Martha Finnemore - Böcker

Rules for the World provides an innovative perspective on the behavior of international organizations and their effects on global politics. Arguing against the conventional wisdom that these bodies are little more than instruments of states, Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore begin with the fundamental insight that international organizations are bureaucracies that have authority to make rules and so exercise power. At the same time, Barnett and Finnemore maintain, such bureaucracies can become obsessed with their own rules, producing unresponsive, inefficient, and self-defeating outcomes. Authority thus gives international organizations autonomy and allows them to evolve and expand in ways unintended by their creators.Barnett and Finnemore reinterpret three areas of activity that have prompted extensive policy debate: the use of expertise by the IMF to expand its intrusion into national economies; the redefinition of the category "refugees" and decision to repatriate by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; and the UN Secretariat's failure to recommend an intervention during the first weeks of the Rwandan genocide. By providing theoretical foundations for treating these organizations as autonomous actors in their own right, Rules for the World contributes greatly to our understanding of global politics and global governance.

Academics and policymakers frequently discuss global governance but they treat governance as a structure or process, rarely considering who actually does the governing. This volume focuses on the agents of global governance: 'global governors'. The global policy arena is filled with a wide variety of actors such as international organizations, corporations, professional associations, and advocacy groups, all seeking to 'govern' activity surrounding their issues of concern. Who Governs the Globe? lays out a theoretical framework for understanding and investigating governors in world politics. It then applies this framework to various governors and policy arenas, including arms control, human rights, economic development, and global education. Edited by three of the world's leading international relations scholars, this is an important contribution that will be useful for courses, as well as for researchers in international studies and international organizations.

No scholar better exemplifies the intellectual challenges foisted on the Neorealist school of international relations than prominent scholar Stephen Krasner (Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Studies, the Senior Associate Dean for the Social Sciences, School of Humanities & Sciences, and Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department 2005-2007). Throughout his career he has wrestled with realism's promises and limitations. Krasner has always been a prominent defender of realism and the importance of power understood in material terms, whether military or economic. Yet realist frameworks rarely provided a complete explanation for outcomes, in Krasner's analyses, and much of his work involved understanding power's role in situations not well explained by realism. If states seek power, why do we see cooperation? If hegemony promotes cooperation why does cooperation continue in the face of America's decline? Do states actually pursue their national interests or do domestic structures and values derail the rational pursuit of material objectives? Krasner's explanations were as diverse as were the problems. They pushed, to use his phrase, "the limits of realism." Edited by Martha Finnemore and Judith Goldstein, Back to Basics asks scholars to reflect on the role power plays in contemporary politics and how a power politics approach is influential today. The arguments made by the authors in this volume speak to one of three themes that run through Krasner's work: state power and hegemony; the relationship between states and markets; conceptions of the nation state in international politics. These themes appeared regularly in Krasner's scholarship as he wrestled, over his career, with fundamental questions of inter-state politics. Contributors largely agree on the centrality of power but diverge substantially on the ways power is manifest and should be measured and understood. Many of the contributors confronted the same intellectual dilemmas as Krasner in struggling to define power and its relationship to interests, yet their responses are different. Together, these essays explore new ways of thinking about power's role in contemporary politics and demonstrate the concepts continued relevance for both policy and theory.

No scholar better exemplifies the intellectual challenges foisted on the Neorealist school of international relations than prominent scholar Stephen Krasner (Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Studies, the Senior Associate Dean for the Social Sciences, School of Humanities & Sciences, and Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department 2005-2007). Throughout his career he has wrestled with realism's promises and limitations. Krasner has always been a prominent defender of realism and the importance of power understood in material terms, whether military or economic. Yet realist frameworks rarely provided a complete explanation for outcomes, in Krasner's analyses, and much of his work involved understanding power's role in situations not well explained by realism. If states seek power, why do we see cooperation? If hegemony promotes cooperation why does cooperation continue in the face of America's decline? Do states actually pursue their national interests or do domestic structures and values derail the rational pursuit of material objectives? Krasner's explanations were as diverse as were the problems. They pushed, to use his phrase, "the limits of realism." Edited by Martha Finnemore and Judith Goldstein, Back to Basics asks scholars to reflect on the role power plays in contemporary politics and how a power politics approach is influential today. The arguments made by the authors in this volume speak to one of three themes that run through Krasner's work: state power and hegemony; the relationship between states and markets; conceptions of the nation state in international politics. These themes appeared regularly in Krasner's scholarship as he wrestled, over his career, with fundamental questions of inter-state politics. Contributors largely agree on the centrality of power but diverge substantially on the ways power is manifest and should be measured and understood. Many of the contributors confronted the same intellectual dilemmas as Krasner in struggling to define power and its relationship to interests, yet their responses are different. Together, these essays explore new ways of thinking about power's role in contemporary politics and demonstrate the concepts continued relevance for both policy and theory.

Academics and policymakers frequently discuss global governance but they treat governance as a structure or process, rarely considering who actually does the governing. This volume focuses on the agents of global governance: 'global governors'. The global policy arena is filled with a wide variety of actors such as international organizations, corporations, professional associations, and advocacy groups, all seeking to 'govern' activity surrounding their issues of concern. Who Governs the Globe? lays out a theoretical framework for understanding and investigating governors in world politics. It then applies this framework to various governors and policy arenas, including arms control, human rights, economic development, and global education. Edited by three of the world's leading international relations scholars, this is an important contribution that will be useful for courses, as well as for researchers in international studies and international organizations.

