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The book provides a critical history of the concept of sustainability and the various institutional measures taken to promote, implement and enforce sustainable development.

"The book provides a critical history of the concept of sustainability and the various institutional measures taken to promote, implement and enforce sustainable development"--

This series aims to provide authoritative guidance on all aspects of the law of international organizations. This area of law has, over the years, developed into a separate field of study within the discipline of public international law. While it covers the law of individual organizations such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the International Criminal Court, and the European Union, it also includes thematic institutional law topics such as membership, decision-making, legal personality, and responsibility of international organizations. In these and other areas, international organizations face similar questions and share a number of common characteristics. The series aims to include works written by practitioners as well as academics

This article will challenge the conventional wisdom according to which international bureaucracies are unviable and undesirable in the age of globalisation. The relevance and powers of today's international bureaucracies can best be understood by reference to the model of the 'network logic of globalisation' rather than Max Weber's classic theory alone. Bureaucracies are undergoing a transformation from the rigid and hierarchical institutions of Weber's time to more network-oriented and delayered post-Weberian entities. On occasion, these post-Weberian structures allow middle-level officials in international organisations to wield considerable new bureaucratic powers. The case study of this article draws upon empirical evidence on the drafting and implementation of An Agenda for Peace (1992) by UN Secretariat officials and its contributions to the United Nations early warning and conflict prevention mechanism. The network-oriented structures and approaches have started to permeate the UN Organisation in two ways: First, the United Nations operates more and more through interdepartmental and interagency teams. This trend was evident already in the drafting and implementation processes of the Agenda. Second, the United Nations is reaching out to academic and civil society networks. The start of these two transformations of the UN bureaucracy is related to globalisation and can be seen already in action in the early 1990s when the Agenda was drafted. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

This article will challenge the conventional wisdom according to which international bureaucracies are unviable and undesirable in the age of globalisation. The relevance and powers of today's international bureaucracies can best be understood by reference to the model of the 'network logic of globalisation' rather than Max Weber's classic theory alone. Bureaucracies are undergoing a transformation from the rigid and hierarchical institutions of Weber's time to more network-oriented and delayered post-Weberian entities. On occasion, these post-Weberian structures allow middle-level officials in international organisations to wield considerable new bureaucratic powers. The case study of this article draws upon empirical evidence on the drafting and implementation of An Agenda for Peace (1992) by UN Secretariat officials and its contributions to the United Nations early warning and conflict prevention mechanism. The network-oriented structures and approaches have started to permeate the UN Organisation in two ways: First, the United Nations operates more and more through interdepartmental and interagency teams. This trend was evident already in the drafting and implementation processes of the Agenda. Second, the United Nations is reaching out to academic and civil society networks. The start of these two transformations of the UN bureaucracy is related to globalisation and can be seen already in action in the early 1990s when the Agenda was drafted.