The United Nations and State Sovereignty: Mechanism for Managing International Security

Recently, some analysts have accused the United Nations of eroding the sovereignty of its members. However, these critics often ignore the fact that the creation of the United Nations was itself one incident in the process of reinterpreting sovereignty which has gone on for centuries. Before 1945, sovereignty was often reinterpreted to fit the changing norms and institutions. As a principle which legitimises political control and helps enhance international security, sovereignty often reflects the prevailing notions of international order. While the Security Council has tried to redefine sovereignty after the cold war, the UN Charter remains a constraint on such reinterpretation. If the Charter is not amended to reflect post-cold war changes, the international society might be split between supporters of the Charter principles of sovereignty and those who seek change.     

美国社会组织与联合国人权规范的起源

二战爆发后,美国社会组织在对战争与和平问题的研究中提出依靠国际组织保障人权的规范构想。美国政府则并未重视人权议题,人权在敦巴顿橡树园会议上只处于边缘地位。社会组织在此后掀起大规模的游说活动,要求提高人权议题的地位,这使得美国政府考虑融合社会组织的人权规范构想与主权规范原则。旧金山会议上,美国说服其他大国接受其人权立场,极力否决拉美国家的人权提案,体现出美国借人权话语行使霸权的实质意图。最终出台的《联合国宪章》多处涉及人权,奠定了此后联合国人权规范的基础。但是,社会组织与美国政府围绕人权的争论凸显了宪章人权条款的复杂特征,这使得美国在此后联合国人权规范的发展中面临更多的挑战。     

Implementing International Environmental Agreements: The Case of the Wadden Sea

It has been a feature of the past 30 years or so that individual sovereign states have been increasingly willing to partially set aside their own interests in favour of international treaties on pollution control and wildlife protection. It is the political will of the government signatories to such agreements that is the key to successful implementation as that political will provides the legitimate enforceable authority that is necessary to ensure compliance. This paper examines a trilateral agreement made by the Governments of Denmark, Germany and Holland for the protection and management of the Wadden Sea—one of Europe's most important wildlife sites. The examination of that agreement explores the key mechanisms used for its implementation and, in the case of the Wadden Sea, those mechanisms include the operation of key European Union environmental Directives. The paper finds major differences in approach and application of the Birds, Habitats and Environmental Impact Assessment Directives across the Wadden Sea region and argues that these differences undermine the trilateral agreements made by the three governments.     

Promoting Environmental Education for Sustainable Development: The Value of Links between Higher Education and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)

Environmental sustainability education, the dissemination of environmental education for sustainable development into the community, should be a lifelong process and not one restricted to a learner's years in higher education. Informal environmental sustainability education, including personal involvement in NGO environmental action, can be an effective way of increasing the understanding of environmental and sustainability issues. NGO projects help provide practical environmental education to environmentally aware people who have built their careers in other areas. In the process, they help environmental awareness to trickle into areas of life where it would not ordinarily impinge. In this case study of a community-based land reclamation research project, supported jointly by the NGO Earthwatch and Oxford Brookes University, analysis of the motivations and experiences of project volunteers shows that their aims include making a personal contribution to enhancing the quality of the environment and networking with like-minded individuals, and that they expect to carry their new understanding back into their everyday lives to influence other people in their workplace. Engagement in practical work and action research may help overcome some of the negativity linked to many assessments of the human impact on the environment and, working together, universities and NGOs can more effectively ‘think globally and act locally’. NGOs may provide the best hope for helping to change the destructive aspects of modern society but they are vulnerable through financial dependency on sponsors, volunteers and donors.     

The United States, The United Nations and Iraq: 'Multilateralism of a kind'

Much is made of the need for any second war against Iraq (following Desert Storm of 1991) to be sanctioned by a resolution of the UN Security Council, approved necessarily by all five Permanent Members. Yet only two of the five, the USA and the UK, show any enthusiasm for renewed war in the Persian Gulf; and British policy is undeniably following rather than leading American actions on the diplomatic and military fronts. What are the sources of this American policy? Some critics say oil; the latest arguments of proponents invoke humanitarian concerns; somewhere between the two are those who desire ‘regime change’ to create the economic and political conditions in which so‐called western political, economic and social values can flourish. To understand the present crisis and its likely evolution this article examines American relations with Iraq in particular, the Persian Gulf more generally and the Middle East as a region since the Second World War. A study of these international relations combined with a critical approach to the history of American actions and attitudes towards the United Nations shows that the United States continues to pursue a diplomacy blending, as occasion suits, the traditional binaries of multilateralism and unilateralism—yet in the new world‐wide ‘war on terrorism’. The question remains whether the chosen means of fighting this war will inevitably lead to a pyrrhic victory for the United States and its ad hoc allies in the looming confrontation with Iraq.     

The Problematic Nature of Nature: The Post-constructivist Challenge to Environmental History

This article discusses the program of environmental history within the larger discipline of history and contrasts it with more recent contributions from post‐constructivist science. It explores the ways in which post‐constructivism has the potential to productively address many of the shortcomings of environmental history's theories and models that environmental historians themselves have begun to view with a critical eye. The post‐constructivist authors discussed in this article, Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour, both represent challenges to the ways in which nature and the natural sciences tend to be conceptualized as non‐problematized entities within environmental history. They also challenge the ways in which dichotomies of nature and culture tend to be reproduced within the program of environmental history. It is argued that these post‐constructivist contributions represent a radical and arguably more truly historical way of introducing non‐human actors into the historical narrative, and thus represent a potential reinvigoration of environmental history that would embrace a more radical historicity, greater diversity, and openness to difference.     

