No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Eyes on the Prize: The Quest for Nonpermanent Seats on the UN Security Council
... Also, states seeking to be elected and re-elected to the UNSC are likely to be sensitive to their region's needs. 9 As Malone (2000) details, candidates are highly strategic in deciding when to run for a seat on the Council, and states that seek to have multiple appointments to the Security Council must demonstrate their commitment to substantive, collective interests. Specifically, the material and political incentives for running repeatedly may induce states to more closely match the preferences of the region in order to get repeated, uncontested nominations. ...
... 13 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/australia-wins-seat-on-united-nationssecurity-council/story-fn59nm2j-1226498971111?nk=c42483f80497c0b491f8e9cf5a325342. also indirectly 14 associated with changes in foreign aid, increased involvement in peacekeeping operations, and resolution sponsorship (MacFarquhar 2008;Malone 2000). Turkey reportedly spent $95 million on debt forgiveness, political support, and development assistance during its 2008 campaign. ...
... 17 14 Direct ties between specific decisions, like increased foreign aid, reduction of barriers to trade, and extension of diplomatic relations and candidacy for the UN Security Council are generally inconclusive, especially as voting is conducted secretly. This makes confirmation of pledges exceedingly difficult (MacFarquhar 2008;Malone 2000). 15 BAustria, Japan, and Turkey Elected to Security Council; Review of Reported Lobbying Efforts.^2008/10/ 21. ...
Do United Nations Security Council (UNSC) members represent states in their geographic regions? Drawing on literature in legislative politics and regional similarities, this manuscript links classic notions of representation - descriptive and substantive - to geographic representation of UN members in the UNSC. However, we argue that the process of getting elected to the UNSC leads to the election of states that are not likely to represent their regions. Using UN General Assembly voting patterns as a proxy for preferences, two sets of analyses test 1) whether, in general, states within the same region have higher levels of General Assembly voting similarity, and 2) if UNSC members possess similar voting patterns with states in their region. The results show that while regional groupings do tend to have higher patterns of vote similarity, this effect is not present when comparing the states voted onto the UNSC with states in their region.
... For meg fremstår Irak som et slags «laboratorium» der man som lege kan studere mangelsykdommer i alle stadier i et helt samfunn (Lege Gerd Holmboe-Ottesen til Aftenposten 11.04.1999) Den arbeidere fra arabiske land, og bistanden fra USA opphørte (Malone 2000). ...
... Norge tilhører den såkalte WEOG-gruppen, der landene står fritt til å fremme sine kandidaturi kontrast til land fra Afrika, der det er en rotasjon i hvilke land som stiller til valg, og det er i WEOG-gruppen det er tøffest konkurranse for å nå opp (Malone 2000). Australia failed to budget adequately for its campaign and, as a result of having to scrounge for campaign funds, missed a number of diplomatic opportunities. ...
... Greece bested both of its competitors by hosting two cruises in the Greek islands during the summer of 1998 for UN permanent representatives and their spouses, ostensibly to advertise preparations for the Olympic Games in Greece in 2004. (Malone 2000) Den norske valgkampen bar imidlertid frukter, men det måtte hele fire valgomganger I came to Iraq neither as an administrator of sanctions nor as an ally of a repressive regime. Instead, I wanted to pursue a two-pronged approach: to enhance the efficiency of the humanitarian programme and to troubleshoot where the Oil-for-Food programme faced obstacles. ...
... The UNSC is the most vital organ of the UN because under the UN Charter, it is mainly saddled with the responsibility of ensuring international peace, security and stability. While 5 of the council's 15 seats are held by permanent members also known as (P5) (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), the other 10 are reserved for nations serving two-year terms, and the opposition for these turning seats can be exceptional (Malone 2000). Non-permanent members of the UN Security Council are first selected by its territorial gathering and afterward affirmed by a two-third vote of the General Assembly. ...
... UNSC participation is appealing. Malone (2000) notices three purposes behind extraordinary campaigning for seats. To start with, UNSC seats give global distinction. ...
This study assessed Nigeria’s non-permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council. The introduction showcased that the UNSC is the most powerful organ of the UN, saddled with the responsibility to promote and maintain international peace and security and membership into this body can be influenced by certain factors. To achieve the objectives, the study relied on research questions that answered the following; influential domestic factors that affected Nigeria during its candidacy into the UN Security Council, key international drivers that impacted Nigeria during its candidacy into the UN Security Council, the contributions Nigeria made during the terms it served as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council and how these events have jointly contributed to Nigeria’s national image. The study adopted Games theory as the theoretical framework. The study adopted a qualitative research design and relied on primary and secondary data, while data collected were thematically analyzed. The primary data gathered from interviews were thematically analyzed. Findings from the study indicate that in the international arena, domestic and international factors play key roles in a nation’s level of interaction. This is evident in the foreign policy structure of states. The study revealed that domestic factors of economy, natural resources, military capability and foreign policy, played key roles in Nigeria’s non-permanent membership of the UN Security Council. The study also revealed that international factors of Nigeria’s western allies, its regional hegemonic role and its participation in international peace keeping operations, impacted on its candidacy at the UN Security Council. The study revealed that Nigeria’s non-permanent membership of the UN Security Council was impactful, especially in the areas of international peacekeeping and stability operations. The study confirmed how these domestic and international factors have contributed to Nigeria’s national image. From the result of the study, the following recommendations have been put forward; that Nigeria needs to tackle its domestic challenges of insecurity, corruption, strengthening its military capability and enhancing the quality of its Foreign Service officers. These challenges, if properly tackled, will restore the image of the nation as well as record significant national developmental progress.
... Second, the problem of Council responsibility shirking is consistently underreported because incumbents have had incentives not to criticize the existing chasm between the rights and privileges of the two categories of membership. E10 countries get to serve on the Council for two years at a time only after announcing their candidacies and contesting an electionwhich until recently normally entailed rivals, as each candidacy is put to a vote in the General Assembly (Malone, 2000). Having successfully secured a two-year rotating seat, the nonpermanent member states are understandably uncomfortable about rocking the boat they just boarded, reversing course to complain of the competencies of the two categories or the rules that underlie the institution. ...
... Instead of running on explicit pledges and references to past foreign policy positions, during the Cold War many candidate countries sought the approval of their peers and the P5 countries by signalling their readiness to accommodate salient political or economic interests. The practice of subjecting the General Assembly vote to the logic of a business transaction, in which the countries offering political support and/or economic aid could enhance their chances of being elected by two thirds of all UN member states, thus undermined the connection to the performance and standing of candidate countries (Malone, 2000;Kuziemko and Werker, 2006;Bueno de Mesquita and Smith, 2010). The P5 countries, whose consent was required for a successful candidacy, did little to stem this development. ...
The United Nations Security Council is the primary international body in charge of upholding international peace and security. Permanent and nonpermanent member states share in the responsibility to avert great power conflicts and thwart asymmetric disputes, regional instability and civil war, but the former task has priority and the prerogatives and therefore the obligations of the five permanent member states widely exceed those of countries that hold two-year elected seats. The bifurcation of roles nevertheless produces ‘responsibility shirking’, which weakens Council performance on the latter type of tasks. This article suggests that responsibility shirking is underreported in the literature even though it is well known to diplomatic practitioners. It considers three types of remedies to the situation, arguing that amendments to the UN Charter or the Provisional Rules of Procedure are unlikely, but that piecemeal and pragmatic reform could precipitate a change of mindset. In particular, allowing nonpermanent member states to co-chair the drafting of resolutions is likely to engage all member states in the core business of the Council.
... The non-permanent seats in the SC hold a special attraction. Current research highlights the intense competition between candidatures, not the least between members of the Western European and Others Group (WEOG) ( Malone 2000 ;Whelan 2002: Byrne 2011Langmore and Farall 2016 ;Chapnick 2019 ;Ekengren and Möller 2021 ). Previous studies have identified population and wealth as the main detected national determinants for SC electoral success. ...
Through an explanation of the domestic political controversy that surrounded the most recent Swedish candidature and subsequent membership of the UN Security Council 2017–18, this article contributes to our understanding of the domestic–foreign policy nexus in two respects. First, it conceptualizes a domain of foreign policy priorities. Issues within this domain are likelier to deviate from a consensual pattern of foreign policy by sparking conflict, as they provoke competing national role conceptions among the foreign policy elite. Second, it refines results from previous study on the executive–legislative relationship in foreign policy. It confirms the association between party conflict on substantive foreign policy and a higher level of parliamentary control on the government. The conflict on substance leads to a decline in trust among members of parliament in opposition, which may motivate the continuation of parliamentary control through available instruments also after the conflict on substance is settled. The analysis is conducted in three descriptive steps: (1) the domestic-institutional context of decision-making, (2) partisan divides, and (3) the executive–legislative relationship. It utilizes a variety of sources, including parliamentary debates, governmental and parliamentary assessments, and interviews with diplomats and senior officials.
... From Ayala Lasso, diplomats learned to accumulate diplomatic capital and convert it into symbolic capital for Ecuador through multilateral engagement. 12 See Malone (2000) on state motivations for obtaining a nonpermanent Security Council seat. 13 Non-governmental organizations recognized how Ayala Lasso's "skilfully achieved consensus" ( Amnesty International 1997 , 3-4) enabled passage of the General Assembly Resolution authorizing UNHCHR's creation, a function his "dapper" self-presentation as "the very model of a diplomat" ( Korey 1998 , 370). ...
In this article, we explain Ecuador's foreign policy shift away from the counter-hegemonic project of the Pink Tide and toward the US-led international order. Current scholarship assumes that small states pursue moral recognition from great powers by reproducing the normative principles of the hegemonic order. However, the dynamics of small-state status seeking remain underexplored. How does domestic elite competition, including their preferred strategic narratives and histories of elite socialization, shape policymakers’ preferences for status within alternative international orders? Bourdieu's practice theory enables us to demonstrate how senior Ecuadorian diplomats embody the principles of the US-led hegemonic order. By analyzing documents, speeches, and the results of semistructured interviews, we show how diplomats’ tacit background knowledge led them to reject former president Rafael Correa's initiatives and replace them with a “professional” diplomacy and “pragmatic” foreign policy. Diplomats pursue moral authority not only for its own sake but also as a means of alleviating stigmas associated with Ecuador's intense subordination. In this way, diplomats legitimated the restoration of the pre-Correa liberal state. Their experience of hysteresis, or a mismatch between their habitus and field position, drove them to assert their taken-for-granted truths as a new orthodoxy once Correa departed.