Violence or the potential for violence is a fact of human existence. Many societies, including our own, reward martial success or skill at arms. The ways in which members of a particular society use force reveal a great deal about the nature of authority within the group and about its members' priorities.In The Purpose of Intervention, Martha Finnemore uses one type of force, military intervention, as a window onto the shifting character of international society. She examines the changes, over the past 400 years, about why countries intervene militarily, as well as in the ways they have intervened. It is not the fact of intervention that has altered, she says, but rather the reasons for and meaning behind intervention—the conventional understanding of the purposes for which states can and should use force.Finnemore looks at three types of intervention: collecting debts, addressing humanitarian crises, and acting against states perceived as threats to international peace. In all three, she finds that what is now considered "obvious" was vigorously contested or even rejected by people in earlier periods for well-articulated and logical reasons. A broad historical perspective allows her to explicate long-term trends: the steady erosion of force's normative value in international politics, the growing influence of equality norms in many aspects of global political life, and the increasing importance of law in intervention practices.

Rules for the World provides an innovative perspective on the behavior of international organizations and their effects on global politics. Arguing against the conventional wisdom that these bodies are little more than instruments of states, Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore begin with the fundamental insight that international organizations are bureaucracies that have authority to make rules and so exercise power. At the same time, Barnett and Finnemore maintain, such bureaucracies can become obsessed with their own rules, producing unresponsive, inefficient, and self-defeating outcomes. Authority thus gives international organizations autonomy and allows them to evolve and expand in ways unintended by their creators.Barnett and Finnemore reinterpret three areas of activity that have prompted extensive policy debate: the use of expertise by the IMF to expand its intrusion into national economies; the redefinition of the category "refugees" and decision to repatriate by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; and the UN Secretariat's failure to recommend an intervention during the first weeks of the Rwandan genocide. By providing theoretical foundations for treating these organizations as autonomous actors in their own right, Rules for the World contributes greatly to our understanding of global politics and global governance.

How do states know what they want? Asking how interests are defined and how changes in them are accommodated, Martha Finnemore shows the fruitfulness of a constructivist approach to international politics. She draws on insights from sociological institutionalism to develop a systemic approach to state interests and state behavior by investigating an international structure not of power but of meaning and social value. An understanding of what states want, she argues, requires insight into the international social structure of which they are a part. States are embedded in dense networks of transnational and international social relations that shape their perceptions and their preferences in consistent ways. Finnemore focuses on international organizations as one important component of social structure and investigates the ways in which they redefine state preferences. She details three examples in different issue areas. In state structure, she discusses UNESCO and the changing international organization of science. In security, she analyzes the role of the Red Cross and the acceptance of the Geneva Convention rules of war. Finally, she focuses on the World Bank and explores the changing definitions of development in the Third World. Each case shows how international organizations socialize states to accept new political goals and new social values in ways that have lasting impact on the conduct of war, the workings of the international political economy, and the structure of states themselves.

Violence or the potential for violence is a fact of human existence. Many societies, including our own, reward martial success or skill at arms. The ways in which members of a particular society use force reveal a great deal about the nature of authority within the group and about its members' priorities.In The Purpose of Intervention, Martha Finnemore uses one type of force, military intervention, as a window onto the shifting character of international society. She examines the changes, over the past 400 years, about why countries intervene militarily, as well as in the ways they have intervened. It is not the fact of intervention that has altered, she says, but rather the reasons for and meaning behind intervention—the conventional understanding of the purposes for which states can and should use force.Finnemore looks at three types of intervention: collecting debts, addressing humanitarian crises, and acting against states perceived as threats to international peace. In all three, she finds that what is now considered "obvious" was vigorously contested or even rejected by people in earlier periods for well-articulated and logical reasons. A broad historical perspective allows her to explicate long-term trends: the steady erosion of force's normative value in international politics, the growing influence of equality norms in many aspects of global political life, and the increasing importance of law in intervention practices.

In Show Time, Lee Ann Fujii asks why some perpetrators of political violence, from lynch mobs to genocidal killers, display their acts of violence so publicly and extravagantly. Closely examining three horrific and extreme episodes—the murder of a prominent Tutsi family amidst the genocide in Rwanda, the execution of Muslim men in a Serb-controlled village in Bosnia during the Balkan Wars, and the lynching of a twenty-two-year old Black farmhand on Maryland's Eastern Shore in 1933—Fujii shows how "violent displays" are staged to not merely to kill those perceived to be enemies or threats, but also to affect and influence observers, neighbors, and the larger society. Watching and participating in these violent displays profoundly transforms those involved, reinforcing political identities, social hierarchies, and power structures. Such public spectacles of violence also force members of the community to choose sides—openly show support for the goals of the violence, or risk becoming victims, themselves. Tracing the ways in which public displays of violence unfold, Show Time reveals how the perpetrators exploit the fluidity of social ties for their own ends.