In the name of democracy: UNSC reform at the intersection of discourse and governmentality

2020 ◽  
pp. 095792652097038
Author(s):  
Bjarke Zinck Winther ◽  
Laura Bang Lindegaard
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Democracy Promotion ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Reform Debate

Both scholars and practitioners are frustrated by the complexity of United Nations Security Council reform. Most research on the reform process is situated within international relations, and almost no attention is granted to the discursive dimensions of the reform. This article approaches democracy promotion as a governmental rationality within the United Nations, and it traces how this governmentality is co-constituted and negotiated discursively in the reform debate. The analysis focuses on argumentation and topoi in statements from debates about reform during 2015 to 2016 by two groups: The Group of Four and The Uniting for Consensus. The analysis demonstrates how the two groups utilise a topos of majority and a topos of equality, respectively, and how the groups thereby in different ways co-constitute and negotiate the governmental rationality of democracy. Through this, the article unravels the subtle ways in which the rigidity of the reform process is co-constituted through discourse.

scholarly journals National Identity and New Zealand’s Actions on the United Nations Security Council: 1993-94 and 2015-16

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kate Breach
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
The United States ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Material Interests ◽  
The United Nations

<p>To win its seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in both 1993-94 and 2015-16, New Zealand campaigned using the same prime pillar; its ability to act independently on the world’s prime authority for maintenance of international peace and security. With the substantial change in New Zealand’s international relationships between the two UNSC tenures, most particularly with the United States of America and China, many commentators have questioned whether New Zealand still acts independently in international affairs. Employing analytic eclecticism, this thesis applied a combined analytical framework to assess the drive behind New Zealand’s actions during both its 1993-94 and 2015-16 UNSC tenures, allowing both traditional international relations theories of neo-realism and neo-liberalism and the constructivist lens of national identity to be combined for greater explanatory power for the state’s actions in the contemporary era of complex international interdependencies. This research determined that most of New Zealand’s actions aligned with pursuit of its interests, as a small state, as ensured through multilateralism under the lens of institutional neo-liberalism. However, a number of actions taken, and strong positions held, by New Zealand on the UNSC in both periods did not align with the state’s pursuit of material interests under traditional international relations theories. By first establishing the popularly internalised national identity characteristics (or content) during each UNSC tenure period, defined as residing in public opinion, this thesis argues that a ‘win-set’ of national identity content relative prioritisation during each period enabled, and arguably drove, New Zealand’s political elite to take actions or hold positions not aligned with those of powerful states on which the small country’s material interests depended. It is argued that New Zealand’s actions on the UNSC in 2015-16 reinforced the social construction of New Zealand’s internationally regarded national identity content as an independent advocate for the global good, which was strongly established during its 1993-94 tenure.</p>

scholarly journals The Women, Peace and Security Agenda: The Unfinished Story of Feminist Revolution versus Compromise in Global Politics

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 47-65
Author(s):  
Míla O'Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Security Council Resolution ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Security Governance ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
The United Nations

The adoption of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security (WPS) in 2000 has prompted the development of an extensive WPS scholarship within the field of feminist International Relations. The dynamic scholarly debate is characterised by certain tensions between two feminist groups – the radical revolutionary one which advocates a redefinition of the global order and is more sceptical of the agenda, and the pragmatist one accentuating the compromise towards the existing peace and security governance. This article explores the two main subjects of the WPS research – the discourse and implementation, as they have been informed by the revolutionary and pragmatist approaches. The article shows that while the academic inquiries into the WPS discourse reveal disappointment with the compromises made regarding the revolutionary vision, this disappointment is also present in the literature on implementation. The latter literature nonetheless acknowledges feminist pragmatism as a way forward given the realities on the ground.

scholarly journals National Identity and New Zealand’s Actions on the United Nations Security Council: 1993-94 and 2015-16

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kate Breach
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
The United States ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Material Interests ◽  
The United Nations

<p>To win its seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in both 1993-94 and 2015-16, New Zealand campaigned using the same prime pillar; its ability to act independently on the world’s prime authority for maintenance of international peace and security. With the substantial change in New Zealand’s international relationships between the two UNSC tenures, most particularly with the United States of America and China, many commentators have questioned whether New Zealand still acts independently in international affairs. Employing analytic eclecticism, this thesis applied a combined analytical framework to assess the drive behind New Zealand’s actions during both its 1993-94 and 2015-16 UNSC tenures, allowing both traditional international relations theories of neo-realism and neo-liberalism and the constructivist lens of national identity to be combined for greater explanatory power for the state’s actions in the contemporary era of complex international interdependencies. This research determined that most of New Zealand’s actions aligned with pursuit of its interests, as a small state, as ensured through multilateralism under the lens of institutional neo-liberalism. However, a number of actions taken, and strong positions held, by New Zealand on the UNSC in both periods did not align with the state’s pursuit of material interests under traditional international relations theories. By first establishing the popularly internalised national identity characteristics (or content) during each UNSC tenure period, defined as residing in public opinion, this thesis argues that a ‘win-set’ of national identity content relative prioritisation during each period enabled, and arguably drove, New Zealand’s political elite to take actions or hold positions not aligned with those of powerful states on which the small country’s material interests depended. It is argued that New Zealand’s actions on the UNSC in 2015-16 reinforced the social construction of New Zealand’s internationally regarded national identity content as an independent advocate for the global good, which was strongly established during its 1993-94 tenure.</p>

