https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity

The End of History and the Last Man

In recent years there has been a growing body of literature within political science and international studies that directly and indirectly uses, discusses and analyzes the processes involved in lesson-drawing, policy convergence, policy diffusion and policy transfer. While the terminology and focus often vary, all of these studies are concerned with a similar process in which knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in one political setting (past or present) is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in another political setting.

Given that this is a growing phenomenon, it is something that anyone studying public policy needs to consider. As such, this article is divided into four major sections. The first section briefly considers the extent of, and reasons for, the growth of policy transfer. The second section then outlines a framework for the analysis of transfer. From here a third section presents a continuum for distinguishing between different types of policy transfer. Finally, the last section addresses the relationship between policy transfer and policy “failure.”

Learning from Abroad: The Role of Policy Transfer in Contemporary Policy‐Making

It comes as something ofa surprise to reflect that the New York Review ofBooks is now over twenty years old. Even people of my generation (that is, old enough to remember the revolutionary 196os but not young enough to have taken a very exciting part in them) think of the paper as eternally youthful. In fact, it has gone through years of relatively quiet life, yet, as always in a competitive journalistic market, it is the controversies that attract the interest of the reader and to which the history (especially an admittedly impressionistic survey that tries to include something of the intellectual context in which a journal has operated) must give some attention. Not all the attacks which the New York Review has attracted, both early in its career and more recently, are worth more than a brief summary. What do we now make, for example, of Richard Kostelanetz's forthright accusation that 'The New York Review was from its origins destined to publicize Random House's (and especially [Jason] Epstein's) books and writers'?1 Well, simply that, even if the statistics bear out the charge (and Kostelanetz provides some suggestive evidence to support it, at least with respect to some early issues), there is nothing surprising in a market economy about a publisher trying to push his books through the pages of a journal edited by his friends. True, the New York Review has not had room to review more than around fifteen books in each issue and there could be a bias in the selection of

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3507774.pdf

The New York Review of Books

Pasic and Weiss examine the limitations and the ethical dilemmas of the humanitarian impulse in light of the recent surge in humanitarian intervention. The authors use the experience of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the former Yugoslavia as an example of the way in which politics and humanitarianism are inextricably intertwined. They describe a spectrum of intervention, from rescue to restorative to revolutionary efforts. Rescue efforts often fail to address the underlying political problems, but for a rescuing nation to commit to “revolutionary” intervention and sustained support raises the issue of state sovereignty. Asserting that humanitarian intervention is a highly ambiguous principle, the authors warn of the dangers of politically driven rescues that often force trade-offs between the pursuit of rescue and political order.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0892679400001519

The Politics of Rescue: Yugoslavia's Wars and the Humanitarian Impulse

What lessons should policy makers, particularly those at United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York and those of the Clinton administration in Washington, be taking away from the military, humanitarian, and diplomatic dilemmas in the former Yugoslavia? Specifically, what have we learned about moral choice as it pertains to recent UN activities? What in fact are the moral choices, and how might they be framed by those in power to make decisions?

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0892679400001040

UN Responses in the Former Yugoslavia: Moral and Operational Choices

REACTIONS in developed countries to the United Nations system and the officials who staff it are indifferent at best and outright hostile at worst. Ironically, these same institutions and personnel are increasingly involved in the discussion on numerous issues of importance for the citizens of these countries-hostages in Iran, international economic relations, and the status of refugees in South East Asia are recent examples. This article examines the theory of the international civil service and the reality of the supra-national staff who are charged with the day-to-day responsibility for international co-operation. Although international organisations have traditionally been of marginal interest to scholars and national decision-makers not directly connected with the study or operation of international institutions, the situation has significantly changed during the last two decades. Decolonisation led to the rapid expansion of United Nations membership in the 1960s; and raw materials prices and shortages during the 1970s helped developing countries to assert their positions as active members of the international system in which they emphasised the work of the United Nations more than did established, economically developed states. The recognition of new problems and the rush to erect new rhetorical or institutional responses have so far monopolised analytical attention whilst the administrative aspects of these international bureaucracies have tended to be overlooked.'

/pdf/international-bureaucracy-the-myth-and-reality-of-the-vxu5v2o2sb.pdf

International Bureaucracy: The Myth and Reality of the International Civil Service

International relations teeters on the edge of an abyss of irrelevance. As an academic pursuit, it has become disparate and fragmented. Those of us in the discipline have ceased to pursue greater clarity in the way that we understand the world around us. Moreover, we have failed as agents of change; that is, as purveyors of opinion and proposals about a better and fairer world order. As such, we no longer serve our students and those practitioners who seek our advice, or, for those of us who take on policy jobs, to push out the envelope of what is considered acceptable. Global governance offers one potentially compelling way of “saving international relations”— though it is not without its problems. This article outlines how and why. The argument unfolds in three parts. The first outlines why and how IR teeters on the edge of an abyss. The second offers a proposal for moving beyond the fragmentation and atomization that afflicts international relations. We suggest that one way of encouraging reengagement is to return to debating grand questions that used to be the sustenance of IR. The third part argues that global governance—appropriately and specifically framed to make it fit for purpose—offers an opportunity to return to these questions and, in so doing, reinvigorate our fragmented and atomized field.

Global Governance to the Rescue: Saving International Relations?

(1994). Intervention: Whither the United Nations? The Washington Quarterly: Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 109-128.

Thomas G. Weiss

Papers

The Politics of Rescue: Yugoslavia's Wars and the Humanitarian Impulse

UN Responses in the Former Yugoslavia: Moral and Operational Choices

International Bureaucracy: The Myth and Reality of the International Civil Service

Global Governance to the Rescue: Saving International Relations?

Intervention: Whither the United Nations?