This leading undergraduate textbook now covers international relations theory in more depth and includes new material on NATO and the EU, while its case studies have been updated throughout. Unlike other textbooks in the field, it takes readers behind the scenes of the world's most important international organizations (IOs), inviting them to ask: What are the legal obligations that give IOs international power? How do IOs ensure compliance from their members? And how do they enforce their rules? International Organizations explores these questions through in-depth, chapter-length case studies of the world's key international organizations, allowing students to connect essential IO theory with the law, practice and philosophy of the leading IOs, including the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union. Concise and engagingly written and with end-of-chapter questions, legal appendices and suggestions for further reading, this is core reading for any course on international institutions.

The politics of legitimacy is central to international relations. When states perceive an international organization as legitimate, they defer to it, associate themselves with it, and invoke its symbols. Examining the United Nations Security Council, Ian Hurd demonstrates how legitimacy is created, used, and contested in international relations. The Council's authority depends on its legitimacy, and therefore its legitimation and delegitimation are of the highest importance to states. Through an examination of the politics of the Security Council, including the Iraq invasion and the negotiating history of the United Nations Charter, Hurd shows that when states use the Council's legitimacy for their own purposes, they reaffirm its stature and find themselves contributing to its authority. Case studies of the Libyan sanctions, peacekeeping efforts, and the symbolic politics of the Council demonstrate how the legitimacy of the Council shapes world politics and how legitimated authority can be transferred from states to international organizations. With authority shared between states and other institutions, the interstate system is not a realm of anarchy. Sovereignty is distributed among institutions that have power because they are perceived as legitimate. This book's innovative approach to international organizations and international relations theory lends new insight into interactions between sovereign states and the United Nations, and between legitimacy and the exercise of power in international relations.

Product Description: Observes how the growth of the political authority of the Council challenges the basic idea that states have legal autonomy over their domestic affairs. The individual essays survey the implications that flow from these developments in the crucial policy areas of: terrorism; economic sanctions; the prosecution of war crimes; human rights; humanitarian intervention; and the use of force...read more