanctions and mediation. Second, UN sanctions did not appear to play a crucial role in the mediation process. This analysis is based on desk research and nineteen interviews with officials from the UN, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, and other regional actors conducted between 2017 and 2018. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UN-imposed sanctions on Sierra Leone began in 1997 after the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) led a coup that forced newly elected president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah into exile. Alongside its peacemaking efforts, the UN Security Council explicitly supported the reinstatement of Kabbah, and its sanctions targeted the RUF by limiting travel and banning the trade of arms, petroleum, and diamonds. This article analyzes whether and how UN sanctions pushed the RUF to negotiate, accept, and implement agreements mediated by the Economic Community of West African States and the UN. Its findings are drawn from the qualitative analysis of official documents, memoirs, and interviews with key negotiators. It adds to the inclusion debate in peace mediation literature by discussing whether the coordinated use of sanctions and mediation can resolve the difficulties inherent in including veto players in peace negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While sanctions and mediation are often used to address the same conflict situations, they are usually employed without significant coordination. Focusing on a rare case of a mediator successfully wielding the threat of sanctions, this article explores the utility of sanctions for mediation in the Yemeni political transition during the mandate of UN special adviser Jamal Benomar. Although the transition ultimately derailed, the analysis shows that the threat of sanctions can be used in different phases of the mediation process to provide mediators with the leverage needed to convince conflict parties to engage in negotiations, break stalemates during talks, nudge parties toward an agreement, or persuade potential spoilers to refrain from undermining the implementation of the negotiated agreement. Their success, however, not only depends on the degree of convergence between the application of the two instruments, but also on the type of target, regional support, and institutional backing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sanctions and mediation are often applied simultaneously by the UN, but there has been little systematic exploration of their interrelationships. Drawing on research from the Sanctions and Mediation Project (SMP), both complications and complementarities can be identified. Sanctions can complicate mediation by fostering exclusion, emboldening nonsanctioned parties, closing mediation space, undercutting mediator impartiality, and forcing premature agreements. At the same time, sanctions can complement mediation by deterring spoilers, breaking stalemates, incentivizing cooperation, modifying cost-benefit calculations, ensuring broad participation in talks, and facilitating the onset of talks. The conditions under which complementarity can be enhanced include UN Security Council unity, focus and coherence of mandates, and regional cooperation. This article concludes with policy recommendations for different institutional actors and some suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I will therefore mobilize the whole United Nations system to assist countries in support of a renewed social contract, anchored in human rights.[3] However, less is said about some of the complex global issues that can have detrimental effects on social contracts. Furthermore, just as the Secretary-General urged mobilizing the United Nations system to support the new social contracts, it would have been important to highlight some key areas where global issues may be detrimental to national social contracts. The Secretary-General's I Our Common Agenda i (OCA) report presented in 2021 responds to a mandate by Member States as part of the UN75 Declaration in 2020.[1] The report centers on promoting a "renewed social contract" and a "new global deal", placing a strong emphasis on future generations. The OCA report could have taken a stronger stance on the need for some of these basic global agreements to sustain social contracts at the national and local level, and urge Member States to prioritize these, if the goal is indeed to support new social contracts. [Extracted from the article]

Japan has been an important actor in Africa's international relations over the past two decades, although its role tends to be understated in most analyses of Africa's ties with the large powers. This article reviews one facet of Japan's engagement with the continent, as enacted through the platform of the Group of 8. There have been significant overlaps between Japan's Africa diplomacy and its wider multilateral objectives and, since the end of the Cold War, the G8 has been an important forum where these aspects have converged. The article assesses past patterns and contemporary dynamics in the evolving relations between Japan and the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the normative case for global tax governance. Contrary to an influential part of the literature, national tax policy choices cause significant externalities for other nation-states. Focusing on business taxation, the article shows that tax competition undermines the integrity and distributive principles of domestic tax systems and aggravates the inequality between developed and developing countries. Further, it demon- strates that the effects of international tax competition are unjust irrespective of whether a globalist or less demanding internationalist perspective on justice is adopted. The minimum requirement of justice is to devise global rules that ensure that national tax systems remain capable of implementing distributive justice as they see fit. Finally, the article presents and discusses a concrete proposal for the global governance of business tax competition, namely, unitary taxation with formula apportionment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis of ways in which the global financial crisis is likely to affect international financial regulations. It is argued that the crisis is likely to damage efforts at global cooperation. Developing nations may be less inclined to adopt the rules promoted by organizations such as the G7 (Group of Seven countries), the International Monetary Fund, or the World Bank. The question of whether a uniform global regulatory scheme would be universally equitable is also addressed.