... The Baltic States' membership and candidacy for the UNSC emphasises the conceptual aspect of international institutions as a necessary tool for securing small states' positions in the world. The UNSC membership generally can be seen in the light of enhancing international standing and relevance, underscoring the international prestige, advancing a national position, and gaining broader foreign policy objectives (Malone, 2000). It is worth mentioning that while all UNSC non-permanent members have similar expectations towards networking during their term, small states in particular have lower expectations in gaining influence but higher expectations on raising their international status (Raik, 2021). ...
The article focuses on the prospects for work conducted by small states in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and examines two aspects which frame the work of small states in the UNSC – the legal aspect (institutional and procedural) and the conceptual aspect (the concept of small states), comparing them with the work and achievements of small states in praxis. The aim of the article is to provide qualitative and comparative analysis of small states’ work in the UNSC, to outline legal and political interpretation of their activities and to compare legal and conceptual framework with the practical perspective. The research is designed to be relevant for Latvia in the context of its candidature for a non-permanent seat of the UNSC at the elections in 2025, and it analyses cases of Lithuania’s and Estonia’s membership. The author of the article argues that despite the minimal role provided for the small states in the UNSC by international law and the theoretical concept, cases of Lithuania and Estonia show that the practical perspective proves a much higher capability, influence and ability of small states to profile themselves actively within the global agenda while at the same time remaining in the aforementioned legal and conceptual boundaries. This can happen under circumstances where there are minor systemic challengers, lack of triggers for security of small states, and overlapping of the international security agenda and their field of expertise. Keywords: United Nations, Security Council, small states, the Baltic States.
... Mot slutten av 1990-tallet jobbet flere innflytelsesrike mellomstore makter med midlertidige plasser i Sikkerhetsrådet (blant dem Canada, Norge, Brasil og Nederland) for at Rådet skulle vedta en resolusjon på Beskyttelse av sivile (Malone 2000;Golberg & Hubert 2001). Da temaet ble lansert, var det imidlertid liten enighet innad i FN-sekretariatet om hvem som skulle ta ansvar for PoC-agendaen eller hva den skulle innebaere. ...
... Lowy Institute 2016. 11 Thakur 1996Malone 2000;Whelan 2000;Byrne 2011;Copeland 1999Copeland , 2010Gillissen 2006, 23-24;Langmore 2013, 104-107;O'Brien 2015;Langmore and Farrall 2016, 59-61;Thorhallsson and Eggértsdottir 2021. 12 Chapnick 2019. ...
Competition for a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council is getting tougher, not the least between candidates within the Western European and Others Group. This empirical study compares the campaigns carried out by Sweden and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, in order to explain the Swedish victory in the first round of the elections in 2016. A theoretical framework identifies three logics of campaigning: contributions, commitment and competence. The study maps out the features of the campaigns, including organisation, key participants, activities and message. It includes interviews with diplomats and public officials involved in the campaigns, as well as available campaign documentation and concluding reports. A main difference detected between the candidatures is the more active political involvement in the Swedish campaign, which shows the Swedish commitment and competence to serve on the Council. Further use of this theoretical framework on additional cases of international campaigning is encouraged.
... In the case of the Security Council, the ten nonpermanent seats are believed to have high symbolic value for states. States that seek election to the Council go to great lengths to secure the necessary votes, mounting costly campaigns in which they champion popular causes, trade votes, offer foreign aid, or bribe individuals who possess voting power (Malone 2000). On this view, Council membership -albeit temporary -allows states to advance their status by associating themselves with the aura of the Security Council. ...
To govern effectively, international organizations (IOs) crucially depend on legitimation and support from their member states. But which states claim legitimacy for IOs, which challenge their legitimacy, and why? We address this gap in the literature by analyzing the legitimation strategies that states use in institutionalized discursive spaces within IOs. Specifically, we examine how United Nations (UN) member states seek to legitimate or delegitimate the UN Security Council in public debates in the UN General Assembly. We formulate a set of hypotheses that link specific state characteristics to evaluative statements on the Council’s legitimacy. We test these hypotheses on an original dataset using a non-linear regression model. In line with our theoretical expectations, we find that legitimation strategies are driven by a state’s membership of the Council and by its attitudes towards the United States. Contrary to our theoretical expectations, economically powerful states and states that are willing to delegate authority to supranational organizations are more likely to challenge the Council’s legitimacy. Furthermore, we provide evidence that states’ legitimacy claims resonate among fellow states, that is, among the Council’s primary audience. More generally, our findings suggest that making public claims about the Security Council’s legitimacy is not an empty diplomatic exercise, and that states do not make these claims at random. Legitimation strategies follow discernible patterns that can be explained by specific state characteristics.
... See, e.g., Singer (1988) and Duque (2018). 37 Malone (2000) summarizes, "The dominant view at the UN is that countries aim for membership in the council to underscore their international prestige." Stolte (2015) illustrates the importance of status aspirations to Brazil's bid for a UNSC permanent seat, which is "the ultimate symbol of international recognition as a Great Power." ...
How do states improve their international status and prestige short of war? We argue that rejecting international assistance can boost a government’s image by making it appear self-sufficient and able to provide for its citizens, leading many states to decline foreign aid. However, potential recipients only do so when they have the ability to send a credible signal and when they value status highly. We derive these hypotheses from a formal model and then use a survey experiment to demonstrate that international observers alter their opinions about potential recipients when they learn that they rejected international aid. Finally, we gather new data to empirically verify that the more resources and greater military capabilities states possess, the more likely they are to reject aid, even when they require the aid. Our results help to explain why states refuse needed assistance and suggest that many states cultivate images of self-sufficiency.
