Understanding International Relations, Third Edition

Understanding International Relations

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both medieval England and the ‘posse’ of Western movie fame. Something
like this seems to be the best way of looking at the Gulf War of 1990–1.
A group of states acted together to expel Iraq from Kuwait – the Coalition
as posse – and the lawfulness of this action was attested to not by the pres-
ence of a sheriff, but by a positive vote of the UN Security Council. In 1995
the posse – this time in the guise of NATO – intervened in Bosnia to create
a ‘level killing-field’ (again with the approval, but not under the command,
of the UN), while in 1999 the NATO posse operated in Kosovo without the
approval of the UN Security Council (albeit without its opposition either).
In 2003 a much attenuated posse invaded Iraq, this time very much against
majority opinion in the UN (on the politics of that war, see Chapter 12).
In the realm of security, the most important task that global institutions can
perform today is not to solve problems, but to give – or withhold – their bless-
ing to those who can and do act. The UN’s role comes close to that of the
medieval papacy, rewarding an enterprise with its blessing – not really some-
thing those in power actually need, but something that they feel better for
nonetheless. When they do not receive the blessings of UN approval, power-
ful states may act anyway, if they believe this to be the right thing to do, or if
their interests are crucially involved – but, as the examples of Kosovo and a
fortiori Iraq 2003 illustrate, action without UN approval generates deep
unease. Legitimacy is important to all international actors, and when it comes
to the use of force, the UN is close to being its only source. These issues will
be investigated further in Chapter 11, when the notion of humanitarian inter-
vention in defence of human rights will be examined.
Global Governance
137
Further reading
Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (2004), is a comprehensive
account of the global networks that constitute the global governance of today’s
world. J. N. Rosenau and E. O. Czempiel (eds) Governance without
Government: Order and Change in World Politics (1992) is a useful collection
providing an overview of the subject. An earlier collected volume by the same
editors, Czempiel and Rosenau, Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges
(1989), contains a number of articles prefiguring the approach, including a
valuable critique by Richard Ashley, ‘Imposing International Purpose: Notes
on a Problematic of Government’ (1989a). Craig Murphy, International
Organization and Industrial Change: Global Governance since 1850 (1994),
gives an historical perspective. An official view from the UN is Our Global
Neighborhood: Report of the Commission on Global Governance (1995).
Readings on international political economy (Chapter 8) and globalization
(Chapter 9) are generally relevant.

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138
Understanding International Relations
On ‘functionalism’, David Mitrany’s writings are central: see A Working
Peace System (1966) and The Functional Theory of Politics (1975). A. J. R. Groom
and Paul Taylor (eds) Functionalism: Theory and Practice in World Politics
(1975) is an excellent collection, and other collections by the same editors are
highly relevant: Taylor and Groom (eds) International Organization: A
Conceptual Approach (1978); Groom and Taylor (eds) The Commonwealth in
the 1980s (1984); Groom and Taylor (eds) Frameworks for International
Cooperation (1994). Peter Willetts (ed.) Pressure Groups in the International
System (1983), is a pioneering collection.
On the functional agencies of the UN, works by Haas and Sewell referred to
in the chapter are crucial: see also Robert W. Cox and Harold K. Jacobson
(eds) The Anatomy of Influence (1973). More recent work on these bodies casts
its theoretical net a little wider into the area of ‘regime’ analysis: for example,
Mark W. Zacher with Brent A. Sutton, Governing Global Networks: