The post-2015 goals and the changing environment of development cooperation will demand a renewed and strengthened UN development system. In line with their increasing significance as economic powers, a growing number of emerging nations will play an expanded role in the UN development system. These roles will take the form of growing financial contributions to individual organizations, greater weight in governance structures, higher staff representation, a stronger voice in development deliberations, and a greater overall influence on the UN development agenda. Emerging Powers and the UN explores in depth the relationship of these countries with, and their role in, the future UN development system. Formally, the relationship is through representation as member states (first UN) and UN staff (second UN). However, the importance of the non-public sector interests (third UN) of emerging economies is also growing, through private sponsorship and NGO activities in development. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

The early twenty-first century has seen the beginning of a considerable shift in the global balance of power. Major international governance challenges can no longer be addressed without the ongoing co-operation of the large countries of the global South. Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, ASEAN states, and Mexico wield great influence in the macro-economic foundations upon which rest the global political economy and institutional architecture. It remains to be seen how the size of the emerging powers translates into the ability to shape the international system to their own will. In this book, leading international relations experts examine the positions and roles of key emerging countries in the potential transformation of the G8 and the prospects for their deeper engagement in international governance. The essays consider a number of overlapping perspectives on the G8 Heiligendamm Process, a co-operation agreement that originated from the 2007 summit, and offer an in-depth look at the challenges and promises presented by the rise of the emerging powers. Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation

This open access handbook analyses the role of development cooperation in achieving the 2030 Agenda in a global context of 'contested cooperation'. Development actors, including governments providing aid or South-South Cooperation, developing countries, and non-governmental actors (civil society, philanthropy, and businesses) constantly challenge underlying narratives and norms of development. The book explores how reconciling these differences fosters achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Sachin Chaturvedi is Director General at the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), a New Delhi, India-based think tank. Heiner Janus is a researcher in the Inter- and Transnational Cooperation programme at the German Development Institute. Stephan Klingebiel is Chair of the Inter- and Transnational Cooperation programme at the German Development Institute and Senior Lecturer at the University of Marburg, Germany. Xiaoyun Li is Chair Professor at China Agricultural University and Honorary Dean of the China Institute for South-South Cooperation in Agriculture. Prof. Li is the Chair of the Network of Southern Think Tanks and Chair of the China International Development Research Network. André de Mello e Souza is a researcher at the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), a Brazilian governmental think tank. Elizabeth Sidiropoulos is Chief Executive of the South African Institute of International Affairs. She has co-edited Development Cooperation and Emerging Powers: New Partners or Old Patterns (2012) and Institutional Architecture and Development: Responses from Emerging Powers (2015). Dorothea Wehrmann is a researcher in the Inter- and Transnational Cooperation programme at the German Development Institute.

The Third UN is the ecology of supportive non-state actors-intellectuals, scholars, consultants, think tanks, NGOs, the for-profit private sector, and the media-that interacts with the intergovernmental machinery of the First UN (member states) and the Second UN (staff members of international secretariats) to formulate and refine ideas and decision-making at key junctures in policy processes. Some advocate for particular ideas, others help analyze or operationalize their testing and implementation; many thus help the UN 'think'. While think tanks, knowledge brokers, and epistemic communities are phenomena that have entered both the academic and policy lexicons, their intellectual role remains marginal to analyses of such intergovernmental organizations as the United Nations.

What has been the role of rising powers in the Arab–Israeli conflict? What does this tell us about rising powers and conflict management as well as rising powers’ behavior in the world more generally? This book studies the way that five rising powers—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the BRICS countries—have approached the conflict since it first became internationalized in 1947. Conflict management consists of different methods, from peacekeeping to mediation and the use of economic incentives and sanctions and (non)enforcement of international legal decisions. What distinguishes them is whether they are active or passive: active measures seek to transform a conflict and resolve it; passive measures seek to ameliorate its worst effects, but do not change their underlying causes. Since 1947 rising powers’ active or passive use of these methods has coincided with their rise and fall and rise again in the international system. Those rises and falls are tied to global changes, including the Cold War, the emergence of the Third World, economic and ideological retrenchment of the 1980s and 1990s and the shift from unipolarity to multipolarity after 2000. In summary, rising powers’ management of the Arab–Israeli conflict has shifted from active to more passive methods since 1947. Their actions have occurred alongside two key changes within the conflict. One is the shift from a primarily state-based conflict between Israel and the Arabs to one that is more ethnic and territorial in scope, between Israel and the Palestinians. The other the emergence of the Oslo framework which has frozen power imbalance between Israel and the Palestinians since 1993. By pursuing the Oslo process, rising powers have separated conflict management from developing ‘normal’ diplomatic and economic exchanges with Israel and the Palestinians. In adopting this more passive conflict management approach, rising powers are disregarding both emerging alternatives that may potentially transform the conflict’s dynamics (including involvement with civil society actors like the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement) and undertaking more active efforts at conflict resolution—and presenting themselves as global powers.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This edited volume examines the policies and practices of rising powers on peacebuilding. It analyzes how and why their approaches differ from those of traditional donors and multilateral institutions. The policies of the rising powers towards peacebuilding may significantly influence how the UN and others undertake peacebuilding in the future. This book is an invaluable resource for practitioners, policy makers, researchers and students who want to understand how peacebuilding is likely to evolve over the next decades.

