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Mendelson reviews 'Ideas and International Political Change: Soviet/Russian Behaviour and the End of the Cold War' by Jeffrey T. Checkel.

Noonan reviews 'Ideas and International Political Change: Soviet/Russian Behavior and the End of the Cold War' by Jeffrey T. Checkel.

Translated and slightly revised from Etudes Internationales 13:445-71 1982. Since the 1930s; focus on the post 1973 era.

The massacre of refugees during the 1996–7 war in Congo illustrates the gap
between existing legal standards and their application, as the principle of
sovereignty rationalises states' behaviour against helpless people. This paper
assesses available information on the scale of the massacre, concluding that
about 232,000 refugees were killed. It argues that firmness in demanding
justice and protecting human rights does not require ignoring the objectives
of stability and prosperity for any country, but rather that it is the best way
of promoting those goals and strengthening state sovereignty within the international
community. To implement international law related to refugees
will require making states and non-state players responsible for their actions
to the international community, since any outflow of refugees creates negative
externalities or costs that are unequally borne by this community.

Abstract  This article interrogates the risk of historical artefacts in travel, emphasising especially on the construction of the risk of boundary‐crossing when museum exhibits travel abroad through "outbound" international travelling exhibitions. This follows the history of a controversial exhibition, the "Splendour of Imperial China"– held in 1996 that travelled from the National Palace Museum in Taipei which is renowned for its abundant and unique Chinese art collection to one of the most prominent museums on the global stage – the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Drawing upon Mary Douglas's analysis of danger/risk and classification, this paper argues that the risk within the "outbound" international travelling exhibition is less ontological than constructed. Often the controversy over the risk re‐delineates the boundary between "us" and "them". This article, first of all, examines the power‐laden relationship, regulated by the struggle of the global museum field, when museum experts at home and abroad co‐write the risk of an exhibition's travel in the language of insurance calculation. Second, it analyses the laymen's protesting discourses against the historical artefacts' overseas travel through outbound international travelling exhibition. The protest which appropriated the "keeping‐while‐giving" logic of exchange, and backed up with both national sentiments and international symbolic sources, rendered the exhibition a hot potato. Finally, it interrogates how the settled outbound travelling exhibition actually renders the museum collection reclassified and revalorized according to their suitability for overseas travel.

Can transparency enhance the legitimacy of international institutions? As transparency has become a widely applied procedural standard in international politics, a range of institutions have implemented transparency reforms under the presumption that increased transparency can elicit support among relevant audiences. This article evaluates whether increased transparency in the UN Security Council leads to enhanced legitimacy perceptions among UN member-states. The article first traces the history of Security Council reform since 1990 and draws on interviews with diplomats and observers to describe a transparency reform the Council enacted in 2006. Next, the article uses longitudinal content analysis to empirically probe the legitimation effects of that transparency reform. The empirical analysis is based on an original dataset of 4,303 legitimacy statements made by UN member-states in annual UN General Assembly debates over the periods 1990–2006 and 2006–18. The findings cast doubt over the potential of transparency reform to improve the Council's legitimacy; instead they suggest that increasing the direct participation of the wider UN membership may be a more viable legitimation strategy. This article contributes to existing international legitimacy literature by providing empirical evidence on the relationship between transparency and legitimacy, and by demonstrating which institutional features that affect the perceived legitimacy of the Security Council.

Can transparency enhance the legitimacy of international institutions? As transparency has become a widely applied procedural standard in international politics, a range of institutions have implemented transparency reforms under the presumption that increased transparency can elicit support among relevant audiences. This article evaluates whether increased transparency in the UN Security Council leads to enhanced legitimacy perceptions among UN member-states. The article first traces the history of Security Council reform since 1990 and draws on interviews with diplomats and observers to describe a transparency reform the Council enacted in 2006. Next, the article uses longitudinal content analysis to empirically probe the legitimation effects of that transparency reform. The empirical analysis is based on an original dataset of 4,303 legitimacy statements made by UN member-states in annual UN General Assembly debates over the periods 1990–2006 and 2006–18. The findings cast doubt over the potential of transparency reform to improve the Council's legitimacy; instead they suggest that increasing the direct participation of the wider UN membership may be a more viable legitimation strategy. This article contributes to existing international legitimacy literature by providing empirical evidence on the relationship between transparency and legitimacy, and by demonstrating which institutional features that affect the perceived legitimacy of the Security Council.