Citizens expect their governments to lead on sustainability. But from largely disappointing international conferences like Rio II to the U.S.’s failure to pass meaningful climate legislation, governments’ progress has been lackluster. That’s not to say leadership is absent; it just often comes from the bottom up rather than the top down. Action—on climate, species loss, inequity, and other sustainability crises—is being driven by local, people’s, women’s, and grassroots movements around th...

Governance for Peace presents a comprehensive analysis of the dimensions of governance that are most likely to prevent armed conflict and foster sustainable peace. It is an accessible study written for the general reader that brings together the best empirical evidence across numerous disciplines showing how effective governance and inclusive, participatory, and accountable institutions help to reduce violence by addressing social needs and providing mechanisms for resolving disputes. This...

The Role of Business in the Responsibility to Protect closes the gap between research on the Responsibility to Protect and the private sector, as previous research has focused only on state responsibilities and state actors. This book examines in detail the developing research on the significant role that private sector actors can play in promoting peace and stability. Contributors to this volume explore the key arguments for where, why, and how private sector actors can contribute to the ...

This book suggests a new explanation for why international peace interventions often fail to reach their full potential. Based on several years of ethnographic research in conflict zones around the world, it demonstrates that everyday elements - such as the expatriates' social habits and usual approaches to understanding their areas of operation - strongly influence peacebuilding effectiveness. Individuals from all over the world and all walks of life share numerous practices, habits, and ...

Years of tremendous growth in response to complex emergencies have left a mark on the humanitarian sector. Various matters that once seemed settled are now subjects of intense debate. What is humanitarianism? Is it limited to the provision of relief to victims of conflict, or does it include broader objectives such as human rights, democracy promotion, development, and peacebuilding? For much of the last century, the principles of humanitarianism were guided by neutrality, impartiality, an...

The Women, Gender and Development Reader is the definitive volume of literature dedicated to women in the development process. Now in a fully revised second edition, the editors expertly present the impacts of social, political and economic change by reviewing such topical issues as migration, persistent structural discrimination, the global recession, and climate change. Approached from a multidisciplinary perspective, the theoretical debates are vividly illustrated by an array o...

At a time when the United States Canada and their coalition partners are re-evaluating their roles and exit strategies in Afghanistan and other broken states this book provides a crucial understanding of the complexities of reforming and transforming the security and justice architecture of the state. Written by leading international practitioners in the field it offers valuable insight into what has worked what has not and lessons that can be drawn in development security and state buil...

Since the 1980s, globalization and neoliberalism have brought about a comprehensive restructuring of everyone’s lives. People are being ‘disciplined’ by neoliberal economic agendas, ‘transformed’ by communication and information technology changes, global commodity chains and networks, and in the Global South in particular, destroyed livelihoods, debilitating impoverishment, disease pandemics, among other disastrous disruptions, are also globalization’s legacy.This collection of ge...

International Social Work: Issues, Strategies, and Programs, Second Edition draws together the practice wisdom emerging within the broad scope of international social work practice and its role in contributing to the international community′s efforts in combating the major global social problems of poverty, conflict and postconflict reconstruction, the development of countries and disadvantaged populations, migration and displacement, and the needs of specific populations ...

Forty years ago, as the United States became increasingly involved in Vietnam, questions were raised in Canada about the relationship between its foreign policy agenda and that of its southern neighbour. Now, with the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is time to raise the same questions: does Canada need an independent foreign policy? Does Canada have the capacity and will to chart its own course?Divided into sections about the history of Canadian foreign policy, diplomacy, s...

A new lens on development is changing the world of international aid. The overdue recognition that development in all sectors is an inherently political process is driving aid providers to try to learn how to think and act politically.Major donors are pursuing explicitly political goals alongside their traditional socioeconomic aims and introducing more politically informed methods throughout their work. Yet these changes face an array of external and internal obstacles, from heigh...

One of the more prolific and influential analysts of multilateral approaches to global problem-solving over the last three decades is Thomas G. Weiss. Thinking about Global Governance, Why People and Ideas Matter, assembles key scholarly and policy writing.This collection organizes his most recent work addressing the core issues of the United Nations, global governance, and humanitarian action. The essays are placed in historical and intellectual context in a substantial n...