... 22 Langmore and Farrall 2016, 61. 23 Malone 2000, 7. 24 Pettit 2001Wendt 2004. Global Governance 26 (2020) 21-45 and diplomats. ...
This article contributes with a novel systematic theoretical and empirical exploration of why states find a nonpermanent seat in the UN Security Council attractive. Three conceptualizations of power—to influence, to network, and to gain status—guide the empirical analysis. A telephone interview survey with diplomatic staff at Member States’ permanent missions to the United Nations in New York provides readers with original and unique empirical knowledge of state perceptions of power. The candidature for a seat comes with expectations of influencing decision-making, despite modest estimations of the opportunity to have impact. Opportunities to network and to gain status are not frequent reasons for a candidature. Diplomats’ estimations are nevertheless higher on the opportunity to actually establish relevant relationships and to gain status brought by a seat.
... Non-permanent membership of the Council, too, while a lesser prize, is also considered as a short-cut to status(Malone 2000). This helps to explain why India, even while refraining from courting permanent membership during the Cold War period, served on the Council as an elected member six times, and took up a seventh term from January 2011 to January 2013. ...
As rising powers, China and India both perceive the United Nations as a primary venue for status seeking, and both express pride in narrating the ways in which they have supported the UN Charter and the maintenance of international peace and security. Given the competitive dynamic between these two countries, we might expect this competition to extend to their activities in global governance. In this article we develop and apply the concepts of ‘status domain’ and ‘status good characteristics’ to examine the extent to which Sino-Indian status competition is exacerbated or mitigated in three status-bearing areas: UN peacekeeping operations, Security Council membership, and Security Council behaviour. We find that status competition between the two countries, at least within the UN, is not always the dominant outcome. International organizations that allow for separate status domains, and also for the expression of a shared global vision, can mitigate status competition between states.
... In the 'Western Europe and Others' and the Eastern European groups the number of candidate countries typically exceeds the number of open seats. Therefore, candidates campaign for election to the UN Security Council for several years(Malone 2000). ...
What explains the outcome of interstate negotiations in international organizations (IOs)? While existing research highlights member states’ power, preference intensity, and the IO’s institutional design, this paper introduces an additional source of bargaining power in IOs: Through issue linkage members of an IO leverage privileged positions in other IOs to obtain more favorable bargaining outcomes. Specifically, European Union members are more successful in bargaining over the EU budget while they hold a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Inside the UNSC EU members can promote security interests of other European countries, and they can use their influence to secure side-payments from the EU budget. The study tests this argument by investigating new EU budget data, and it shows that EU members obtain 1.7 billion Euro in additional net receipts during a two-year UNSC term, on average. Thus, bargaining processes in the EU and the UN are intricately linked.
... For instance, countries on the UNSC do seem to act as distinct entities within regions. Each council member has full sovereignty over how it votes and countries pour large sums of money into campaigns for election to the UNSC (e.g., Malone 2000), suggesting that they do not perceive membership by another country in their region to be a perfect (or even a good) substitute for their own membership. Also, the voting behavior in the UNGA of serving members of the UNSC is no more similar to that of their regional members than to the votes of the remaining UNGA members (Lai and Lefler 2009). ...
We analyze democratic equity in council voting games (CVGs). In a CVG, a voting body containing all members delegates decision-making to a (time-varying) subset of its members, as describes, e.g., the relationship between the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). We develop a theoretical framework for analyzing democratic equitability in CVGs at both the country and region levels, and for different assumptions regarding preference correlation. We apply the framework to evaluate the equitability of the UNSC, and the claims of those who seek to reform it. We find that the individual permanent members are overrepresented by between 21.3 times (United Kingdom) and 3.8 times (China) from a country-level perspective, while from a region perspective Eastern Europe is the most heavily overrepresented region with more than twice its equitable representation, and Africa the most heavily underrepresented. Our equity measures do not preclude some UNSC members from exercising veto rights, however.
... Sua investigação do porquê, porém, limita-se a pouco mais de uma página de considerações genéricas sobre prestígio, promoção de interesses particulares e articulação de conceitos. 2 Sua hipótese básica de que os P-5 dominam inteiramente o Conselho, afi nal, o impede de entender quais as motivações dos demais países. ...
... One such arena is the UN. David Malone, who was in charge of the final leg of Canada's last successful campaign for a nonpermanent seat on the Security Council, gives us the inside story (Malone 2000). He starts out by stating: '[t]he dominant view at the UN is that countries aim for membership in the council to underscore their international prestige' (p. 6). ...
... Paradoxalmente, a percepção de que o CS adquiriu nova centralidade e maior efetividade com o fim da Guerra Fria -em particular, após a bem-sucedida concertação que culminou na expulsão do Iraque do território do Kuwait, em 1991 -gerou uma renovada onda de debate em torno da necessidade de se reformá-lo (WEISS, 2003). Esta percepção foi acompanhada de um expressivo acirramento na disputa entre os países pelos assentos não permanentes, com campanhas iniciadas com grande antecipação e envolvendo a mobilização da maior parte do aparato diplomático dos candidatos, incessantes visitas intergovernamentais e um intrincado e dispendioso processo de barganha e lobby que passou a quase monopolizar as representações em Nova York durante os meses que antecedem as eleições na Assembleia Geral da ONU (MALONE, 2000). ...
