International Organizations - 4th Edition by Robert S Jordan & Clive Archer & Gregory P Granger (Hardcover)

About the Book

This new edition of a classic text, comprehensively revised throughout, appraises the emerging challenges to the centrality of the nation-state international system, such as humanitarianism, environmentalism, new international legal standards, and concepts such as civil society and globalism. As inter-governmental and international non-governmental activities are increasingly being blended, for example in the area of peace-keeping, this poses a challenge to the sanctity of the territorial state as the primary political unit. Similarly, technological and social changes such as the emergence of the Internet, encourages borderless activities (both legal and illegal) by non-state actors. This book provides the basis for students to consider a thorough rethinking of our international system and its prospects for the future in the face of these fundamental and unprecedented developments.

While the book as a whole is built around the unifying theme of the management of cooperation, illustrative cases enhance the individual chapters and provide the basis for comparative analysis and discussion. These take the reader through the tangled webs of international cooperation in such areas as the European Union, NATO, humanitarian intervention, arms control, transnational criminal organizations, and global environmental issues. Discussion questions at the end of each chapter add to the usefulness of this text for students.

Book Synopsis

This new edition of a classic text, comprehensively revised throughout, appraises the emerging challenges to the centrality of the nation-state international system, such as humanitarianism, environmentalism, new international legal standards, and concepts such as civil society and globalism. As inter-governmental and international non-governmental activities are increasingly being blended, for example in the area of peace-keeping, this poses a challenge to the sanctity of the territorial state as the primary political unit. Similarly, technological and social changes such as the emergence of the Internet, encourages borderless activities (both legal and illegal) by non-state actors. This book provides the basis for students to consider a thorough rethinking of our international system and its prospects for the future in the face of these fundamental and unprecedented developments.

While the book as a whole is built around the unifying theme of the management of cooperation, illustrative cases enhance the individual chapters and provide the basis for comparative analysis and discussion. These take the reader through the tangled webs of international cooperation in such areas as the European Union, NATO, humanitarian intervention, arms control, transnational criminal organizations, and global environmental issues. Discussion questions at the end of each chapter add to the usefulness of this text for students.

Review Quotes

"An extremely timely and well organized text on the evolving and increasingly central role of international organizations in the management of global change. This fourth edition of International Organizations: A Comparative Approach has been prepared by Robert S. Jordan and addresses all the pertinent questions. It will be of great interest to students and practitioners alike."-John P. Renninger Director Asia and the Pacific Division Department of Political Affairs United Nations

"International organization textbook writers face a formidable challenge. There are so many organizations, which display huge variety in almost every aspect. One response is to produce a book which is long, descriptive, and dull. Professor Jordon and his associates, however, have chosen a much more difficult route, and traversed it with great skill and success. Their book is short, focuses analytically on a wide range of issues, yet also provides extremely interesting case studies which give the reader a sense of immediate practicality. Above all, the book had the virtue of encouraging the student to sit up and think. The authors are to be very warmly congratulated."-Alan James, Emeritus Professor Department of International Relations Keele University, U.K.

"This volume provides an extraordinarily useful text for a course in international organizations, as it furnishes a compact, authoritative, and highly readable analysis of how, why, and to what degree international organizations contribute to regularizing the interactions among states and other international actors....The analysis is well balanced between theoretical considerations and real world policy output....[T]his volume emerges as an outstanding contribution to the contemporary literature on international organizations."-Christopher C. Joyner Professor of International Law and Government Georgetown University

About the Author

ROBERT S. JORDAN is Research Professor of Political Science at the University of New Orleans and past Vice President of the International Studies Association. He is the author or editor of over twenty scholarly books.

CLIVE ARCHER is Professor of Political Science at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is the author of several books on International Organization and the European Union, and is Chair of the University for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) He is an active member of the British International Studies Association and the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

GREGORY GRANGER is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northwestern State University of Louisiana. He held the 1999-2000 Clyde Bostick Professorship of Social Sciences and is currently Vice President of the Louisiana Political Science Association.

KERRY ORDES is Temporary Visiting Instructor of Political Science at Louisiana State University in Shreveport.