International Organisations and Peace Enforcement. The Politics of International Legitimacy. By Katharina P. Coleman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 360p. $85.00 cloth, $36.99 paper.

Since the 1990s, international and regional organizations have engaged in a record 17 peace enforcement operations, multilateral military interventions to end violent conflict within a country. In her excellent book, Katharina P. Coleman seeks to explain why states choose to act either through the auspices or with the explicit consent of an international organization. Using a comparative case method, she explores state motivations in the Nigerian intervention in Liberia under the Economic Community of West African States; the U.S.-led operation in Kosovo under NATO; the interventions of Australia in East Timor under the United Nations; and South Africa's intervention in Lesotho and Zimbabwe's actions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, both under the SADC (Southern African Development Community).