O governo brasileiro tem definido a busca por uma reforma do Conselho de Segurança
como um dos principais pontos de sua agenda de política externa há pelo menos vinte
anos. O presente artigo se propõe a analisar de maneira crítica e teoricamente
informada o argumento que legitima esta demanda, tentando responder amplamente a duas
questões: (i) em que medida a configuração sistêmica no pós-Guerra Fria corresponde
às expectativas dos defensores da reforma?; e (ii) dada a real estrutura de poder do
sistema internacional contemporâneo, uma expansão do Conselho de Segurança traria
maior efetividade ao sistema de segurança coletiva baseado na ONU?
... To control for preference similarity over security issues, we use Kendall's 12 The Republic of China (ROC) is coded as a permanent member prior to the recognition of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1971. 13 Typically, three of the 10 temporary members are from Africa; two are from Asia; two are from Latin America and the Caribbean; two are from Western Europe, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand; and one is from Eastern Europe (Malone 2000). Each regional caucus implements different procedures and traditions in choosing its nominees (for example, rotation in Africa and power dominance in Latin America). ...
Recent studies report that temporary members of the UN Security Council receive favorable treatment from the IMF, the World Bank, or in US foreign aid in exchange for their political support for permanent members. Nevertheless, few studies have examined whether this favorable treatment and these benefits have actually made any significant changes in the member states’ voting behavior in the United Nations. To explore this question, we investigate whether membership on the UN Security Council influences a state’s voting in the UN General Assembly. In the analysis of panel data for 197 countries over the period from 1946 to 2008, the empirical results show that elected members of the UN Security Council tend to behave similarly with permanent members, especially with the US, as the number of loan programs signed with the IMF and the World Bank increases. Also, US foreign aid significantly increases temporary members’ vote coincidence with the US and other permanent members. In this regard, this article contributes to our understanding of state voting behavior and power politics in international organizations.
There has been a crucial yet under-appreciated shift in the significance of World Heritage prestige itself, as World Heritage has also emerged as a key venue for international status-seeking in relation to culture. This chapter shows how this has elevated the stakes in the World Heritage regime, with important implications for the protection-prestige nexus. Whether it is their first or fiftieth site inscription, World Heritage has become activated by States Parties in a diverse range of status-related ends. To illuminate this dimension, the chapter establishes the relationship—and distinction—between prestige and international status, to reveal how the prestige of individual World Heritage sites becomes aggregated towards advancing a state’s broader pursuit of status. World Heritage sites signal states’ tasteful consumption in a process of international distinction. World Heritage also figures within global city and country rankings through which states and cities, large and small, seek to differentiate themselves. The crucial question here is the effect this elevation of the World Heritage regime to status-seeking venue may have on the interrelated logics of protection and prestige.
The number of leader visits to other countries has been counted higher right before the (UNSC) elections. Why do the high-level officials of the state visit other countries’ leaders right before the (UNSC) elections? To find an answer to this question, this research paper aims to examine the effects of leader visits to gain votes in the UNSC elections. On this occasion, to restrict the research area, we will compare leader visits of two countries, (Czech and Croatia), before and after the occurrence of the UNSC elections in 2007. This theme is one of the newly concerning research issues among academic societies, thus, it obviously contributes to the enrichment of the literature.
The 2020 UN Security Council ( SC ) elections concluded during a historical period defined by the global COVID -19 pandemic. As officials scrambled to organise a socially distanced election, the final stage of the campaigns was forced into the digital realm. To bolster candidate states’ chances of being elected to the SC , digital diplomacy became the primary mode of communication. Here we focus on the SC campaigns of Canada, Ireland and Kenya, which were defined by ‘digital celebrity diplomacy’. U2 and Celine Dion supported the national campaigns of Ireland and Canada, while Kenya drew on the recognition of a number of celebrity athletes to bolster its campaign’s national brand. Thus, we explore the convergence of celebrity and digital diplomacy in these SC campaigns, contributing to new understandings of the use of celebrity in transforming the projection and reception of strategic narratives when integrated with digital diplomacy during the global COVID -19 pandemic.
This chapter focuses on what seems to be the dynamo factor, or driving force, of the conflict. Since the summer of 2014, two battles over legitimacy, or two legitimation crises, have spoiled Libyan politics and weakened the UN mediation with two rounds of international recognition of one new political institution or another. Both institutions have required separate budgets derived from oil revenues of the rival entities and their respective governments; and claimed distant interpretations of legitimacy in the eyes of Libyans and the rest of the world.
This chapter probes into the struggle of UN diplomacy, as it passed its tenth-year mark September 16, 2021 with more political stubbornness and rigid factionalism. The most recent U.N. Special Representative for Libya Jan Kubis faced an “extraordinary difficult set of tasks.” The following pages examine five main factors: first, the Libyan conflict has been complicated by the construction of a double-edged legitimacy of two competing institutions: the House of Representatives in Tobruk versus the Government of National Accord (GNA) and, later, the General National Congress (GNC) in Tripoli. There has been vocal contestation in most diplomatic gatherings about the disputed claim of legitimacy on both sides.
The GNC and HoR remain idle and ineffective in solidifying a rapprochement between the East and West in a split Libya. I recall our heated debates, as members of the United Nations Panel of Experts, in New York, Tunis and Brindisi, over the scope of each party’s interpretation of “legitimacy,” and how to construct an objective reading of the findings to help move forward with the United Nations’ desired political transition.
