United Nations Politics

Politics in the United Nations reflects the predominant discord and occasional convergence among the members of the UN system as they view the international problems of our times through lenses of their geographic, historical, ideological, religious, and ethnic diversity. The contributors to this book describe how, since the United Nations was founded more than forty years ago, the UN system has changed to accommodate the varied interests of its members.

United Nations Politics takes a unique approach that focuses on the politics that is, the persistent and mostly singular emphasis that all member states place on the pursuit of national political, economic, cultural and ideological interests of UN affairs. The project began as an effort to research and write a ten-year-later sequel to The Challenge of Relevance written by Puchala and Coate in 1989. This earlier volume was an assessment of the United Nations and its operations in the late eighties. United Nations Politics builds from a series of some 200 interviews conducted at the UN and in various member-state missions between 2000 and 2005. Among other things , these interviews revealed that the existing English-language literature on the UN fails to take into appropriate account the dynamics and the impacts of the internal and external political contexts within which the UN operates. This book directly addresses this shortcoming in the academic literature.

United Nations Politics takes a unique approach that focuses on the politics that is, the persistent and mostly singular emphasis that all member states place on the pursuit of national political, economic, cultural and ideological interests of UN affairs. The project began as an effort to research and write a ten-year-later sequel to The Challenge of Relevance written by Puchala and Coate in 1989. This earlier volume was an assessment of the United Nations and its operations in the late eighties. United Nations Politics builds from a series of some 200 interviews conducted at the UN and in various member-state missions between 2000 and 2005. Among other things , these interviews revealed that the existing English-language literature on the UN fails to take into appropriate account the dynamics and the impacts of the internal and external political contexts within which the UN operates. This book directly addresses this shortcoming in the academic literature.

This book offers the first book-length explanation of the UN’s politics of selective humanitarian intervention. Over the past 20 years the United Nations has imposed economic sanctions, deployed peacekeeping operations, and even conducted or authorized military intervention in Somalia, Bosnia, or Libya. Yet no such measures were taken in other similar cases such as Colombia, Myanmar, Darfur—or more recently—Syria. What factors account for the UN’s selective response to humanitarian crises and what are the mechanism that drive—or block—UN intervention decisions? By combining fuzzy-set analysis of the UN’s response to more than 30 humanitarian crises with in depth-case study analysis of UN (in)action in Bosnia and Darfur, as well as in the most recent crises in Côte d’Ivoire, Libya and Syria, this volume seeks to answer these questions.

A beginner's guide to the United Nations which sets out the purposes and structure of this organization and also discusses how much power the UN really has and whether the need for and the role of the UN in the world is justified. Six contemporary criticisms of the UN are also analyzed.

Six authors, all of whom have been associated with the Center of International Studies at Princeton University, take the occasion of the twentyfifth anniversary of the United Nations to reexamine the UN's role and work in the world today and to anticipate its future. Chapters ranging from the theoretical to the detailed and practical include "The United Nations and the International System," by Oran R. Young; "The United Nations and the League," by Stanley Michalak; "An Inquiry into the Successes and Failures of the United Nations General Assembly," by Gabriella Rosner Lande; "International Organization and Internal Conflicts," by Linda Miller; "The United Nations and Economic and Social Change," by Leon Gordenker; and "The United Nations: Various Systems of Organization," by Richard A. Falk. Originally published in 1971. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.