Enhance your library’s holdings with our comprehensive collection of 56 titles in international law, international relations and security studies. This curated selection includes both timeless classics and pioneering new works, featuring esteemed titles from the renowned Melland Schill series, known for its signifi cant contributions to the field.
Our collection integrates contemporary research with historic texts, serving as a global repository of academic scholarship.
| Key series |
| Melland Schill Perspectives on International Law |
| Melland Schill Studies in International Law |
| Melland Schill Classics in International Law |
| New Approaches to Confl ict Analysis |
| Collection year | Titles |
| 2025 titles | 11 |
| 2023/4 titles | 10 |
| 2000-2022 titles | 31 |
| Total collection | 56 |
| Keywords |
| Conflict |
| Military |
| Geopolitics |
| War |
| Children |
| Peace |
| Thema subject categories |
| Artifical intelligence |
| Diplomacy |
| International law |
| International relations |
| Peace studies and conflict resolution |
| Religion and politics |
| Geopolitics |
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International law and international relations collection
This introduction outlines a novel framework for researching counter-terrorism from a decolonial, postcolonial, and comparative perspective. The editors argue for moving beyond binaries in existing scholarship between liberal democratic and emergency politics, West/non-West, past/present, and domestic/international spheres. Instead, a decolonial approach is proposed that reveals the colonial genealogies and continuities underlying contemporary counter-terrorism globally. Comparative analyses of different cases from the Global North and South show how colonial legacies, nationalist discourses, and transnational dynamics all affect how counter-terrorism is practiced around the world. The introduction delineates how the collection’s empirical chapters challenge Eurocentric, epochal, and state-centric tendencies in critical terrorism studies. Overall, the chapter makes a persuasive case for decolonising and deparochialising scholarship on counter-terrorism.
The modern concept of humanitarian intervention follows the same doctrinal and operational pattern either as the societas humana which interposes to restore the forfeited standards of humanity and to protect maltreated individuals or the need to restore peace and order threatened by human rights abuses. Because humanitarian intervention is prima facie an assault on state sovereignty, it is legitimised by being integrated into a natural law theory which envisages an enveloping human society. Related to the rationalisation and secularisation of natural law is the projection of the individual who is for Hugo Grotius the ultimate unit in national and international law. Grotius' social contract appears as an attempt for the philosophical rationalisation of the status quo, whereas for the contractual philosophers it is a means for scrutinising state power.
This chapter sets out a key conceptual notion that underpins the book. It expands the well-known conflict response framework of conflict management, conflict resolution and conflict transformation to encompass crisis response by the EU. Thus it examines how a framework of crisis management, crisis resolution and crisis transformation may apply to the EU and expands the framework even further by considering the notion of critical conflict transformation. In keeping with other chapters in the book, it argues that elements of EU crisis response have shown signs of being progressive and emancipatory and conforming to crisis transformation or critical crisis transformation. Yet, and again as seen in later chapters, the trend has been away from emancipatory-style crisis response towards responses that emphasise security and stabilisation.
This chapter is interested in the framing and construction of the ‘migration crisis’ that faced the EU in the 2010s and its responses to that ‘crisis’. The framing of the migration issues chapter was influenced by the internal politics of member states, the rise of populist and anti-incumbency politics, and a general trend towards securitising issues that previously had been examined outside of a security frame. The chapter details the specific tools adopted by the EU to deal with the ‘crisis’ and notes a withdrawal to a realist policy mind-set that was primarily interested in stabilisation and containment rather than examining the drivers of migration or the populist instrumentalisation of it.
How effective has the EU been in its crisis responses? The organisation has developed comprehensive strategies to complement a growing security architecture. It is not always clear, however, whether the organisation is effective in terms of the aims that it has set itself and in relation to opinion of stakeholders in host countries. This chapter uses the standardised foreign policy cycle of output, outcome and impact effectiveness to assess EU performance in Afghanistan, Iraq and Mali.
This is a start-of-the-art consideration of the European Union’s crisis response mechanisms. It brings together scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds to examine how and why the EU responds to crises on its borders and further afield. The work is based on extensive fieldwork in among another places, Afghanistan, Libya, Mali and Iraq.
The book considers the construction of crises and how some issues are deemed crises and others not. A major finding from this comparative study is that EU crisis response interventions have been placing increasing emphasis on security and stabilisation and less emphasis on human rights and democratisation. This changes – quite fundamentally – the EU’s stance as an international actor and leads to questions about the nature of the EU and how it perceives itself and is perceived by others.
The volume is able to bring together scholars from EU Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies. The result showcases concept and theory-building alongside case study research.
The EU aims at being a prominent global crisis responder, but its member states act also through the UN, NATO and OSCE to achieve both short-term stabilisation by military and/or civilian means, and longer-term conflict prevention and transformation. By comparing the policy approaches of these four multilateral organisations to conflicts and crises, this contribution shows how the broad principle of comprehensiveness has been developed to fit different institutional logics, thus leading to divergences in approach. Distilling findings from empirical research conducted in the framework of the Horizon 2020-funded EUNPACK project in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Libya, Mali and Ukraine, this chapter synthesises lessons about varying levels of the EU’s and the other organisations’ conflict sensitivity, effective multilateralism, value-based approach and application of the principle of local ownership in theatre.
The Introduction sets out the structure and essential purpose of the book, and explains EUNPACK – the comparative study on which the book is based. It asks what EU crisis management seeks to address; introduces the innovative typology for crisis response that lies at the heart of the book; and highlights how much of the book is based on fieldwork, while being careful to note how difficult it is for outside researchers to authentically reflect the voices of local populations. The key findings of the book are presented, including the trend identified in a number of later chapters towards security-led approaches in the EU’s crisis response activities in its neighbourhood and further afield. The conclusion offers further thoughts on how EU crisis response has evolved and on its future role.
Based on extensive fieldwork and perception surveys, this chapter examines the nature of the EU’s crisis response in the extended neighbourhood. It finds that interventions have a significant security element leading to questions about the ultimate aim of EU crisis response interventions: stabilisation or something more emancipatory. The chapter also shows how the EU is often insulated in-country and has difficulty connecting with the wider populations and their aspirations.
The aim of this chapter is to identify the potential and limits of the EU’s external crisis response. Rather than focusing on the character of the EU as a foreign policy actor, it concentrates on the EU toolbox or repertoire applied in EU missions and activities in various external crises and conflicts in the near and extended neighbourhood, and also how the Union’s activities are perceived by local stakeholders. A key question is whether there is a match or mismatch between EU intentions, the implementation, and the perceptions of local stakeholders. The analysis in this article draws on both a series of qualitative case studies and a quantitative analysis of a large number of EU documents and statements. This mixed method has enabled us to explore the EU’s crisis response repertoire systematically and from various angles.