When do states pursue status enhancement through peacekeeping and how do they go about it? This article argues that states’ contributions to peace operations can be related to attempts at acquiring a positive identity in the international arena through membership in highly ranked groups. Drawing on insights from social identity theory and peacekeeping and burden-sharing research, the article elaborates on how states choose an identity management strategy that involves peacekeeping practices, the factors influencing states’ ability to pursue status through peacekeeping, and the conditions for succeeding in acquiring the desired social identity. Ukraine's significant peacekeeping engagement in the first two decades following independence represents an intriguing case of an emerging state positioning itself in the international and regional systems, which makes it a relevant case study to explore. Therefore, the article discusses how two of Ukraine's formative peacekeeping experiences have fostered, or alternatively undermined, the pursuit of a positive social identity, first as a sovereign state and member of the broader international community and second as an aspiring member of the Western community of states.
Standard economic theory would predict that costly demands placed by the United Nations on its members should be rewarded. Similarly, when rewards are not attractive enough, countries are not expected to comply with such demands. In this paper, we study whether the rewards offered by the United Nations are seats at the Security Council. We show empirically that countries that have greater demands placed upon them by Security Council resolutions are more likely to be elected. Furthermore, although countries comply with resolutions leading up to their election, compliance decreases after they are elected. Finally, we show that countries that have not been in the Security Council recently, and thus are due for election, have additional requests made of them.
This is the introduction to my PhD dissertation about UNSC reform. It is an independent short book and an introduction to four articles about the same issue.
The United States took an active role in promoting some countries for a United Nations Security Council seat as part of its struggle with the Soviet Union during the early Cold War. Did these US-backed countries act in the interests of their promoter when they voted in the Council? Were these efforts of the United States advantageous? By studying the voting behavior of the US-backed countries between 1946 and 1965, this article answers the question of whether promoting some states to international institutions is beneficial for the great powers.
From its capacity for deploying joint operations in conflict zones to its status as a standard-bearing forum for international behaviour, the United Nations has asserted its relevance in a diverse array of issues and conflicts around the world. Equally as diverse has been the scholarship surrounding the United Nations over the past several decades. This collection of essays provides a snapshot of these diverse lines of scholarship, highlighting existing scholarship on a range of topics, as well as identifying areas of opportunity for future scholarly work on these topics. Taken as a whole, this forum more broadly provides insight into core pillars of the United Nations' mission--including the maintenance of peace and security; fostering friendly relations between nations; promoting human rights and humanitarian goals; and encouraging cooperation and harmonization of interests between nations. Moving forward, it is our hope that this collection will serve as a sprigboard for inspiring future work to both build and expand upon the insights from the past several decades of scholarship on the United Nations.
This article provides a case study of a small state, Iceland, and its motives for running for a seat on the UN Security Council for the 2009-2010 term, the domestic dispute about the affair, key campaign messages and the campaign strategy. The article fills a gap in the international relations and small state literature on small states’ campaign strategies in UNSC elections. We conclude that the decision to run for a seat and the core message of the campaign were largely based on the quest to enhance Iceland’s status among international actors. However, the country’s lack of resources, limited international engagement and domestic debate about the candidacy became a hindrance. Iceland succeeded in using its smallness to build good momentum for its candidacy but in the end it failed due to weaknesses associated with its small size and its lack of contributions, competence and ideational commitment in the UN.
The United States and India relationship has changed from offense to more extensive engagement since 2004. 0With mutual interest and potential of both, the US and India relationship has matured into a strategic partnership through mutual atomic cooperation. This paper investigates the cost and advantage of the strategic partnership of India and the US and the effect on the South Asian balance of power in the backdrop of PakUS relationships. It additionally concentrates on the security structure of the neighborhood, and challenges for the US to keep up strategic partnerships with the opponents India and Pakistan.
This article applies spatial theory, or the view that phenomena are distributed in space, to democracy. This analysis demonstrates that plural (two or more) democratic practices are evident in three spatial categories: (1) vertical stratification (i.e. at different levels of governance), (2) horizontal separation (i.e. among different agents operating at each level of governance), and (3) social association (i.e. in workplaces, families, schools). This finding, that plural democratic practices are demonstrated by agents operating at multiple levels of governance and in various non-or quasi-governmental associations prompts us to argue that measures of democracy in the world should be extended to spaces "beneath", "above", and "outside" the national level-presently the dominant locus for regular batteries that test the quality and extent of democratic practices globally. However, global data on the quality and extent of democracy at these other levels needs to be built before such an extension can happen.
This book examines Africa’s internal and external relations by focusing on three core concepts: orders, diplomacy and borderlands.
The contributors examine traditional and non-traditional diplomatic actors, and domestic, regional, continental, and global orders. They argue that African diplomats profoundly shape these orders by situating themselves within in-between-spaces of geographical and functional orders. It is in these borderlands that agency, despite all kinds of constraints, flourishes. Chapters in the book compare domestic orders to regional ones, and then continental African orders to global ones. They deal with a range of functional orders, including development, international trade, human rights, migration, nuclear arms control, peacekeeping, public administration, and territorial change. By focusing on these topics, the volume contributes to a better understanding of African international relations, sharpens analyses of ordering processes in world politics, and adds to our comprehension of how diplomacy shapes orders and vice versa. The studies collected here show a much more nuanced picture of African agency in African and international affairs and suggest that African diplomacy is far more extensive than is often assumed.
This book will be of much interest to students of diplomacy studies, African politics and International Relations.
Judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) are prominent jurists of high merit. However, little is known about certain extra-legal factors of the candidates that guide states in their selection and appointment process. This article focuses on examining extra-legal factors that matter for states in the selection process. Such extra-legal factors demonstrate that elections of candidates to the Court constitute another aspect of a broader political struggle to define the meaning of international law. The article situates the discussion on the selection process in the broader context of the discussion on biases in international law to suggest that the election of candidates to the Court becomes both an instrument and a procedure for controlling the discourse. The characteristics of the judges thus matter as a proxy to control the production and direction of such discourse. This article then explores the ways in which some states have greater strategic advantage in the selection and election processes that enables them to control the discourse to define the meaning of international law effectively.
World Bank projects sometimes receive supplemental loans months or years after initial project approval. Largely unnoticed, supplemental lending has mushroomed in the last decade, accounting for nearly 30% of all new loans in some years. These loans can serve important functions, as they come without the bureaucratic delays associated with new projects. We argue that supplemental loans are potentially useful foreign policy tools for powerful donors in settings where time is of the essence. Consistent with this, we find that countries receive significantly larger supplemental loans while serving a two‐year term on the geopolitically important United Nations Security Council. L'essor des prêts supplémentaires au sein de la Banque mondiale. Les projets de la Banque mondiale peuvent parfois bénéficier de prêts supplémentaires plusieurs mois ou années après leur validation initiale. Passant très souvent inaperçus, ces prêts supplémentaires ont proliféré au cours des dernières décennies, représentant certaines années près de 30 % de tous les nouveaux prêts accordés. Échappant aux délais bureaucratiques afférents aux nouveaux projets, ces prêts peuvent revêtir d'importantes fonctions. Nous affirmons que les prêts supplémentaires représentent d'utiles outils de politique étrangère pour les puissants donateurs dans les situations où le temps constitue un élément crucial. Dans cette optique, nous constatons que les pays reçoivent des prêts supplémentaires bien plus importants lorsqu'ils siègent pour deux ans au Conseil de sécurité des Nations Unies, organe éminemment important au plan géopolitique.
While the cholera outbreak in Haiti still claims victims every month, it is also the backdrop of one of the biggest legal battles the UN has been engaged in – one for the recognition of harm caused and for reparations for victims of cholera. Having used its immunity to disengage from the issue, the UN finally changed its stance in December 2016 and apologized for the organization’s role in the cholera outbreak. This article analyses the role of the elected members of the Security Council – alongside other key stakeholders – in contributing to the UN’s change of policy. Based on privileged access to a number of actors in this politico-legal fight, this article argues that elected members of the Security Council have played a crucial role in pushing the UN to ‘do the right thing’. This article, along with other contributions to this special issue, sheds a different light on the practices inside the Security Council, demonstrating that elected members are far from being powerless, as most of the literature on the subject tends to assume. They can successfully play a significant role inside the organization when the right conditions permit them to play this role.
This article analyses the decision-making process of the UN Security Council when it adopts outcome documents, such as resolutions, Presidential statements and press statements. It is commonly assumed that because of their veto power and permanency China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States have greater influence than their elected counterparts in shaping those outcomes. In recent years, that control has been strengthened by the penholdership system. Under this practice, one or more members, usually France, the United States or the United Kingdom (P3), take leadership over a situation on the agenda of the Council. When ‘holding the pen’ a member often decides what action the Council should take, then drafts an outcome document that it negotiates with other permanent members before sharing the text with elected members. This article explores the development of this practice and its impact on the respect for the rule of law in the Security Council’s decision-making process. It argues that, while concentrating power in the hands of the P3, hence diminishing transparency and the opportunity for all members to participate in the decision-making of the Council, at the same time the penholdership system also provides an avenue to strengthen elected members’ influence in ways that promote respect for the international rule of law.
The article is to attempt to determine the role and competence-organizational position of the non-permament members of the UN Security Council. The article is also aimed at enriching the knowledge contained in the Polish scientific literature in the field of broadly understood issues of the United Nations and, in particular, help in understanding the mechanisms governing the process of selecting states for non-permanent members of the SC, indicating the principles and criteria of election, describing the main factors of selected election campaigns and the way they are led by the candidate countries. At last on appearance too as main organs function and subsidiary and in forming trend forms and methods of work security council, as UN, the key organ in international security system.
Scholars find a clear link between a state's election to a rotating membership on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and increased receipt of foreign aid, especially that provided by the United States. Most researchers view this finding as evidence of Washington's attempts to buy the votes of rotating members of the UNSC. If this is the case then it raises serious concerns about the legitimacy of UNSC decisions. However, while current statistical tests show an association between US foreign aid and holding one of the rotating seats on the UNSC, they do not establish the underlying causal mechanism. We seek to do so by generating theoretically motivated hypotheses about the relationship between relative voting congruence with the United States and the receipt of US foreign aid. Leveraging natural variation from the rotating structure of nonpermanent UNSC members, we uncover a causal relationship consistent with the claim that the United States uses foreign aid to procure support for its positions on the UNSC.
The UN Security Council has made great contributions to global peace and security over the past 70 years. The five permanent members and ten non‐permanent members of the council share the responsibility by voting for the Security Council resolutions together. In this paper, we study whether Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) has been influenced by political incentives from perspective of the UN Security Council. Using China's Global Investment Data from 2005 to 2015 provided by the Heritage Foundation, we find that a country attracts more Chinese OFDI when it rotates onto the council. Such an effect increases during the important years when member's votes should be more valuable and among the countries which do not have close cooperation with China.
