Suchergebnisse

Argues that activities of international financial institutions in the poorest countries has changed the substance of sovereignty to that of providing material well-being to national populations; focus on sub-Saharan Africa.

Most analyses of legitimacy and legitimation in international organizations (IOs) focus on the perceptions of external audiences. In so doing, they fail to consider self-legitimation, where an IO undertakes legitimation internally, as a way of developing and reinforcing its identity. Moreover, most studies of IO legitimacy neglect the fact that IO identities are rarely uniform and instead are multiple and conflicting. I address these omissions by examining self-legitimation in three IOs—the United Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the World Bank. These organizations are both operational and normative actors, and both institutions dependent on member states and autonomous bodies with independent expertise and capacities. These identities sometimes dictate contradictory goals and practices, forcing the organizations to violate the principles and activities considered appropriate to one of their identities, thus complicating legitimation. Based on extensive fieldwork and drawing on a range of disciplines, this article proposes a novel theory of IO self-legitimation: I argue that the need for self-legitimation depends on the degree of identity cohesion and identity hierarchy of the organization. I identify two temporal dimensions of self-legitimation, three categories of self-legitimation practices, and three broader repercussions of self-legitimation, ultimately showing that self-legitimation is a necessary and constitutive activity for IOs.

This comment on an article by Jens David Ohlin, "On the Very Idea of Transitional Justice" (2007), notes that while it is insightful & stimulating, it is marred by a "serious misreading of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC)." Unfortunately, his argument is based on this misreading, an error that goes beyond the case in question. Adapted from the source document.

Mental ill-health is a matter of incongruity between outside stimuli & the adaptive forces of the organism; hence its cure or prevention may be approached either by reducing the external stimuli or by increasing the organism's resistance. The promotion of mental health usually depends on parents, teachers, clergymen & others just as much as psychiatrists & is also dependent upon the individual's success at identifying with cultural values. For several reasons an internat'l approach to mental health problems is an urgent necessity. Among the several org's to foster such an approach have been: the First Internat'l Congress on Mental Health, the World Federation for Mental Health, the Mental Health Section of WHO UNESCO, & the Soc Defense Section of the Bur of Soc Affairs of the UN. The main responsibility falls, however, to WHO & the World Federation for Mental Health (non-gov'al). Both org's have engaged in a considerable amount of work. Care should be taken not to over-state the case for an internat'l approach because of the diff material needs & possibilities of diff regions, as well as the more basic reason that the variation in cultural values limits the wisdom of expecting the recommendations applicable to one region to be easily transferable to another. What may be considered mental health in one region may not be so considered in another. Mental health is a value-loaded concept. Work in the area requires a multi-disciplinary effort. B. J. Keeley.

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