Book Reviews Mendlovitz, Saul and Burns H. Weston (eds.). Preferred Futures for the United Nations. New York: Transnational Publishers, 1995. Pp. ix, 505. Index. $75. It is not fashionable today to promote a movement for a just world order. Suggesting, however, that a reformed United Nations should play a central part in a project aimed at humane global governance will probably situate you somewhere between the stern adherents to utopian world order fantasies, post Second World War idealists and 1970s world economic enthusiasts - in other words, beyond the pale. In an intellectual climate where cynicism and timidity mixes with hard-balled pragmatism to create a shoulder-shrugging malaise, the editors of this volume remain unintimidated and unconvinced. On the occasion of the United Nations 50th anniversary, they organized a symposium at the University of Iowa, with the aim of undertaking a fundamental reconsideration of the United Nations. As the sole intergovernmental institution with global jurisdiction authorized to address the entire human rights agenda, the UN has the potential, according to the authors, to be the institutional centrepiece of a system of humane global governance. The selection of articles reproduced in this volume formed the preparatory reading for the symposium. With David Kennedy's `A New World Order: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow', the book begins with a sceptic's perspective: every now and again a new generation of international law enthusiasts enters the scene and criticizes the mainstream with the same set of renewable ideas, stylizing themselves as mavericks, just as their predecessors did. The question, however, is not what will further the international order, but which `international' to further. Kennedy favours an international melting into the local, focusing on the order that structures civil society within and among states and showing an interest in particular redistributional struggles, rather than misunderstanding the support for the international order as a substitute for substantive political choices. The UN has no privileged role to play. From the perspective of liberal international relations theory, Anne-Marie Slaughter reconceives the UN as a forum for global governance as opposed to the realist idea of a great power alliance or the legalist conception of a nascent world government. The central point is that states are not unitary, identical actors with identical interests. Instead, states' interests are a function of the process of state preference formation, which the UN can help to shape. The state is conceived as desegregated, distinct institutions performing specific (legislative, executive, judicial) governmental functions, each of which interacts with individuals and groups that are part of transitional society. It makes a difference whether a state is democratic or not. Important implications include redrawing boundaries between what is of concern and what is a question of domestic jurisdiction and refocusing funding priorities. In other essays, Hilary Charlesworth describes a future for the UN from a feminist perspective. Richard A. Falk provides a highly critical assessment of the role of the UN in establishing the Rule of Law in international affairs. Björne Hettne writes about the role of the new regionalism in UN conflict management. Additionally, there are articles about reforming the UN to eliminate war, to secure human rights, to eradicate poverty and maldevelopment and to ensure environmentally-sustainable development. Finally, the Appendix includes a draft memorial in support of the application by the World Health Organization for an Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice on the legality of the use of nuclear weapons under international law. Mattias Kumm Harvard Law School
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