The More the Merrier? The Effects of Having Multiple International Election Monitoring Organizations

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Kelley
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Organizational Politics ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Election Monitoring ◽  
The Cold War

As the pressure to invite international election monitors rose at the end of the Cold War, states refused to grant the United Nations a dominant role. Thus, today multiple intergovernmental, regional, and international non-governmental organizations often monitor the same elections with equal authority. This article examines the costs and benefits of this complex regime to highlight some possible broader implications of regime complexity. It argues that the availability of many different organizations facilitates action that might otherwise have been blocked for political reasons. Furthermore, when different international election monitoring agencies agree, their consensus can bolster their individual legitimacy as well as the legitimacy of the international norms they stress, and thus magnify their influence on domestic politics. Unfortunately the election monitoring example also suggests that complex regimes can engender damaging inter-organizational politics and that the different biases, capabilities, and standards of organizations sometime can lead organizations to outright contradict each other or work at cross-purposes.

Labor, the UN and the Cold War

1957 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Karan Jacobson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
World Federation ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War

One of the significant structural differences between the organization of economic and social work under the League and under the United Nations is the extent to which non-governmental organizations (NGO's) have been allowed to participate. NGO's have been granted far greater privileges in the UN than they enjoyed in the League. Initially, they were formally recognized in Article 71 of the Charter, which gives the Economic and Social Council the right to make “suitable arrangements” for consultation with them. While defined in differing ways during different periods, consultative status under this article has, subject to various conditions, always included the right to participate in the debates of ECOSOC, its commissions and committees, and to propose items for inclusion in their provisional agenda. NGO's have made extensive use of these privileges. Their use, however, as well as the entire record of NGO action in the UN, has been inseparably linked with the cold war. Russian demands at San Francisco for privileges for the newly created, communist-controlled World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) were a contributing factor in the decision to include Article 71 in the Charter. The initial definition of this article resulted primarily from the interaction of pressures by the Soviet Union and the WFTU and the western response.

scholarly journals Field Diplomacy: A New Conflict Prevention Paradigm?

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luc Reychler
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Conflict Prevention ◽  
Conflict Zones ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
The North ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Religious Extremism ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
North And South ◽  
Very High

One of the most important challenges facing the global community in the next decade, is the prevention of destructive conflicts. Listening to the discourse in the United Nations and other governmental and non governmental organizations this may sound like kicking in wide open doors (Bauwens and Reychler, 1994). But the failure of conflict prevention and the high number of conflict zones, indicates that we still have a long way to go. A global survey of contemporary conflicts counts 22 high-intensity and 39 lowerintensity conflicts, and 40 serious disputes (PIOOM, 1995). In 1995 five groups were victims of genocides or politicides. The risks of future victimization of 47 communities in different parts of the world is assessed as high of very high (PIOOM, 1995). The growth of nationalist feelings at the end of the Cold War is only the beginning of more suffering. More conflicts are expected, with old and new causes, such as the unequal or unfair trade balances between North and South, unemployment in the North, the environmental pollution, religious extremism, mass immigration and the growing number of failed states. These problems could hurt people so much that they would be prepared to fight for them.

Overpopulation Debates in Latin America during the Cold War

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eve Buckley
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The United States ◽  
Family Welfare ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The Cold War

From the 1950s to the 1970s, numerous academics and non-governmental organizations based in the United States generated alarm about political and ecological threats posed by human population growth. During the first half of the 20th century, improvements in nutrition, sanitation, and medical therapies had dramatically reduced infant mortality and contributed to increased life expectancy in many parts of the world. In the context of the Cold War, many leaders of Western industrialized nations viewed the rapid growth of poor Asian, African, and Latin American populations as a potential source of political instability. They feared that these poor masses would become fodder for revolutionary political movements, particularly communism. Combined with eugenicist views rooted in colonial racism, new understanding of ecological systems, and growing concern about overtaxing earth’s resources, these fears led many American and European scholars and activists to promote population reduction in the newly designated “Third World.” In Latin America, such efforts to curb human increase were met with skepticism or outright opposition by both Catholic Church leaders and many left-wing nationalists who saw the promotion of birth control as a form of racist imperialism. Although some physicians and even liberal priests viewed decreasing family size as important for public health and family welfare, the involvement of North American capitalists (such as the Rockefellers), U.S. government agencies, and former eugenicists in efforts to distribute contraceptive technologies made them deeply suspect in the eyes of many Latin Americans.