The article provides information concerning the research works of World Bank in the U.S. Research is on e of the important activities of the World Bank and an essential input to lending. The author implies that the Bank must combine the power of ideas and knowledge with finance to meet the challenges of development and poverty reduction. Research findings are used in the advisory services of the Bank which include policy dialogue with governments, analytical reports, and technical assistance. World Bank lending provides opportunities for learning about development.

This article investigates Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-level development cooperation, a relatively overlooked dimension in assessing regionalism in Southeast Asia, by examining the Initiative for ASEAN Integration (IAI). The IAI provides a unique case of experimenting with multilateral South-South development cooperation based on regional solidarity; however, despite the declared aspirations and commitments to the program, this article finds that the IAI's actual development has been quite contrary to the declared goals. First, unlike what was expected, IAI has not been able to provide institutional benefits to help pool ASEAN-6's resources regionally and coordinate their development programs. Second, the principle of solidarity made the IAI valuable, but it did not stand out in its actions. Third, although its primary goal was to narrow the gap among members, IAI ironically created unwanted diplomatic divide and discontent. The observations confirm a perspective that constructing ASEAN as a regional community is both driven and constrained by member states' nationalistic priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UN Development Programme introduced the human security concept in 1994 to address the diversity of challenges to people's survival, livelihood, and dignity in seven key areas: personal, food, health, economic, political, community, and environmental security. A voluminous literature has since engaged its definitional parameters, theoretical implications, and practical applications. Yet neither dignity nor community security , defined in part to include cultural traditions and identities, have attracted much attention despite considerable human and community in securities caused by assaults on cultural heritage which, as emblematic of distinctive cultural identities, have downward effects on dignity. This article aims to correct that gap. It identifies and examines three security markers to ascertain and redress the sufferance of indignities and insecurities pertaining to heritage, dignity, and community security: ensuring use of heritage; promoting its transmission; and protecting and advancing cultural rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the vast number of people who make global governance happen. It probes the role of the unknown people in the "middle" who are largely absent from scholarly gaze: professionals, service teams, and others who act behind the scenes. They are not at the top of public and private organizations ("global governors" in the literature), but they keep the lights on. They accomplish the policy, operational, and support work to move the needle of global governance institutions of all varieties from the local to global. These largely invisible and unheard populations—at least in the scholarly and policy literatures—make global governance work. The "missing middle" is not confined to the everyday contributions of professionals in intergovernmental secretariats because contemporary global governance is not synonymous with international organization, but concerns networked forms of public authority that may or may not include secretariats or states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the very outset, I want to set to rest the myth that the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan poses a challenge to the international system as presently constituted. Second, the near total ostracism of the Taliban regime by the international community and the consequent economic distress it caused made the Taliban dependent on bin Laden's largesse that saved the regime from economic collapse. 3 Strategic Factors Favoring the Taliban In addition to these considerations, geopolitical factors also work in favor of the Taliban regime. [Extracted from the article]

Focuses on the postwar political economy in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) which was ravaged by war in 1990s. Statistics on unemployment in BiH; Attitude shown by armed factions and entrepreneurs; International agencies wielding influence over monetary policy and economic development of BiH.

Focuses on the efficiency and need for the development of information and communication technologies (ICT) in developing nations. Efforts to bridge the digital divide between developed and developing countries; Examples showing fruitfulness of ICT; Problems faced by developing countries in their access to the global information economy by ICT regimes and technologies.