Ann Kent - Böcker

Beyond Compliance argues that the record of China's international behavior since the 1970s indicates the long-term effectiveness of the multilateral system. Through its analysis of China's interaction with leading international organizations—such as the Conference on Disarmament, the IMF, and the United Nations Environmental Programme—it concludes that engagement with the multilateral system is the key to the gradual socialization of "rogue" states. Contrasting the People's Republic of China's post-1949 alienation from the international community with its increasing compliance since it entered the United Nations in 1971 with the rules of leading international institutions, Kent explains China's changing attitude toward international institutions in terms of the most appropriate theories of state compliance. At the same time, she argues that compliance theories on their own are not sufficient to explain the complex interaction between states and the international system and develops a broader theory to encompass China's behavior.

Beyond Compliance argues that the record of China's international behavior since the 1970s indicates the long-term effectiveness of the multilateral system. Through its analysis of China's interaction with leading international organizations—such as the Conference on Disarmament, the IMF, and the United Nations Environmental Programme—it concludes that engagement with the multilateral system is the key to the gradual socialization of "rogue" states. Contrasting the People's Republic of China's post-1949 alienation from the international community with its increasing compliance since it entered the United Nations in 1971 with the rules of leading international institutions, Kent explains China's changing attitude toward international institutions in terms of the most appropriate theories of state compliance. At the same time, she argues that compliance theories on their own are not sufficient to explain the complex interaction between states and the international system and develops a broader theory to encompass China's behavior.

Selected by Choice magazine as a Outstanding Academic Book for 2000Nelson Mandela once said, "Human rights have become the focal point of international relations." This has certainly become true in American relations with the People's Republic of China. Ann Kent's book documents China's compliance with the norms and rules of international treaties, and serves as a case study of the effectiveness of the international human rights regime, that network of international consensual agreements concerning acceptable treatment of individuals at the hands of nation-states.Since the early 1980s, and particularly since 1989, by means of vigorous monitoring and the strict maintenance of standards, United Nations human rights organizations have encouraged China to move away from its insistence on the principle of noninterference, to take part in resolutions critical of human rights conditions in other nations, and to accept the applicability to itself of human rights norms and UN procedures. Even though China has continued to suppress political dissidents at home, and appears at times resolutely defiant of outside pressure to reform, Ann Kent argues that it has gradually begun to implement some international human rights standards.