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Tuesday, August 30, 20051125382800
The Only Text at UNL So Far Worth Anything
"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"
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01:20 Posted by Dan tdaxp in UNL | Permalink | Comments (5) | Email this | Tags: rules for the world, michael barnett, martha finnemore
Comments
Is another constructivist being born? We're like the Borg, you know, only less pasty.
Posted by: Dan Nexon | Thursday, September 15, 2005
Dr Nexon
Thanks for the comment! Having a political science professor /from Big Wig University/ read your blog is a great ego-booster to a poor grad student :)
I think I'll start posting my notes from my seminars too, for self-reference if nothing else. Anyway...
As I mentioned to the profs, constructivism seems to be a special case of liberalism, and liberalism seems to be a special case of realism.
Constructivism: Everything's political, anything can be an actor, all goals can be created
Liberalism: Same thing as above, except focus only on states and igos. Nothing else matters too much.
Realism: Same as above, except focus only on states. IGOs can't socialize states.
Another thought: In the human cognition and instruction class, we went over behavioralism (individual action-response-feedback), cognition (rearranging minds), and social cognition (behavioralism by proxy). So far
Behavioralism => State Interests
Cognition => International Legitimacy
Social Cognition => International Law
Last thought: commenting on a couch with various, super-interesting friends is a way too distracting environment for coherent blog comments :)
Posted by: Dan tdaxp | Friday, September 16, 2005
Not to be too shameless, but to get a better sense of these relationships between realism, liberalism, and constructivism I suggest the International Studies Review forum on "Realist Constructivism", which appeared last year.
Posted by: Dan Nexon | Friday, September 16, 2005
Dr. Nexon,
Sorry for the delay responding -- thanks!
I would kill to be in one of your classes right now.
(Just joking... kinda)
tdaxp
Posted by: Dan tdaxp | Sunday, September 25, 2005
OMG! OMG! OMG!
The first 100-some pages of Rules for the World are available online.
http://fhss.byu.edu/polsci/Nielsond/PLSC%20450-470/Barnett%20&%20Finnemore.2004.Rules%20for%20the%20World.pdf
(Yes I'm hyperventilating, but mad props are due to the book that introduced me to constructivism)
Posted by: Dan tdaxp | Tuesday, February 14, 2006