Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
EPDF and EPUB available open access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Civil society organizations (CSOs) and non-governmental organizations have increased at the United Nations (UN) since the 1990s. Yet few studies discuss the notion of inclusion and what it entails in intergovernmental negotiations.
This book delves into the UN’s relationship with CSOs, exploring who participates in negotiations and how their input is integrated into ratified documents. Drawing on ethnographic research, the author uncovers the complexities of accreditation, participation, and the interpretation of CSOs’ contributions. Offering a sociological analysis, she highlights the increased exclusion of CSOs despite their apparent inclusion in institutions of global governance unbounded to public accountability.
Leah R. Kimber examines the practices of exclusion CSOs are subjected to in UN negotiations by opening the machinery of intergovernmental negotiations in light of the UN’s future and legitimacy.
Chapter 2 allows to look back in time to analyse the United Nations (UN)’s uneasy relationship with its civil society and clarify how civil society has been approached and theorized in the literature. With civil society gaining increasing interest in world politics through its growing role and presence, it has called for different theoretical stances and changing methodological implications, as witnessed in the literature on international relations. Yet if the inclusion of civil society could be measured as the number of non-governmental organizations the UN accredits each year, a more fine-grained analysis at the individual level needs to analyse the inclusion contingent on interactions and power dynamics at play. Drawing on the sociology of organizations to analyse the power dynamics among civil society actors and the UN system with its Member States and its staff members in each apparatus the author proposes an innovative theoretical framework, drawing on a pragmatic approach, combining interest group theory and dispositif, to analyse the inclusion of civil society as a process from its beginnings of mobilization to its end, namely the outcome written document.
The concluding chapter, ‘Exclusion in Light of Inclusion’, first looks back at the empirical chapters and discusses the various forms of inclusion, built on Foucault’s concept of apparatus, namely the institutional, social and substantive inclusion. Each form of inclusion depends on each apparatus, respectively institutional, social and substantive, in which the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction and Member States embody inclusive or exclusive practices. Investigating the interdependence between each apparatus provides additional nuance to grasp the hurdles that impede inclusion of civil society. Moving forward, the author proposes three scenarios, ultimately answering more accurately what it means and entails to be included as a member of civil society. In sum, in an evidence-based approach, the research nuances the United Nations’ claims of being an inclusive institution.
Chapter 5, ‘Disentangling the Social’, looks at the nitty-gritty practices around the text that forms world politics and how it all plays out; navigating between policy arenas and decision venues, incorporating United Nations codes, organizing access and performing advocacy strategies. Harnessing Goffman’s concepts of front stage and backstage, the author presents the various activities members of civil society develop, be it front stage, for official activities, or backstage, namely informally, in the interstices of formal meetings. The framework helps shed light on civil society’s times of social inclusion and times of social exclusion. Building on the concept of social apparatus informs of the numerous codes and tacit expectations required to navigate particular settings in order to ultimately best impact the final text.
The introductory chapter presents the puzzle around the inclusion of civil society and intergovernmental processes at the United Nations, laying theoretical, methodological and empirical groundwork to revisit the very notion of inclusion. Guiding the reader through rich empirical data, generated through ethnography as member of the Women’s Major Group in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the author brings to the fore an innovative theoretical framework built on interest group theory and Foucault’s concept of apparatus to analyse the various mechanisms that allow civil society to gain access, participate and advocate for agenda items. Developing three types of apparatus – institutional, social and substantive – the chapter suggests a new definition of inclusion to nuance and rethink the mechanisms of inclusion – but also of exclusion. The last section convinces the reader of the relevance of the book, namely, if international organizations aim to have an impact on the world, we ought to study how these institutions include civil society in intergovernmental negotiations because it reminds us of the United Nations’ initial pledge which speaks to democratic values.
Chapter 3 presents the context in which the research took place. As the ten-year programme, the Hyogo Framework for Action, was coming to an end, the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) initiated new impetus in the creation of what was going to be the Sendai Framework. While UNISDR fights for disaster risk reduction, promotes resilience and updates outdated frameworks, by convening Member States in intergovernmental negotiations, it opens the debate globally by inviting and consulting with civil society. The chapter delves into UNISDR’s vision, such as its agenda, the alignment – or dissonance – of Member States, and the claims of civil society. The chapter gives background information, which sets the stage to understand the ways in which actors get involved and position themselves in the Sendai process.
Chapter 6, ‘The Text Before All Things’, puts centre stage the subsequent versions of the Sendai Framework in the making from July 2014 to March 2015 to highlight specific agenda items pushed by civil society and the Women’s Major Group especially. It shows the importance of words – for some contentious, for others, vehicles for consensus building – by highlighting what is retained in the text and thus what is substantively included or excluded. A retrospective analysis from the first ratified document dedicated to disaster risk reduction in Yokohama in 1994 to the one ratified in Sendai 2015, with a special focus on gender, provides a socio-historical account of gender gains and losses in the past 30 years and the challenges that arise with using the term ‘woman’.
Chapter 4, ‘We the Peoples’, not only refers to the UN General Assembly statement in 1945, but also provides a solid basis to look at who the individuals are that mobilize forces for disaster risk reduction in the institutional apparatus. To better grasp the claims, resources and the way they organize as Major Groups, the chapter draws on collective action theory to help get a sense of the motivations and networks that build around the Major Groups. Combining collective action with the concept of career allows to depict the essential milestones required for a civil society member to be institutionally included and considered as an ‘insider’, that is, to take part in the Sendai process as a member of the Women’s Major Group.
Article VI of the NPT obliges all parties to the treaty to pursue negotiations toward arms control and eventual disarmament. A number of gaps in our understanding of Article VI exist, however, and these impede efforts to revive negotiations today.
Under international law, an obligation to negotiate is an obligation of best efforts, not an obligation of result. It is therefore an enduring puzzle why the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in its 1996 advisory opinion on nuclear weapons, said that Article VI obliges disarmament as a result. The ICJ read too much into Article VI. Realists, by contrast, deprecate Article VI: they describe it as hortatory—the expression of a wish, not the stipulation of a duty.
To negotiate in good faith, a party must do more than go through the motions. The party must come prepared to make, and to entertain, fresh proposals. Moreover, the party must observe an essentially negative obligation: it must not seek to impose a fait accompli in respect of the subject matter of the negotiations; and it must not aggravate the problem that it has committed to negotiate to resolve.
Policy makers across the political spectrum in the US and allied countries recognize that China’s nuclear weapons buildup is a challenge to the strategic balance that had prevailed for decades among nuclear-weapon states. However, consensus is lacking as to what to do about it. One element of our response should be to negotiate toward arms control, as Article VI of the NPT requires.
It takes more than one party to hold a negotiation. China has refused to take part in a nuclear arms control negotiation. China maintains that only when China is at nuclear weapons parity with the US and Russia will it be appropriate for China to negotiate. But NPT Article VI does not stipulate parity as a precondition for the pursuit of negotiations.
An NPT party violates Article VI that refuses to negotiate. An NPT party that instigates an arms race and seeks to impose a strategic fait accompli also violates Article VI. The US, its allies, and like-minded countries should call attention to the inconsistency of China’s conduct, including its nuclear weapons buildup, with Article VI.
