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As an editorial team we set out with the aim of showcasing academic research which not only makes a theoretical impact, but also has practical value for policy makers.

The new politics of modernization in post-Mao China raises a variety of intriguing questions to ask and hypotheses to test in international relations research. This paper examines the normative and policy changes brought about by the impetus of the modernization drive at home and how these changes have affected Chinese foreign policy in general and Chinese global policy in particular. In pursuit of this line of inquiry, the institutional setting of international organizations, especially those concerned with global political, military, developmental, and functional issues, is chosen as a testing ground of Chinese global policy. The scope of the paper is largely limited to the Chinese global policy of the post-Mao period of 1977 - 1980. The paper attempts a normative-behavioral analysis concentrating on global geopolitical, developmental, and functional domains. By way of conclusion, the paper broadly assesses the implications of post-Mao Chinese global policy for the Third World's elusive pursuit of a new world order.

AbstractThis article introduces the Special Section Evaluation, International Organizations, and Global Policy. It provides a synopsis of the overarching challenges and opportunities for evaluation in the field of global public policy through international organizations. In the article four issue areas are addressed. First, is the central role of peacekeeping, development, and environment in global public policy and how evaluations enhance the governance capacity of international organizations in these areas. Second, the contribution that evaluation can make toward legitimizing the activities of international organizations through accountability mechanisms of communication, assessment, and optimization of outcomes. Third, how evaluation at the international level is especially suited to facilitate solutions to increasingly complex and globally interdependent problems. Fourth, it concludes with, how evaluation contributes to producing constructive policy at the global level. This includes, especially in terms of policy implications, the need to evaluate evaluation itself on a regular basis, in order to ensure its constant progress as a discipline and practice, and the need to embed evaluation in good policies, at the global level among others.

As a counterpoint to the other articles in this special issue, this final paper presents a skeptical view of the global policy perspective, especially as it has been presented in the writings of the guest editor. The author argues that the perspective is conceptually muddled and that such key terms as `global' and `policy' have yet to be given clear, precise, or analytically penetrating definitions. A case is made that the very idea of global (as opposed to international) policy seriously misrepresents the nature of contemporary international regulations. It concludes by suggesting that the policy perspective, even if the conceptual problems can be worked out, promises to provide little additional descriptive, analytic, or heuristic leverage for students of international relations.

This introductory article notes several parallels in the mission and historical evolution of the fields of contemporary policy studies and peace research, as well as some of the basic differences in the two fields. The field of policy studies, which analyzes the potential contributions of governmental action to collective well-being, encompasses a variety of approaches, including positivism, social engineering, incrementalism, and rationalism. A case is made for development of an international and global dimension of the field of policy studies in view of the increasing seriousness and complexity of transnational problems and the scope of international problem-solving activities. Much of peace research has, in effect, the basic characteristics of the differing approaches to policy studies. Global policy studies can make several contributions to peace research, including a comprehensive theoretical orientation for guiding initiatives for achieving desired outcomes, insights into the dynamics of international conflict resolution, a greater understanding of the potential role of international law and institutions in world politics, and a recognition of the wide range of global policies that have a bearing on peace. Peace research has much to offer global policy studies, but this is a subject to be elaborated elsewhere.

It is advantageous to combine international regime and global policy approaches to employment. Sources of the relative ineffectiveness of regional and global employment policy are found primarily in conflicting missions of intergovernmental organizations, ideological conflicts and the inadequate resources and powers of such organizations. Employment suffers from the existence of higher economic and human rights priorities in virtually all international policy arenas. Although evolutionary progress can be expected in the present regime structure, fundamental change will require truly global policies in a more highly developed regime that integrates economic and human rights principles and goals.