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Issue 20: October 2002

A new book from UNU Press analyses how innovative diplomatic practices have promoted global governance. In Enhancing Global Governance: Towards a New Diplomacy, a group of expert contributors show that the impetus for a new diplomacy has come not from the top but from other sources in the international architecture through a series of cross-cutting coalitions among like-minded states and civil society.

The question of how these alternative leadership forms have been expressed through the United Nations system, together with an evaluation of the impact they have achieved, is the theme that binds together the individual contributions to this collection.

The first section provides an overview of the frustrations concerning the nature of leadership from the P5 members of the Security Council that has continued to be embedded in the post-Cold War settlement. A second section looks at how innovative diplomatic practices played out in two significant case studies: the development of the Ottawa Treaty to ban anti-personnel landmines and the campaign to establish an international court.

The third section points towards the application of new diplomacy in different domains of international activity. On the one hand, the range of analysis is extended by probing the potential effectiveness of a new diplomacy in the commercial sphere, with particular application of codes of conduct that would affect both states and global business. On the other hand, the possibilities and the limitations of new diplomacy are explored in selected areas of the expanded security agenda, such as child soldiers and "conflict" diamonds.

Enhancing Global Governance is edited by Andrew F. Cooper, Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo, John English, co-director of the Centre on Foreign Policy and Federalism at the University of Waterloo, and Ramesh Thakur, Head of the Peace and Governance Programme and Vice Rector of the UN University.

Enhancing Global Governance will be launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair October 11, along with three other UNU Press titles:

• Beyond Violence: Conflict Resolution Process in Northern Ireland (see UNU Update Issue 19)
• Global Governance and the United Nations System: The UN in the Twenty-first Century explains why failure by traditional international governance systems to address new challenges – the IT  revolution, globalization and the end of the cold war – is leading to a transformation from “international” to “global” governance. 

• Researching Violently Divided Societies: Ethical and Methodological Issues analyses research in war-torn and divided societies and the extent to which it can benefit the local populace and contribute to ending conflict.

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