This timely new title examines the importance and impact of major international organizations and their role in global governance. International Organizations in World Politics focuses on the most influential IOs, including the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization. For each organization, author Tamar Gutner describes their birth and evolution, governance structure, activities, and performance. A second chapter on each organization presents a case study that illuminates the constraints and challenges each IO faces. Regional organizations and issues are also examined, including the European Union and the euro crisis, as well as a case study on the African Union’s peace operations.

Globalization: The Paradox of Organizational Behavior is an excellent resource for undergraduate and graduate students, professors, policy makers, and the intelligentsia worldwide. Sagini explores the text's major themes using historical, materialistic, and imperialistic factors. The globalization movement is shaped by economic, political, technological, and cultural forces that transform human collectivities. Instability and related concomitant issues such as disease, energy security, and terrorism challenge the reconstructive role of internal and external factors in foreign policy decision-making. The implications of the global forces on the divided world of gated communities, urban and village ghettos, national borders, and cultural decay could be far-reaching if leaders fail to redesign and implement effective governance models.

This book, first published in 2002, gathers some of America's top subject expert librarians to determine the most influential journals in their respective fields. 32 contributing authors reviewed journals from over twenty countries that have successfully shaped the evolution of their individual specialties worldwide. Their choices reflect the history of each discipline or profession, taking into account rivalries between universities, professional societies, for-profit and not-for-profit publishers, and even nation-states and international ideologies, in each journal's quest for reputational dominance. Each journal was judged using criteria such as longevity of publication, foresight in carving out its niche, ability to attract & sustain professional or academic affiliations, opinion leadership or agenda-setting power, and ongoing criticality to the study or practice of their field. The book presents wholly independent reviewers; none are in the employ of any publisher, but each is fully credentialed and well published, and many are award-winners. The authors guide college and professional school librarians on limited budgets via an exposition of their analytical and critical winnowing process in determining the classic resources for their faculty, students, and working professional clientele.

SAGE Course Companions provide students with an insider's guide into how to make the most of their undergraduate courses and extend their understanding of the key concepts covered. Ideal for anyone new to the study of international relations or looking for a refresher, this Course Companion includes a comprehensive introduction to the competing theories at the heart of the discipline as well as hints and tips on how to apply them when tackling coursework or examinations. Written in a straightforward and clear style, it is designed to augment, rather than replace, existing textbooks for the course and provides: o pointers to success in course exams and written assessment exercises; o easy access to the key theories in international relations; o guidance on the essential study skills required to pass the course; o help with developing critical thinking; o 'taking it further' sections that suggest how readers can extend their thinking beyond the received wisdom.

Contemporary international affairs are largely shaped by widely differing thematic issues and actors, such as nation states, international institutions, NGOs and multinational companies. Obtaining a deeper understanding of these multifaceted themes and actors is crucial for developing a genuine understanding of contemporary international affairs. This book provides undergraduate and postgraduate students of global politics and international relations with the necessary knowledge of the forces that shape and dominate our global political, economic and social/cultural environment. The book significantly enhances our understanding of the essentials of contemporary international affairs. Understanding Global Politics takes a pragmatic approach to international relations, with each chapter being written by an expert in their respective field: Part I provides the historical background that has led to the current state of world affairs. It also provides clear outlines of the major yet often complex theories of international relations. Part II is dedicated to the main actors in global politics. It discusses actors such as the most important nation states, the UN, EU, international organizations, NGOs and multinational companies. Part III considers important contemporary themes and challenges in global politics, including non-state centered challenges. Chapters focus on international terrorism, energy and climate change issues, religious fundamentalism and demographic changes. The comprehensive structure of this book makes it particularly viable to students who wish to pursue careers in international organizations, diplomacy, consultancy, the think tank world and the media.

Offering a panoramic view of the broad field of International Relations by integrating three distinct but interrelated foci. This handbook is a timely and innovative reference text for academics, researchers and practitioners in the world of International Relations.

While many texts on international relations deal only with ideologies, this book goes beyond discussion of ideology to provide an understanding of how global economics, politics, and society operate. The book begins with a history of the International Studies Association, which was founded to develop empirically-based knowledge and was opposed to ideological “isms” as biased guides to policy. The book focuses on four major paradigms—Marxian, Mass Society, Community Building, and Rational Choice—with diagrams indicating their empirical predictions over time. The Marxian paradigm focuses on scientific claims of Marx and Engels. The Mass Society paradigm explains why democracies become dysfunctional. The Community Building paradigm explains how communities can be and are built at the local, national, regional, and international levels. The Rational Choice paradigm assembles proposed explanations of reason-based economic, political, and social life to demonstrate what they have in common. Other candidates for paradigms are reviewed, with a focus on why they need further development to become major paradigms at the decision-making, dyadic, societal, national, and international system levels of analysis.

Reconciliation is an important agenda for postwar countries. It plays a major role in harmonizing bilateral and regional relations. Lin Ren compares reconciliations between the Sino-Japanese and the Franco-German dyads. Each dyad shares a deep-rooted historic antagonism. Nevertheless, France and Germany reached a far deeper degree of reconciliation. Therefore, this book devotes to explore the “trouble-creators” that led to the diverse outcomes, so as to challenge taking rationality as the single micro-foundation of decision making concerning reconciliation.

The »return of great power competition« between (among others) the US, China, Russia and the EU is a major topic in contemporary public debate. But why do we think of world politics in terms of »competition«? Which information and which rules enable states and other actors in world politics to »compete« with one another? Which competitive strategies do they pursue in the complex environment of modern world politics? This cutting-edge edited collection discusses these questions from a unique interdisciplinary perspective. It offers a fresh account of competition in world politics, looking beyond its military dimensions to questions of economics, technology and prestige.