What is meant by international society? On what principles is the notion of international society based? How has the notion of nationalism influenced its evolution? In this book James Mayall addresses these questions and sheds important new light on the issues of nation and international society by bringing together subjects that have hitherto been examined separately. Three central themes run throughout the study. First, the challenge posed to previous conceptions of international society and order by the principle of national self-determination. Secondly, the relationship between national...

At the end of the Cold War the hope was that it would be possible to reform international society and create a new world order. This book explores the experience of the United Nations in the three largest peacekeeping operations of recent years, in Cambodia, former Yugoslavia, and Somalia, to explain why it has proved so difficult for the international community to live up to this hope. The introduction explores the common themes and the major contrasts in the three operations, and each case study is accompanied by a chronology of events and a selection of relevant UN documents.

The Universal Declaration for Human Rights was approved in 1948 and yet more than fifty years later some human rights--especially the rights of groups such as women, minorities, and indigenous peoples--continue to be at risk. This book examines recent humanitarian catastrophes involving such groups and suggests how the society of states may develop a collective capacity for human rights enforcement. Above all, it emphasizes the long term efforts to stabilize weak or failing societies and to develop democratic governments on which the protection of human rights ultimately depends.

At the end of the Cold War, there was much talk of a new world order in which the sovereign state would be held to democratic account, fundamental rights would be respected, and conflict would be replaced by cooperation based on the rule of law. At the start of the new millenium most of this optimism has evaporated.


This book examines why it is so difficult to improve standards of international behaviour and explores the pre-conditions for any realistic attempt to do so. It discusses three major issues that have dominated international debate over the past decade: the...

At the end of the Cold War, there was much talk of a new world order in which the sovereign state would be held to democratic account, fundamental rights would be respected, and conflict would be replaced by cooperation based on the rule of law. At the start of the new millenium most of this optimism has evaporated.


This book examines why it is so difficult to improve standards of international behaviour and explores the pre-conditions for any realistic attempt to do so. It discusses three major issues that have dominated international debate over the past decade: the...

Between the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the singing of the Helinski accords in August 1975, major changes occurred in the condition of the East-West conflict and more generally in the structure of great-power relations which had been built up since the end of the Second World War. This collection of documents, which includes the main speeches, treaties and agreements concluded between these two events, has been designed to illustrate the nature of these changes. The volume if prefaced by an analytical essay by the editors, and is subsequently divided into six sections. The...

This collection of essays has been assembled to mark the centenary of The Round Table. It provides an analysis of the modern Commonwealth since the establishment of the Secretariat in 1965. Providing an overview of the contemporary Commonwealth, this book places the organization in its rich historical context while assessing its achievements, failures and prospects. The volume is divided into two parts: * Part I concentrates on a series of themes, dealing with the structure and functioning of the Commonwealth and its major activities, including the work of the secretary general and...

German troops fighting the Taliban in the Hindu Kush; EU judges sitting in courts in the Balkans; UN viceroys governing parts of Oceania; American occupation of the Middle East. Amid the myriad political experiences of the post-Cold War era, the historians of the future are likely to pay particular attention to attempts by outsiders to administer a host of post-conflict societies, to perform physical and social reconstruction, to establish functioning institutions, to open economies and, ultimately, to transform the "maladjusted" political cultures of Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Few...