This study explores the normative dimension of the evolving role of the United Nations in peace and security and, ultimately, in governance. What is dealt with here is both the UN's changing "raison d'etre" and the wider normative context within which the organization is located. The study looks at the UN through the window of one of its most contentious, yet least understood, practices: active involvement in intra-state conflicts as epitomized by UN peacekeeping. Drawing on the conceptual tools provided by "historical structural" approach, this study seeks to understand how and why the international community continuously reinterprets or redefines the UN's role with regard to intra-state conflicts. The study concentrates on intra-states' "peacekeeping environments" and examines what changes, if any, have occurred to the normative basis of UN peacekeeping in intra-state conflicts from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. One of the original aspects of the study is its analytical framework, where the conceptualization of "normative basis" revolves around objectives, functions and authority, and is closely connected with the institutionalized values in the UN Charter such as state sovereignty, human rights and socio-economic development. This publication should be essential reading for postgraduate students of international relations and international peacekeeping organizations.

Europe of the Dictators, 1919-1945.@@@International Politics since World War II: A Short History.

The United Nations, intra-state peacekeeping and normative change

The emergence of legal decolonization in the mid-twentieth century, as evidenced by the 1960 United Nations Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, is often understood through the lens of race and the disruption of racial hierarchy. If we take seriously the transnational feminist contention that the colonial racial order was also gendered, however, how might this perspective shift our understanding of decolonization? In this article, I explore the debates on decolonization that take place in the UN General Assembly from 1946–1960 that lead to the 1960 Declaration from a transnational feminist perspective to answer this question. Specifically, I use comparative historical and discourse methods of analysis to explore how colonialists and anti-colonialists negotiate the onset of legal decolonization, focusing especially on how colonialist hierarchies of race, culture, and gender are addressed in these debates. I argue that, on the one hand, colonialists rely on a paternalist masculinity to legitimate their rule (i.e., our dependencies require our rule the way a child requires a father). In response, anti-colonialists reply with a resistance masculinity (i.e., “colonialism is emasculating;” “decolonization is necessary for a return of masculine dignity”). I argue that decolonization in the United Nations transpires via contentions among differentially racialized masculinities. Ultimately, a transnational feminist perspective that centers the intersection of race and gender offers a richer analysis than a perspective that examines race alone.

Contending masculinities: the gendered (re) negotiation of colonial hierarchy in the United Nations debates on decolonization

Premises and Promises of International Law. An Empirical Analysis of Treaty Commitment (1945-2007)

Arising from a desire for "a new and more wholesome diplomacy," as President Woodrow Wilson phrased it,1 the concept of collective security has over the years encompassed hope, delusion, and disillusion as well. From its beginning it was seen as an alternative to the "crude machinations" of the balance of power system that had led to World War I; and it was designed, by means of the League of Nations, to offer legitimate international authority to manage a preponderant collective deterrent power, and to define and resist aggression. "The scheme is collective in the fullest sense; it purports to provide security for all states, by the action of all states, against all states which might challenge the existing order by the arbitrary unleashing of their power." 2 But if the concept of collective security was thought to express an international order other than the mechanical maneuvering of a balance of power system, it was not, at the same time, thought to be a form of world government. Even while seeking an effective deterrent arrangement, President Roosevelt said of the United Nations, "We are not thinking of a superstate with its own police force and other paraphernalia of coercive power," 3although national con-

Contingencies, Constraints, and Collective Security: Perspectives on UN Involvement in International Disputes

The structure of power in the international system has generated interest amongst scholars around the globe. Some argue that the international system is unipolar. This is premised on the notion that the United States is the only state with preponderance in all components of power â€“ military, economic, technological and cultural. Other scholars view global politics through a multipolar lens. Unlike the â€˜primacistsâ€™ (proponents of unipolarity), they posit that the United States has lost its primacy in the global arena and that new players have emerged that compete with it. Furthermore, many scholars posit that the structure of power in todayâ€™s international system has become so sophisticated and complex that traditional models such as unipolarity, bipolarity and multipolarity are insufficient to explain the reality in contemporary international realpolitik. It is in this context that Huntingtonâ€™s uni-multipolarity, Greviâ€™s interpolarity and Haassâ€™ nonpolarity can be located. Using both primary and secondary data, this article explores the structure of power in contemporary international politics. It seeks to determine whether or not existing models are adequate to explain the dynamics of such politics. It concludes that uni-interpolarity (a hybrid of uni-multipolarity and interpolarity) best explains the features of todayâ€™s global politics.

/pdf/polarity-in-contemporary-international-politics-a-uni-24csmtei6b.pdf

Europe of the Dictators, 1919-1945.@@@International Politics since World War II: A Short History.

Citations

The United Nations, intra-state peacekeeping and normative change

Contending masculinities: the gendered (re) negotiation of colonial hierarchy in the United Nations debates on decolonization

Premises and Promises of International Law. An Empirical Analysis of Treaty Commitment (1945-2007)

Contingencies, Constraints, and Collective Security: Perspectives on UN Involvement in International Disputes

Polarity in contemporary international politics : a uni-interpolar order?.

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