scholarly journals International law and humanitarian intervention

2007 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-48
Author(s):  
Sava Savic
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
International Community ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The United Nations

Taking an action by the international community, individual states or their organizations with the aim of protecting citizens in some country from the tyranny of their own authorities has been defined as a humanitarian intervention. According to international law the use of power as an instrument in international relations is, however, prohibited and therefore, any approach to humanitarian intervention is stretched out between the challenges of moral responsibility and limitations of legislature. The subject of discussion in this article is the legislative aspect of humanitarian intervention by force. The research is focused on law and legitimating of humanitarian intervention by force without the United Nations Security Council approval. .

scholarly journals Reforming the United Nations Security Council: Feasibility or Utopia?

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Schaefer
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Structural Reform ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Single State ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Way

Reforming the United Nations Security Council has been on the agenda of the General Assembly for over two decades. However, structural reform of the Council remains elusive. This article explains why after so many years nearly all 193 states within theunremain actively seized on the matter of reform, despite no immediate outcome being in sight. In order to analyze Security Council reform efforts and the various obstacles along the way, this article emphasizes states’ motivations during the reform process. With the help of new institutionalist theory, an argument is formed that highlights how certain states are driven by strategic calculations and self-interest, while others are more normatively motivated. Furthermore, the article highlights that despite only lukewarm support for reform from certain states, not a single state can publicly denounce Council reform, because the reform issue itself has become an ingrained norm.

UN Peacekeeping Operations and Successful Military Diplomacy: A Case Study of Pakistan

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bakare Najimdeen
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Policy Objective ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Peacekeeping Missions ◽  
Military Diplomacy

Few years following its creation, the United Nations (UN) with the blessing of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) decided to establish the UN Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKO), as a multilateral mechanism geared at fulfilling the Chapter VII of the UN Charter which empowered the Security Council to enforce measurement to maintain or restore international peace and security. Since its creation, the multilateral mechanism has recorded several successes and failures to its credit. While it is essentially not like traditional diplomacy, peacekeeping operations have evolved over the years and have emerged as a new form of diplomacy. Besides, theoretically underscoring the differences between diplomacy and foreign policy, which often appear as conflated, the paper demonstrates how diplomacy is an expression of foreign policy. Meanwhile, putting in context the change and transformation in global politics, particularly global conflict, the paper argues that traditional diplomacy has ceased to be the preoccupation and exclusive business of the foreign ministry and career diplomats, it now involves foot soldiers who are not necessarily diplomats but act as diplomats in terms of peacekeeping, negotiating between warring parties, carrying their countries’ emblems and representing the latter in resolving global conflict, and increasingly becoming the representation of their countries’ foreign policy objective, hence peacekeeping military diplomacy. The paper uses decades of Pakistan’s peacekeeping missions as a reference point to establish how a nation’s peacekeeping efforts represent and qualifies as military diplomacy. It also presented the lessons and good practices Pakistan can sell to the rest of the world vis-à-vis peacekeeping and lastly how well Pakistan can consolidate its peacekeeping diplomacy.

The UN Secretary-General and the Security Council

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
Organizational Relationships ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
International Mediation ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Relationship

The United Nations Secretary-General and the United Nations Security Council spend significant amounts of time on their relationship with each other. They rely on each other for such important activities as peacekeeping, international mediation, and the formulation and application of normative standards in defense of international peace and security—in other words, the executive aspects of the UN’s work. The edited book The UN Secretary-General and the Security Council: A Dynamic Relationship aims to fill an important lacuna in the scholarship on the UN system. Although there exists an impressive body of literature on the development and significance of the Secretariat and the Security Council as separate organs, an important gap remains in our understanding of the interactions between them. Bringing together some of the most prominent authorities on the subject, this volume is the first book-length treatment of this topic. It studies the UN from an innovative angle, creating new insights on the (autonomous) policy-making of international organizations and adding to our understanding of the dynamics of intra-organizational relationships. Within the book, the contributors examine how each Secretary-General interacted with the Security Council, touching upon such issues as the role of personality, the formal and informal infrastructure of the relationship, the selection and appointment processes, as well as the Secretary-General’s threefold role as a crisis manager, administrative manager, and manager of ideas.

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