scholarly journals Institutionalizing cultural Europeanism: between transnationalism and national identity (1948-1954)

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. e009
Author(s):  
Luis Domínguez Castro ◽  
José Ramón Rodríguez Lago
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cold War ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Council Of Europe ◽  
Multilateral Cooperation ◽  
European Centre ◽  
Model Based ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The Cold War

Cultural Europeanism is a variant of the process of European integration attested within the framework of the Cold War. It will be mostly anti-communist, although it will couch elements favouring West-East dialogue. The governments will promote an intergovernmental model based on multilateral cooperation and national identity, and put into practice in institutions such as the Western Union or the Council of Europe. Non-governmental organizations, such as the European Movement, will be committed to a more transnational model based on the affirmation and promotion of the idea of Europe through institutions such as the College of Europe, the European Centre for Culture or the European Cultural Foundation. Within cultural Europeanism, networks of secondary institutionalization, such as educational seminars, ended up having as much or more impact than the primary entities from which they emerged.

Cultural Education as Containment of Communism: The Ambivalent Position of American NGOs in Hong Kong in the 1950s

2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grace Ai-Ling Chou
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Educational Work ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Strategic Value ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Cold War

This article discusses the ambivalent role of U.S. non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in shaping Hong Kong's institutions of higher education in the 1950s. Cold War concerns about Communist expansion induced the NGOs to pursue ideological goals that were not part of their main mission, even as they continued policy directions that superseded and sometimes unintentionally counteracted Cold War thinking and strategies. Hong Kong, as a site important but marginal to both China and Britain, had strategic value in the Cold War and as such impelled many different forces to contest it. By examining how U.S. NGO educational work in Hong Kong both reinforced and destabilized Cold War ideology, one gains a clearer picture not only of Hong Kong's cultural significance in Cold War politics but also the ambiguity of Cold War intellectual paradigms of culture and education.

scholarly journals Using Geopolitics in the Comparative Analysis of Two International Systems Based on Factors Considered Relevant

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-99
Author(s):  
Anca Dinicu
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International System ◽  
The State ◽  
International Governance ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
National Economies ◽  
International Systems ◽  
Objective Being

Abstract The international scene is still modeled on the states’ interests, despite the challenges of non-state actors, whose international policy intervention can not be described as new. The state still continues to play a central role in shaping the international system, even if it is forced to act in an environment where large corporations are designing many of the national economies of states whose nationality they do not have, and non-governmental organizations are at the outskirts of an emerging global civil society, which could jeopardize the state’s right and obligation to prevent injustice, and considering that at the global level there is no entity able to issue regulations in this regard, all of which amid testing international governance models. Looking retrospectively, during the Cold War, the state was much stronger and the threats which it had to face were characterized by a much higher degree of predictability. This paper aims to analyze the contemporary international system by reference to that specific to the Cold War, based on factors considered relevant, the objective being to identify the possibility of turning the present international system to a new Cold War.

