Staying the Course: Funding Effective UN Responses to COVID-19 While Protecting the 2030 Agenda

Development financing has come under unprecedented stress in only a few months, as the world experiences one of the most rapid and damaging pandemics in human history. The socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 emphasize that the pandemic is not only a health crisis, but a human one that threatens to reverse decades of progress in the fight against poverty and exacerbate high levels of inequality within and between countries.

This is why responses to this pandemic have to not only mitigate the immediate threat to all citizens’ health and livelihoods but also make investments in ways that strengthen global resilience, prosperity and sustainability, the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation states in a recent report.

Titled ‘Staying the Course: Funding Effective UN Responses to COVID-19 While Protecting the 2030 Agenda’, aims to support United Nations Country Teams, UN Member States and their partners to effectively use financial resources to respond to the immediate impact of the pandemic, while safeguarding progress already made towards Agenda 2030.

The report shows how responses to the pandemic need to be flexible: country and location specific solutions are essential. With that in mind, it considers how at country-level the leadership role of the UN Resident Coordinator system provides a platform for effective UN cooperation with the Member State and its partners. 

“This role is highly relevant to the current health emergency response and the local knowledge of the participating UN agencies is a source of strength for tackling the pandemic,” the report states. 

There have been previous global health emergencies and UN Country Teams can build on prior experience to make effective responses to the current situation. The report argues that this knowledge needs to be firmly anchored with local actors and UN staff. 

Funding remains a central issue in tackling the pandemic and is the focus of the report. In that vein, the report seeks to raise awareness of the Funding Compact which was welcomed by both UN entities and UN Member States in 2019.

“The Funding Compact should be seen as the foundation for scaling up the response to the pandemic in an effective and transparent manner.”

The report also asks whether current funding is sufficient and in a form that enables UN Country Teams to rapidly reallocate funds in response to the emergency. It explores the different types of funding available, the commitments of Member States to finance the various modes of funding, and the current situation regarding the funding that is actually available.

Core funding and voluntary contributions, unearmarked, are clearly the most flexible of financial resources, allowing country teams to rapidly reassess where funding is most needed and more easily reallocate to the new priorities. “The gap between intentions, commitments and funding is striking and is a challenge for the local responses to the pandemic and the longer-term challenge of building back better.”

The Funding Compact is seen as the foundation for scaling up the response in an effective and transparent manner, giving visibility to the inputs of the Member States. The report further argues that at country level the expectations of UN leadership and coordination, specifically the UN Resident Coordinator System, need to be met, with local strategizing and repurposing of funding in response to COVID-19 in rapid consultation with all partners.

There are positive reports from the country level of coordinated funding dialogues resulting in unified action. However, there are reports of the response sometimes being unilateral and uncoordinated, risking the waste of resources. Despite this, Member States’ expectations of UN coordination and leadership at country level remain high.

Finally, the report argues that the Funding Compact commitments can only be achieved through mutually responsible leadership, between funding UN Member States and implementing UN entities. “Indeed, scaling up of available funds is as crucial as optimizing available funds.”

At both the global and local level there is a need to remain focused on aligning global financial systems with the Sustainable Development Goals so that countries emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic can be supported to rebuild with resilience and the global plan for sustainable development remains in focus.

Institutional Development of the UN Secretariat

As the United Nations celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, it becomes pertinent to assess the performance of the UN Secretariat so far. BOB REINALDA takes on the question in a research article in the journal Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations.

“The institutional development of the secretariat of an international organization (IO) depends on the leadership displayed by the executive head and senior staff and on the political settings such as the constitutional leeway, the selection of its main functionaries, the conditions set for activities, and the allocation of resources,” he writes in the article, ‘Institutional Development of the United Nations Secretariat’. “The better the secretariat is managed, the stronger the leadership capacity of the organization’s executive head will be.” 

However, REINALDA adds, it may be questioned whether this same expectation regarding effective management can be applied to the UN. 

