Global governance, development and human security : the challenge of poverty and inequality

The idea for this series grew out of a panel on human security at the British International Studies Association (BISA) conference in December 1998. Panellists expressed concern at the silence of the International Relations discipline in the face of growing inequality and widespread poverty that characterised the era of neoliberal development. The uneven distribution of the benefits of the glob alisation process, and the general failure of that process to attend to the human security of the majority of humanity, were noted. There was a desire to remove the intellectual blinkers arising from an emphasis on a state-level analysis and to put people first.

The series is concerned with the area of convergence between International Relations and Development Studies. In contrast to most International Relations series, which take the stat the state as the Pons of central unit of analysis, this series gives primacy to human beings and their complex social, political, economic and cultural relations. Importantly, the concept of human security pursued here differs fundamentally from competitive, possessive notions security of the individual conceived in the currently fashionable neoliberal sense. Rather, human security describes a condition of existence in which basic material needs are met and in which human dignity, including meaningful participation in the life of the community, can be met. Thus, while material sufficiency lies at the core of human security, in addition the concept encompasses non-material dimensions to form a qualitative whole. Human security is oriented towards an active and substantive notion of democracy, and is directly engaged with discussions of democracy at all levels, from the local to the global.

The series investigates the causes of human insecurity and the pursuit of human security. For the majority of humankind, human security is pursued as part of a collective, most commonly the household, sometimes the community defined along other lines such as religion, caste, ethnicity or gender, or a combination of these. States play a critical role in the achievement of human security; they have the authority and the responsibility to attend to the human security needs of citizens. State-society relations are up for scrutiny, as fundamental questions arise concerning state capacity, state legitimacy and state collapse. Global processes may impact on, even jeopardise human security; these processes and the global governance structures that drive them need investiga tion. Regional organisations and global governance institutions set and implement the global development agenda and the global security agenda. Private transnational banks and transnational corporations exert a huge influence. Indeed the development of the global economy requires us to consider humanity embedded not simply within discrete territorial states, but within a global social structure: the capitalist world economy that has been developing since the sixteenth century. The aim is the exposure of policies which undermine the fulfilment of human security and the articulation of processes, policies and practices which support it.