Land of Blue Helmets

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Arab World ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
Member States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Mediation

Born in 1945, the United Nations (UN) came to life in the Arab world. It was there that the UN dealt with early diplomatic challenges that helped shape its institutions such as peacekeeping and political mediation. It was also there that the UN found itself trapped in, and sometimes part of, confounding geopolitical tensions in key international conflicts in the Cold War and post-Cold War periods, such as hostilities between Palestine and Iraq and between Libya and Syria. Much has changed over the past seven decades, but what has not changed is the central role played by the UN. This book's claim is that the UN is a constant site of struggle in the Arab world and equally that the Arab world serves as a location for the UN to define itself against the shifting politics of its age. Looking at the UN from the standpoint of the Arab world, this volume includes chapters on the potential and the problems of a UN that is framed by both the promises of its Charter and the contradictions of its member states.

scholarly journals Informal Reform of the United Nations Security Council

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-115
Author(s):  
Mariana Pimenta Oliveira Baccarini
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Institutional Perspective ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Lock In Effect ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Lock In

Abstract This article analyses attempts to reform the United Nations Security Council from a historical-institutional perspective. It argues that the possibilities for reform have suffered from a ‘lock-in’ effect that has rendered the UN resistant to change. On the other hand, the UN decision-making process has evolved since its establishment, especially since the end of the Cold War, in response to new power aspirations, making it more representative and legitimate. The Security Council has also undergone continuous informal reform that has allowed it to adapt to new times.

Beyond Keeping Peace: United Nations Effectiveness in the Midst of Fighting

2014 ◽  
Vol 108 (4) ◽  
pp. 737-753 ◽  
Author(s):  
LISA HULTMAN ◽  
JACOB KATHMAN ◽  
MEGAN SHANNON
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Empirical Examination ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
United Nations Peacekeeping ◽  
Peacekeeping Missions ◽  
The Cold War

While United Nations peacekeeping missions were created to keep peace and perform post-conflict activities, since the end of the Cold War peacekeepers are more often deployed to active conflicts. Yet, we know little about their ability to manage ongoing violence. This article provides the first broad empirical examination of UN peacekeeping effectiveness in reducing battlefield violence in civil wars. We analyze how the number of UN peacekeeping personnel deployed influences the amount of battlefield deaths in all civil wars in Africa from 1992 to 2011. The analyses show that increasing numbers of armed military troops are associated with reduced battlefield deaths, while police and observers are not. Considering that the UN is often criticized for ineffectiveness, these results have important implications: if appropriately composed, UN peacekeeping missions reduce violent conflict.

The Development of the United Nations Law Concerning Peace-Keeping Operations

1992 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-281
Author(s):  
Robert Siekmann
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Central America ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
New Thinking ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Cold War

Especially as a consequence of the termination of the Cold War, the détente in the relations between East en West (Gorbachev's ‘new thinking’ in foreign policy matters) and, finally, the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the number of UN peace-keeping operations substantially increased in recent years. One could even speak of a ‘proliferation’. Until 1988 the number of operations was twelve (seven peace-keeping forces: UNEF ‘I’ and ‘II’, ONUC, UNHCYP, UNSF (West New Guinea), UNDOF AND UNIFIL; and five military observer missions: UNTSO, UNMOGIP, UNOGIL, UNYOM and UNIPOM). Now, three forces and seven observer missions can be added. The forces are MINURSO (West Sahara), UNTAC (Cambodia) and UNPROFOR (Yugoslavia); the observer groups: UNGOMAP (Afghanistan/Pakistan), UNIIMOG (Iran/Iraq), UNAVEM ‘I’ and ‘II’ (Angola), ONUCA (Central America), UNIKOM (Iraq/Kuwait) and ONUSAL (El Salvador). UNTAG (Namibia), which was established in 1978, could not become operational until 1989 as a result of the new political circumstances in the world. So, a total of twenty-three operations have been undertaken, of which almost fifty percent was established in the last five years, whereas the other half was the result of decisions taken by the United Nations in the preceding forty years (UNTSO dates back to 1949). In the meantime, some ‘classic’ operations are being continued (UNTSO, UNMOGIP, UNFICYP, UNDOF, and UNIFIL), whereas some ‘modern’ operations already have been terminated as planned (UNTAG, UNGOMAP, UNIIMOG, UNAVEM ‘I’ and ‘II’, and ONUCA). At the moment (July 1992) eleven operations are in action – the greatest number in the UN history ever.

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