This book highlights how temporary international civil servants play a crucial role in initiating processes of legal and institutional change in the United Nations system. These individuals are the "missing" creative elements needed to fully understand the emergence and initial spread of UN ideas such as human development, sovereignty as responsibility, and multifunctional peacekeeping.

The book:

• Shows that that temporary UN officials are an actor category which is empirically crucial, yet usually neglected in analytical studies of the UN system. Focussing...

Both the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) are now about to close.

Bachmann and Fatic look back at the achievements and shortcomings of both tribunals from an interdisciplinary perspective informed by sociology, political science, history, and philosophy of law and based upon on two key notions: the concepts of legitimacy and efficiency. The first asks to what extent the input (creation) of, the ICTY and the ICTR can be regarded as legitimate in light of the legal and public debate in the early...

The institutional procedures for the UN's decision-making on issues of global peace and security, first and foremost the Security Council (SC), were conceived with the objective of enabling a swift but internationally coordinated response to irregular situations of crises. Today, however, the UN is constantly involved in situations of conflict and has expanded its range of activities.

This book offers a concrete and practically applicable answer to the question of how to reform the UN and increase the legitimacy of the UN's decision-making procedures on issues of global peace and...