Rising Powers in International Conflict Management locates rising powers in the international conflict management tableau and decrypts their main motives and limitations in the enactment of their peacebuilding role. The book sheds light on commonalities and divergences in a selected group of rising powers’ (namely Brazil, India, China, and Turkey) understanding and applications of conflict management and explains the priorities in their conflict management strategies from conceptual/theoretical and empirical aspects. The case studies point to the evolving nature of conflict management policies of rising powers as a result of their changing priorities in foreign and security policy and the shifts observed in the international order since the end of the Cold War. The country-specific perspectives provided in this study have also proven right the potentialities of rising powers in managing conflicts, as well as their past and ongoing challenges in envisaging crises in both their own regions and extra-regional territories. Improving the understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of rising powers as conflict management actors and peacebuilders at regional and international levels, Rising Powers in International Conflict Management will be of great interest to scholars of international relations, conflict studies, and peacebuilding. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

This book is organized in seven chapters. Chapter one looks at the origins and the causes of war. The chapter argues that war is a consequence of how we, as a species, have evolved. War has both endogenous and exogenous causes. While the former depends on our biology and psychology, the latter has to do primarily with international relations. Chapter two makes the case for the paradoxical nature of war. While war takes lives, it is legitimate under certain circumstances. For example, armed humanitarian interventions are allowed to save lives among local populations at the expense of the oppressors by employing all necessary means – ethical or not. Chapter three asks if peace among nations is achievable, which is the main theme of this book. However, it does not elaborate on the question entirely. Instead, it gives sort of a prelude of what will be discussed in the remaining of the book by talking about the concepts of world order and American hegemony, arms race, and peacebuilding. Chapter four builds on three by looking at realism, idealism, and pacifism in international relations. As to pacifism, the chapter attempts to answer the question, what was the most peaceful time in history? Chapter five presents the elements of hope for world peace by considering the role played by the following: (1) the United Nations; (2) the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); (3) the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE); (4) the non-governmental organizations (NGOs); (5) the role of nuclear deterrence; (6) globalization; (7) transnationalism; (8) diplomacy; (9) sports; (10) international cooperation in space exploration; (11) the Nobel Prize; and (12) the declining of war and violence in modern times. On the other hand, chapter six presents the opposite argument or the barriers to world peace, using the following points: (1) the proliferation of nuclear weapons; (2) geoeconomics; (3) terrorism; (4) the global refugee crisis; (5) the profitability of arms sales; and (6) the profitability of wars. It makes an interesting argument especially as to the profitability of wars by showing how the United States, first, emerged as an imperial and a world power in the 1890s; then as the only world’s superpower after World War II. Finally, chapter seven takes a proactive approach by peering into the future of armed conflict, which is likely to take place in new environments: Cyberspace, the littoral, choke points, near space, and increasingly in expanding cities or slums War. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the Doomsday Clock, a concept stemmed from the uncertainty as to the future of mankind because of armed conflicts and which is a symbol that represents the likelihood of a man-made global catastrophe.

There is a woeful neglect of the current United Nations in the academic and policy literatures, and so it is unsurprising that an examination of that multilateral structure before 1945 shows an even more egregious absence of analytical attention. Such ignorance conveniently ignores the forgotten genius of 1942–1945, namely in the wide substantive and geographic relevance of multilateralism during the World War II and in the foundations for the contemporary world order. The wartime and immediate post-war United Nations was not simply dictated by the US State Department, Whitehall, and the foreign ministries of the West—even a generation before decolonisation had proceeded apace and two-thirds of UN member states moved into the limelight as erstwhile colonies. These essays interrogate the extent to which anti-colonialists and other nationalists resisting imperial rule embraced the promise of a rule-based world order as a normatively and operationally valuable projection in 1945. They critically review the worlds of 1945 and 2015, of then and now, to determine the role of continuity and change, of the continuing bases for compromise and for the clashes between the Global South and North. This book was previously published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

The book examines the rising influence of emerging powers in global politics, with a special focus on the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China). Chapters contributed by international scholars first look at the changing status of the US in the 21st century and at the EU as both an emerging and innovative power. China's rising power status, India's regional and global influence, Russia's re-emergence, and Brazil's growing regional and international role are then analyzed comparatively to explain how the BRIC states are poised to become vital players not only in politics and economy, but also in key international concerns such as terrorism, globalization, and climate change. The book provides a detailed analysis of political, economic, security, and foreign policy trends in the BRIC countries to address such questions as to whether they will seek to revise the international order or work within it and how they will deal with transnational global problems. Using a unique comparative approach, the text will appeal to undergraduate students in world politics, international relations, and foreign policy.