Global Governance and the UN

"Global governance is the latest catchphrase in discourses about international relations. It signifies 'governance without government,' or how the international community creates rules and maintains order without formal government structures, yet few serious studies of the phenomenon exist. Weiss (Graduate Center, CUNY) and Thakur (Univ. of Montreal, Canada) begin with a clear articulation of the concept as a prelude to how governance issues have played out in the UN. The book is both a history of global governance in the context of the UN as well as a report card of what gaps remain. A notable feature is the amazing breadth of the work; over 75 percent of the book is devoted to nine sets of issues across three different areas: international security (e.g., use of force, arms control, and terrorism), development (e.g., sustainable development, trade, and climate change) and human rights (e.g., rights, responsibility to protect, and health) respectively. Weiss and Thakur have managed to perform the difficult trick of producing a work that can function as textbook, scholarly reference, policy guide, and popular reading. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers, upper-division undergraduate students, graduate students, and research faculty. — Choice"

~P. F. Diehl, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Global Governance and the UN will satisfy those who seek a serious grappling with the ethical aspects of international action to address the world's most pressing challenges. The book argues that the UN's evolution is an "unfinished journey": . . . global governance will continue to evolve, with the UN at the center, in the wake of each global crisis. dec 2011"

~Ethics and International Affairs

"Weiss and Thakur have managed to perform the difficult trick of producing a work that can function as textbook, scholarly reference, policy guide, and popular reading. . . . Recommended."

~Choice

"Every student of global governance, and every course on global governance, needs to have a coherent understanding of the existing UN system and its relationship to the rest of world governance, both as it now exists and as we can imagine it can be. This is simply the best book available for that purpose."

~Craig Murphy, Wellesley College

"An intriguing and meaty analysis of the world's collective problem-solving arrangements. . . . Tom Weiss and Ramesh Thakur are the doyens of contemporary scholarship in this field, and there could be no more credible or lucid guides through these complex and important issues."

~Gareth Evans, International Crisis Center, Brussels

"Never has a serious book on the United Nations and global governance been timelier."

~John Gerard Ruggie, Harvard University Law School