美英在联合国中国代表权问题上的分歧与协调(1950-1951)

有关中国在联合国的代表权问题,美国的基本立场是反对中国代表权变更,尽管在朝鲜战争爆发前后有微妙的区别,此前主要是私下操纵,此后则公开阻挠。英国的投票立场经历了从弃权、赞成中国代表权变更到最终支持美国在联合国搁置对中国代表权问题讨论的演变过程。而且,英国赞成新中国取得合法代表权并不意味着取缔国民党集团的非法代表,其政策转轨亦不同步。在1950年1-6月,英国开始由弃权走向有条件赞成新中国取得席位,美英分歧凸现,各自为自己的立场游说其他安理会成员国。1950年6月-1951年1月是美英分歧与协调的高峰时期,英国逐渐走向赞成接纳新中国代表同时驱逐国民党非法代表的立场。美国则不遗余力地反对中国代表权的变更。1951年2-6月,英国由赞成中国代表权变更转向支持美国在联合国搁置对这一问题的讨论,美英纷争基本平息。美英在这一问题上的分歧除了反映两国对华政策的差异外,也折射出两国对联合国组织的不同理念。     

美国与联合国中国代表权问题

对致力于推动中美关系正常化的尼克松与基辛格而言,如何处理联合国中国代表权问题似乎颇为棘手。实际上,与北京改善关系是他们处理此问题的战略前提,如何避免美国国内保守阵营的攻击则是两人制定具体战术的出发点,至于蒋介石政权的反应则基本不在他们的考虑范围内。1971年中国成功恢复在联合国的合法席位,虽与尼克松政府的相关政策不无关系,但其根本原因则在于中国自身,即只要中国不发生内乱,任何力量都无法阻止其加入联合国的步伐。而只要北京不让步,台北当局被驱逐出联合国就是必然的结局。     

Social Concertation and Local Development: The Case of Industrial Districts

It is often believed that industrial districts result from an entirely spontaneous process of economic development. On the basis of in-depth study of several Italian industrial districts, in this paper it is argued that the competitiveness and the dynamism of industrial districts' firms are dependent from social integration. Social integration, however, is usually the result of a conscious co-ordination among the local institutions: i.e. the 'high road' to competitiveness is not the outcome of market mechanism, but of a combination of market and concerted collective action among the representatives of the principal district categories and the local establishment.     

1992年联合国环境与发展大会评析

联合国环境与发展大会是继1972年联合国人类环境大会后国际环境保护史上的又一个里程碑事件。大会的召开与20世纪80年代后期世界范围的环保主义高潮有着直接的联系。在预备会议和正式会议上,南北国家代表围绕全球可持续发展的几个主要焦点议题产生了分歧并展开了激烈的辩论。会议取得的主要成果表现在两个方面:一是确立了世界各国在可持续发展和国际合作的一般性原则。二是制订了可持续发展和国际合作的战略措施。     

Environmental Standards and Industrial Restructuring: the Case of the Australian Paper Industry

Environmental standards imposed on the Australian paper industry have emerged in response to public concern over the logging of native forests and the ‘greening’ of consumer demand. Such standards play an integral part in the paper industry's restructuring. Neo-classical theorists hypothesised environmental standards as encouraging the relocation of polluting industries to countries with lax regulations. An alternative hypothesis is that environmental standards encourage in-situ restructuring that can positively affect a company's competitiveness. In considering this alternative hypothesis the implications for state and federal policy are briefly considered.     

Cold War Conflicts and Cheap Cabaret: Sexual Politics at the 1975 United Nations International Women's Year Conference

In a widely read memoir, a Bolivian union militant signals the moment of her alienation from the nongovernmental organisation tribune of the United Nations’ 1975 International Women's Year (IWY) conference in Mexico City by describing her dismay when she encountered a group of women clamouring for sexual rights, reiterating a persistent narrative about a trade‐off between sexual rights and other forms of social justice.
Drawing on feminist performance theory, this article examines the political performances of three central figures at IWY – Domitila Barrios de Chungara, Betty Friedan and Mexican theatre director Nancy Cárdenas – to explore the ways that political performances rooted in distinct scenarios, or historical contexts, generated a confusion of meanings around campaigns for sexual rights.     

Commuting to the Istanbul Historical Core: The Case of Industrial Employees

The aim of this paper is firstly, to determine the types of manufacturing activities which are at present active in the Istanbul Historical Core and secondly, to establish the daily commuting pattern of industrial employment. With this information to hand, it is then possible to assess the impact of the transportation pattern on the historical core and the metropolitan area as a whole. The results show that industrial employees commuting to work in the historical core face more difficulties, by way of duration-distance-change, than the average value observed in the metropolitan area. Moving manufacturing activities away from the historical core will not only decrease the difficulties faced by industrial employees in this area, but will also relieve this 2400 year old area from the burden of traffic congestion, environmental and noise pollution, and create usable building capacity .