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This study explores the normative dimension of the evolving role of the United Nations in peace and security and, ultimately, in governance. What is dealt with here is both the UN's changing raison d'être and the wider normative context within which the organisation is located. The study looks at the UN through the window of one of its most contentious, yet least understood, practices: active involvement in intra-state conflicts as epitomised by UN peacekeeping. Drawing on the conceptual tools provided by the ‘historical structural’ approach, it seeks to understand how and why the international community continuously reinterprets or redefines the UN's role with regard to such conflicts. The study concentrates on intra-state ‘peacekeeping environments’, and examines what changes, if any, have occurred to the normative basis of UN peacekeeping in intra-state conflicts from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. One of the original aspects of the study is its analytical framework, where the conceptualisation of ‘normative basis’ revolves around objectives, functions and authority, and is closely connected with the institutionalised values in the UN Charter such as state sovereignty, human rights and socio-economic development.
normative basis of UN peacekeeping in intra-state conflicts has evolved unevenly but appreciably in terms of both objectives and authority, with the shift in the pattern of prescribed functions emerging as one important indicator of this change. Objectives were conceptualised here with reference to four key principles enshrined in the UN Charter, namely peace and security, state
normative basis of UN peacekeeping and the UN’s evolving role in world politics. The literature on the UN’s Cambodia experience has rightly pointed to the ‘comprehensive’ nature of the mission. What is less well understood is the normative meaning and implications of this comprehensiveness, which is what this chapter seeks to elucidate. Here we explore the local, regional and global interests
composed of three models of news media performance: the elite-driven model, the independent model and the oppositional model. We describe carefully the explanatory and descriptive aspects of each of these models, and discuss their normative basis. We also give an account of how the relationship between foreign policy, news media and war might be expected to operate, based on current theoretical understanding. The second objective of this chapter is to operationalise this framework, so we describe the methodology that was developed in order to implement it.1 Models of
the normative basis of moral reasoning, we could not be much further from Milton’s image of a Spenserian knight moving through the world, testing and making trial of the ‘all manner of reason’ with which it confronts us. Through that figure, Milton describes human moral understanding not as the recovery of a lurking godliness, but as inhabiting the ambivalent space defined and interpretively shaped by
, functions, and authority as detected in peacekeeping environments Our concentration on peacekeeping environments is intended to uncover any changes to the normative connection between the UN and intra-state conflicts. In this context we have already made reference to the ‘normative basis’ of UN peacekeeping, alluding to its connection with three crucial concepts that we use in
. Differences in individuals – for instance between scientists and non-scientists – are often secondary to differences in structures and norms, for example between a religious and scientific community. Ideally, scientific communities have a strong norm (at least verbally) that prescribes openness towards new and challenging data. However, in a scientific environment where such a normative basis is absent, scientists – as the human beings they are – are likely to deviate from this norm. They might gear themselves towards knowledge resistance not just by ignoring rival
T HE CHANGING MACROPOLITICAL landscape brought in its wake both continuities and discontinuities in the normative basis of intra-state peacekeeping, which we will closely examine in the context of four detailed case studies. Each case study in the following chapters will of necessity be handled in its ‘own’ time, in seemingly static fashion. This chapter will
situation is the means of resolving this particular crisis, or whether it is a universal principle which underpins or should underpin the public sphere in modern society. Nevertheless, whether a specific resolution to the 1970s crisis or a more general proposition, Habermas seeks to solve the state’s steering problems by re-establishing its legitimacy to manage the economy and society. With the ideal speech situation, Habermas attempts to re-establish a collective normative basis for the state and its bureaucracies, the system. He intends to re-create a public lifeworld
maintenance of international peace and security. No doubt, these beliefs find some support from the wording of the Charter. However, does the UN’s actual practice not raise serious doubts about their correctness? The organisation’s active involvement in intra-state conflicts is a case in point. It may well be the case that international players are redefining the UN’s ‘normative basis’, that is its ideal