This book explores tensions in global trade by examining the role of experts in generating, disseminating and legitimating knowledge about the possibilities of trade to work for global development. To this end, contributors assess authoritative claims on knowledge. They also consider structural features that uphold trade experts' monopoly over knowledge, such as expert language and legal and economic expertise. The chapters collectively explore the tensions between actors who seek to effect change and those who work to uphold the status quo, exacerbate asymmetries, and reinforce the...

This book helps us to think carefully about how this area of the world should be best handled in the future by offering a concise and accessible introduction to the Arctic Council. Over the past two decades, the Arctic has evolved from being a remote region in international affairs to becoming an increasingly central concern of the global community. The issues of climate change, access to new energy resources, the development of new global trade routes, the protection of the natural environment and the preservation of indigenous cultures and languages have all come to be focused within...

Today, there are some 28.8 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in sixty-two states throughout the world. Refugees, outside of their own state and unable to count on its protection, are provided protection through an international refugee regime based in law and organizations such as the UNHCR. By contrast, IDPs, though displaced for similar reasons, do not have the same protections since they remain within their own state. While they continue to possess rights as citizens, the state may be unable or unwilling to protect these displaced persons, or it may even be the direct cause of...

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is the world's leading international Islamic organization. Turan Kayaoglu provides the first accessible and concise introduction and overview of this important organization.

This book details the OIC's struggle to address popular Muslim demands balanced against the member states' reluctance to support the OIC politically and materially. Despite this predicament, the organization has made itself increasingly relevant over the last decade through increasing its visibility as the representative body of Muslim unity and promoting...

Written by a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (2003 4), this book has been fully updated for a second edition and continues to provide a much needed, short and accessible introduction to the foundational human rights ideas of our times and shows that every government is under international obligation to respect and uphold universal human rights.

Updates include:

• Discussion of the recent intellectual challenges to the international human rights movement
• Examination of the establishment and functioning of the Human...

There are now more refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) uprooted by conflict than at any time since the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia in the early 1990s. In addition, hundreds of thousands of people are displaced every year by natural disasters. In International Organization for Migration (IOM) Bradley provides an accessible, incisive introduction to this important but under-examined agency.

This book:

• Introduces IOM and analyses its origins, evolution and governance structure
• Considers the present day operation of IOM, outlining key criticisms and debates...

This book offers a concise and accessible overview and analysis of the place of large multinational and regional corporations in the political economy of global governance.May argues that not only do corporations have an impact on the institutions of global governance, but they must be understood as a multifaceted institution of global governance in their own right, controlling and shaping significant aspects of the global political economy.

Topics include:

• What are global corporations?
• Corporations and global governance
• The legal personality of the...

It has become commonplace to observe the growing pervasiveness and impact of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). And yet the three central approaches in International Relations (IR) theory, Liberalism, Realism and Constructivism, overlook or ignore the importance of NGOs, both theoretically and politically.

Offering a timely reappraisal of NGOs, and a parallel reappraisal of theory in IR-the academic discipline entrusted with revealing and explaining world politics, this book uses practice theory, global governance, and new institutionalism to theorize NGO accountability...

Around 1.4 billion people presently live in extreme poverty, and yet despite this vast scale, the issue of global poverty had a relatively low international profile until the end of the 20th century. In this important new work, Hulme charts the rise of global poverty as a priority global issue, and its subsequent marginalisation as old themes edged it aside (trade policy and peace-making in regions of geo-political importance) and new issues were added (terrorism, global climate change and access to natural resources).

Key updates for the new edition:

• evaluation of...