Global Governance, Development and Human Security

In this innovative new book, Caroline Thomas explores security from a human – rather than state – perspective. Thomas offers a conceptual approach to the subject, contextualizing the notion of human security within a framework of the evolving global economy. Against the backdrop of increasing inequality between and within states, and also between corporations in the 1980s and 1990s, she examines dominant ideas about development. The focus then shifts to the evolving practices of global governance institutions. Building on the general acceptance that growth is not enough to deliver the UN target of a 50 percent reduction in absolute poor by 2015, Thomas plots different ways forward, broadly categorized as reformist and transformist. Throughout, Thomas emphasizes the fulfillment of human security rather than the pursuit of the national interest.