Download or read book The Commonwealth Brand written by Victoria te Velde and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-23 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: te Velde examines Commonwealth identity through the lens of its membership criteria, its recent enlargement and its constant reincarnation. Far from being an old relic of the past, the Commonwealth is a growing, vibrant modern international organisation and despite its traditional image, Commonwealth membership is shown to be a rather fluid concept that evolves with the times. This book identifies and discusses the different theoretical approaches to analysing the Commonwealth. In so doing it exposes various shortcomings in current thinking about international relations and the Commonwealth. Furthermore, it reveals how a number of turning points in the Commonwealth's history have shaped its membership rules and illustrates how the official Commonwealth still has the potential to expand and develop to best reflect an organisation that represents a third of the world's population. In terms of further growth of the organisation, this book examines the cases of a number of eligible states to assess their likelihood of achieving membership. It also incorporates a handful of non-eligible states that, notwithstanding the new 'rules', are still bent on joining.