This chapter seeks to determine why the Trudeau government seeks a seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for the 2021–2022 term despite so many uncertainties and challenges. First, there is the lack of a guarantee of a win against Ireland and Norway for one of the two seats. Next, there is the significant cost to campaign and hold the seat. Third, there is the fact that the Liberals may not be in power come time to hold the seat. Moreover, the dysfunction of the UNSC and the clear disdain Canada’s closest neighbor and ally, the United States, holds for the UNSC seem reason enough to avoid the seat. Is campaigning for a seat a Liberal dynastic imperative? Or a Canadian one? This chapter examines the powers and importance of the UNSC, Canada’s history on the Council and the costs, benefits, and challenges of mounting a Canadian bid for a Council seat.
States stand at the core of the World Heritage Convention and their multifaceted interstate relations have been a central subject in contemporary World Heritage research. Less research has been directed towards intrastate relations, that is relations between organisation-agencies and individual agents within a State Party. Spurring from the 40th anniversary of Norway’s ratification of the World Heritage Convention, this paper utilises archival records to explore the intrastate relations and transactional authority at play within the State Party of Norway. Inspired by recent research in international relations and political science, it analyses Norway’s ratification process (1972–1977) through its early years as an observer (1978–1983) to its first committee tenure (1983–1989). Currently known as one of the spokespersons for scientific advice, returning to the 1980s provides an opportunity to reflect on how Norway laid the foundations for becoming a conservation ‘good power’ through its actions and responses to other states’ lobbying efforts.
With 16 ongoing peacekeeping operations currently deploying almost 100,000 troops, United Nations (UN) peacekeeping is the largest single source of foreign military intervention in conflict zones. Because UN peacekeeping is entirely dependent on voluntary contributions from Member States, there a pressing need to better understand why nations contribute peacekeeping troops in the first place. This article proposes a model for understanding the peacekeeping contribution issue under the lens of strategic culture. Through the fourth generation of strategic culture and its understanding of the dynamic ways that a country views force, we can better understand why or whether that country may contribute troops to UN peacekeeping. Using the case study of Canadian post-Cold War contributions to peacekeeping to develop the model, this article aims to better understand the decision-making environment of national strategic elites and how criteria for the use of force change over time in complex ways.
This study provides evidence of government distortion of news coverage among independently owned media outlets in a democratic regime. It uses data from 1946 to 2010 and documents that U.S. news coverage of human rights abuses committed by foreign governments was associated with membership on the United Nations Security Council and the degree of political alliance with the United States. For countries that were not allied with the United States, coverage increased with membership; for countries that are strongly allied with the United States, coverage decreased with membership. There is an analogous effect on reports of human rights abuses by the U.S. State Department, but no such effect on human rights practices according to other measures. The results are driven by the Reagan and Bush Sr. Administrations, 1981–1992, a period during which the government was known to have actively influenced the press. (JEL: P16, N4)
Acentral issue for global security organizations since 1815 has been the character of their central decision-making body—particularly their membership and voting rules. The 1815 Congress of Vienna established that the membership of the Concert of Europe would be confined to great powers and that decisions would only be made by unanimous votes. The Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907 introduced the large number of non-great powers into global security deliberations, and the 1907 conference even adopted the practice of passing recommendations by simple majority. At the 1919 Versailles conference that formulated the Covenant of the League of Nations, the dominant consensus was that the body responsible for security issues should be the Council composed of the five great powers and four states chosen from the rest of the membership. Also, it was agreed that resolutions from the Council would require the unanimous consent of all member states, with the exception of the accused aggressor if it were a Council member.1
Rising powers such as Brazil, China, India, Russia, and Turkey are increasingly claiming heightened profiles in international politics. Although differing in other respects, rising states have a strong desire for recognition and respect. This pioneering volume on status features contributions that develop propositions on status concerns and illustrate them with case studies and aggregate data analysis. Four cases are examined in depth: the United States (how it accommodates rising powers through hierarchy), Russia (the influence of status concerns on its foreign policy), China (how Beijing signals its status aspirations), and India (which has long sought major power status). The authors analyze status from a variety of theoretical perspectives and tackle questions such as: How do states signal their status claims? How are such signals perceived by the leading states? Will these status concerns lead to conflict, or is peaceful adjustment possible?
Les délégations latino-américaines et les intérêts de la France à la Société des Nations
Owing to their numerical weight and lack of interest in many purely European issues dealt with mainly by the League of Nations, the votes of the Latin American delegations were coveted. Influenced by racial prejudice and convinced that Latin-American diplomats were vain and easily corruptible, French diplomats adopted the practice of vote trading, by offering honorary distinctions such as decorations and prestigious functions in the Assembly. Uruguay was also promised reelection to the Council. If it is true that some Latin Americans accepted and took advantage of this practice, in most cases the defence of national interest and of universal juridical principles remained the priority.
The UN Security Council (UNSC) has experienced significant changes since the end of the Cold War. The article surveys key shifts in UNSC attitudes, mandates and activities between 1987 and 1997, nearly all of which stem from the twin phenomena of greater cooperation among the Permanent Five members (P-5) of the Council and of the Council's growing focus on civil wars and intercommunal strife which has launched the Council into new and largely untested waters. It argues that Council decisions since 1987 have profound significance for, and have enhanced the Council's role in, international relations despite several spectacular setbacks, notably in Bosnia and in Somalia. These decisions have eroded and redefined the concept of sovereignty.