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Once described by Trygve Lie as the \"most impossible job on earth,\" the position of UN Secretary-General is as frustratingly constrained as it is prestigious. The Secretary-General's ability to influence global affairs often depends on how the international community regards his moral authority. In relation to such moral authority, past office-holders have drawn on their own ethics and religious backgrounds-as diverse as Lutheranism, Catholicism, Buddhism, and Coptic Christianity-to guide the role that they played in addressing the UN's goals in the international arena, such as the maintenance of international peace and security and the promotion of human rights. InThe UN Secretary-General and Moral Authority, contributors provide case studies of all seven former secretaries-general, establishing a much-needed comparative survey of each office-holder's personal religious and moral values. From Trygve Lie's forbearance during the UN's turbulent formative years to the Nobel committee's awarding Kofi Annan and the United Nations the prize for peace in 2001, the case studies all follow the same format, first detailing the environmental and experiential factors that forged these men's ethical frameworks, then analyzing how their \"inner code\" engaged with the duties of office and the global events particular to their terms. Balanced and unbiased in its approach, this study provides valuable insight into how religious and moral leadership functions in the realm of international relations, and how the promotion of ethical values works to diffuse international tensions and improve the quality of human life around the world.

This study examines how the UN Secretary-General's leadership qualities affect how they address threats to peace and security. The personal traits of all seven Secretaries-General are measured and categorized into one of three leadership styles: managerial, strategic, and visionary.

The UN Charter describes him or her merely as the \"chief administrative officer of the organization,\" yet today the Secretary-General is widely recognized as the UN's chief political representative. How did this transformation and expansion of the office from administrative to political take place? Existing scholarship tends to emphasize the contribution made by Dag Hammarskjöld. This article challenges that story on two accounts: first, by pointing out the importance of institutional factors and not just the officeholder's personality; and second, by examining the contribution made by Trygve Lie, the UN's first Secretary-General. The article establishes a conceptual framework based on institutional theory to understand the role of the Secretary-General and analyzes Lie's contribution in the period 1946–1953.

In a narrative-redefining approach, Engaging the Evil Empire dramatically alters how we look at the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Tracking key events in US-Soviet relations across the years between 1980 and 1985, Simon Miles shows that covert engagement gave way to overt conversation as both superpowers determined that open diplomacy was the best means of furthering their own, primarily competitive, goals. Miles narrates the history of these dramatic years, as President Ronald Reagan consistently applied a disciplined carrot-and-stick approach, reaching out to Moscow while at the same time excoriating the Soviet system and building up US military capabilities. The received wisdom in diplomatic circles is that the beginning of the end of the Cold War came from changing policy preferences and that President Reagan in particular opted for a more conciliatory and less bellicose diplomatic approach. In reality, Miles clearly demonstrates, Reagan and ranking officials in the National Security Council had determined that the United States enjoyed a strategic margin of error that permitted it to engage Moscow overtly. As US grand strategy developed, so did that of the Soviet Union. Engaging the Evil Empire covers five critical years of Cold War history when Soviet leaders tried to reduce tensions between the two nations in order to gain economic breathing room and, to ensure domestic political stability, prioritize expenditures on butter over those on guns. Miles's bold narrative shifts the focus of Cold War historians away from exclusive attention on Washington by focusing on the years of back-channel communiqués and internal strategy debates in Moscow as well as Prague and East Berlin.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations is a unique figure in world politics. At once civil servant, the world's diplomat, lackey of the UN Security Council, and commander-in-chief of up to a hundred thousand peacekeepers, he or she depends on states for both the legitimacy and resources that enable the United Nations to function. The tension between these roles - of being secretary or general - has challenged every incumbent. This book brings together the insights of senior UN staff, diplomats and scholars to examine the normative and political factors that shape this unique office with particular emphasis on how it has evolved in response to changing circumstances such as globalization and the onset of the 'war on terror'. The difficulties experienced by each Secretary-General reflect the profound ambivalence of states towards entrusting their security, interests or resources to an intergovernmental body.

This book investigates the various understandings of and approaches towards tax avoidance in 39 countries.

This article argues that the secretary-general of the United Nations is in many respects in a strong position to engage in \"norm entrepreneurship.\" However, he must constantly balance the desire to forward particular principled ideas with the need to maintain the support of the member states and to act within the organization's (and his own) mandate. Examined here are the attempts made by Boutros Boutros-Ghali to promote a norm of democratic governance, with particular emphasis on the importance of the ways in which he strategically \"framed\" that concept. It is argued that although his democracy-promotion activities were not an unqualified success—and indeed some of the limitations on the secretary-general's capacity for norm building are highlighted—they nevertheless had a real and lasting impact on the organization.

In March 2011, the UN Security Council authorized the use of force to protect civilians in Libya. This was the first time that the Council has ever authorized the invasion of a functioning state for such purposes. International society's relatively decisive responses to recent crises in Côte d'Ivoire and Libya has provoked significant commentary, suggesting that something has changed about the way the world responds to violence against civilians. Focusing on these two cases, this article examines the changing practice of the UN Security Council. It argues that we are seeing the emergence of a new politics of protection, but that this new politics has been developing over the past decade. Four things are new about this politics of protection: protecting civilians from harm has become a focus for international engagement; the UN Security Council has proved itself willing to authorize the use of force for protection purposes; regional organizations have begun to play the role of 'gatekeeper'; and major powers have exhibited a determination to work through the Security Council where possible. However, the cases of Côte d'Ivoire and Libya also help to highlight some key challenges that might halt or reverse progress. Notably, states differ in the way they interpret mandates; questions are being asked about the UN's authority to act independently of specific Security Council authorizations; the overlap of regional organizations sometimes sends conflicting messages to the Security Council; and there remains a range of difficult operational questions about how to implement protection mandates. With these in mind, this article concludes with some suggestions about how the future challenges might be navigated in order to maintain the progress that has been made in the past decade.