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IAN HURD: AFTER ANARCHY: LEGITIMACY AND POWER IN THE UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007, ix+221 ages, pbk, ISBN 978-69113834-3.
After Anarchy opens up a new theoretical aspect in International Relations by viewing the 'logic of appropriateness' and the 'logic of consequence' as 'complementary rather than mutually exclusive' (p. 16). Ian Hurd deepens our understandings of how states strategically behave under the community environment of their mutually shared belief in 'legitimacy' while aiming to 'introduce a workable concept of legitimacy to the study of International Relations' (p. 1 ).
Hurd provides a detailed discussion of his analytical tools in Chapters 2 and 3. Legitimacy is defined as 'the belief by an actor that a rule or institution ought to be obeyed' (p. 30). If such a belief is widely shared in society, states will change their behaviour by reconfiguring their interests according to it because to do so would enhance their social reputations. Moreover, they will use this social force to justify their actions by showing how they are closely associated with this collective belief. Accordingly, Hurd claims that contestation over legitimacy for states' interests is happening around the authority and symbols of the United Nations Security Council, viz. 'potentially the most powerful international organization ever known to the world of states' (p. 12).
The theory of legitimacy is examined in the case study chapters. Chapter 4 investigates the legitimation process of the United Nations that was accomplished at the San Francisco conference in 1945. Chapter 5 in turn discusses how the legitimacy ascribed to the Security Council changes the strategic action of states by exploring their resistance to the deletion of their proposals from the Council's agenda list,...