The Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Exploring New Horizons

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is a rapidly developing multipolar center that covers a vast landmass and includes China, India, Russia, and its southern Eurasian neighbors. Its activities have expanded beyond security and stability to broader cooperation with the UN and other groupings. This volume evaluates the possibilities and challenges for the SCO in achieving economic, humanitarian, legal, trade, labor, migration, and environmental cooperation, as well as its traditional concerns with security and defense. The authors note the controversial character of this process, which demonstrates both efficiency and declarative and decorative nature.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 29 January 2024
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) stands as a rapidly evolving hub within the multipolar world, encompassing a vast expanse of land, including China, India, Russia, and its southern Eurasian neighbors. With its eight member states and an expanding cohort of observer states, the SCO's activities have broadened beyond its initial focus on security and stability to encompass broader cooperation with the United Nations (UN) and other international groupings such as the G20, BRICS, NATO, and ASEAN. This convergence of large and diverse nation-states, often carrying contrasting geostrategic agendas, presents both substantial structural challenges and immense potential.

Contributors to this volume, drawn from various SCO member states, assess the possibilities and challenges faced by the Organization in achieving its goals through a legal regulatory lens. They examine the bloc's potential for economic, humanitarian, legal, trade, labor, migration, and environmental cooperation, as well as its traditional concerns with security and defense. The authors delve into the quality of cooperation between states within the SCO, highlighting both its efficiency and the dual nature of this process, which exhibits both declarative and decorative aspects.

This book is of immense value to scholars and policy-makers with a keen interest in Eurasian cooperation, regionalism, and universalism in international relations. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the SCO's evolution, its member states' perspectives, and the legal frameworks that shape its activities. By examining the challenges and opportunities presented by the SCO, this volume contributes to our understanding of the complex dynamics shaping global governance and international relations in the 21st century.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367772819