Just Security in an Undergoverned World

Dr. William Durch is a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center and was research director for the Commission on Global Security, Justice and Governance. He co-directed Stimson's program on UN peace operations, focused on restoring post-conflict rule of law, and was project director for the UN Secretary-General's Panel on UN Peace Operations (the Brahimi Report). His publications include Twenty-First Century Peace Operations (edited, USIP, 2006).

Dr. Joris Larik is Assistant Professor at Leiden University and Senior Researcher at The Hague Institute for Global Justice. He is the author of Foreign Policy Objectives in European Constitutional Law (Oxford University Press, 2016) and co-author of ASEAN's External Agreements: Law, Practice and the Quest for Collective Action (Cambridge University Press, 2015), and has published in various peer-reviewed law and international relations journals. His work has been acknowledged with several awards, including NATO's Manfred Wörner Essay Award (2008) and the Mauro Cappelletti Prize for the Best Thesis in Comparative Law (2014) from the European University Institute (EUI).


Dr. Richard Ponzio directs the Just Security 2020 Program at the Stimson Center. Previously, he led the Global Governance Program at The Hague Institute for Global Justice and was Project Director for the Albright-Gambari Commission on Global Security, Justice & Governance. Major publications include Democratic Peacebuilding: Aiding Afghanistan and other Fragile States (OUP, 2011) and Human Development and Global Institutions: Evolution, Impact, Reform (co-authored with Arunabha Ghosh, Routledge, 2016).

Just Security in an Undergoverned World examines how humankind can manage global problems to achieve both security and justice in an age of antithesis. Global connectivity is increasing, visibly and invisiblyin trade, finance, culture, and informationhelping to spur economic growth, technological advance, and greater understanding and freedom, but global disconnects are growing as well. Ubiquitous electronics rely on high-value minerals scraped from the earth by miners kept poor by corruption and war. People abandon burning states for the often indifferent welcome of wealthier lands whose people, in turn, draw into themselves. Humanity's very success, underwritten in large part by lighting up gigatons of long-buried carbon for 200 years, now threatens humanity's future.

The global governance institutions established after World War II to manage global threats, especially the twin scourges of war and poverty, have expanded in reach and impact, while paradoxically losing the political support of some of their wealthiest and most powerful members. Their problems mimic those of their members in struggling to adapt to new problems and maintain trust in norms and public bodies. This volume argues, however, that a properly mandated, managed, and modernized global architecture offers unparalleled potential to midwife solutions to intractable issuesfrom violent conflict and climate change to poverty and pandemic diseasethat transcend borders and the capacities of individual actors. It offers just security as a new framework for charing innovating solutions and strategies for effective and essential global governance.

The book explores global governance, its rules, and institutions at large, and provides analysis on some of the most salient global challenges today.