When states create IOs, the negotiation results are carefully recorded in the constitution. However, constitutional sections on the secretariat and staff are relatively short and lack detail, which implies that secretariats need to be elaborated by their staff who are given some room to maneuver to do so (in principal-agent theory referred to as ‘agency slack’ or ‘slippage’). 

“This is also true of the UN Charter, with only 5 out of 111 Articles discussing the Secretariat and a major administrative role for the first and successive Secretaries-General.” 

IO secretariats are hierarchically organized organs whose leadership sees to the organization’s continuity, seeks to devote itself to its objectives, runs the headquarters and field missions, and represents the organization vis-à-vis other actors. Secretariats encounter limitations, among them political restrictions and insufficient resources. Playing a role of its own in world politics may not be obvious for IOs, given the major powers’ inclination to curb that role, but executive heads have several assets available to act independently such as their good offices and the IO’s bully pulpit. 

“Since most literature on the UN Secretariat focuses on external, or political, leadership, I examine here the internal, or administrative, leadership,” REINALDA writes. 

When the UN was first established, a choice was made to have one secretariat to serve all principal organs. The Secretary-General is both a political figure, given the opportunity to bring threats to international peace and security to the attention of the Security Council, and the UN’s chief administrative officer. The December 1945 Report of the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations stipulated that the Secretary-General’s choice of higher staff and his leadership largely determine “the character and the efficiency of the Secretariat as a whole,” mentioning aspects such as team spirit, moral authority, and Member State confidence. 

The Secretary-General may assume roles as a mediator and an informal adviser to governments, but also will be called on, when exercising administrative duties, to make decisions “which may justly be called political.”

REINALDA assesses the Secretariat’s institutional development, through analysis of the administrative qualities of eight former Secretaries-General, with a focus on how they strengthened the UN Secretariat and how they weakened it.

“No fewer than six out of eight former UN Secretaries-General showed poor administrative leadership of the Secretariat, particularly regarding issues that require specific competences such as staffing, finances, and team coherence,” the author states. 

Trygve Lie, the first Secretary-General, carved out the Secretary-General’s administrative role, but he weakened it by his troubled staff relations and his betrayal of the Secretariat’s independent character, REINALDA states. The sequence of four weak administrators (U Thant, Kurt Waldheim, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, and Boutros Boutros-Ghali) during a period of thirty-five years (1961–1996) considerably and continuously enfeebled the Secretariat’s institutional development, which can be attributed to their apparent lack of administrative skills and their understanding of UN finances. Ban Ki-moon’s administrative record was also weak. 

“Only two Secretaries-General had obvious administrative leadership qualities and succeeded in strengthening the Secretariat: [Dag] Hammarskjöld, because he enjoyed administration, and [Kofi] Annan, who profited from knowing the organization from within,” the author notes. Unlike the others, both also mastered intraorganizational relations, particularly with the General Assembly and the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions. These relations are crucial, he stresses, given the Assembly’s inclination to control the Secretariat and to approve new expenditures resulting from what happens in the world, particularly when reform efforts are being made with austerity.

This poor administrative leadership outcome fits some general patterns observed in the literature regarding IO administration, REINALDA states. Trust, confidence, expertise, knowledge, information, and persuasion are crucial skills to the constructive workings of secretariats. But IOs have a relatively poor personnel management record.

Notwithstanding the states’ potential interest in having weak executive heads, the selection process of the UN Secretary-General should from an institutional perspective value not only issues such as gender, but also administrative qualities regarding staffing, finances, and team coherence to break away from the continual process of reform. 

To end the UN’s poor administrative record, particularly in a world with multilateralism under serious pressure, there should be a greater control of internal developments (Secretariat- and UN system-wide).

Reinalda, B. (2020). Institutional Development of the United Nations Secretariat, Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations, 26(2), 325-339. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/19426720-02602005

The Rise of Counterterrorism: A Fourth Pillar for the UN?

Seventy-five years ago, the Charter of the United Nations established a new institution with three founding pillars: peace and security, human rights and development.

Over the past 20 years, however, a fourth pillar – counterterrorism – has begun to emerge, through multiple UN Security Council resolutions, a global strategy from the UN General Assembly, the rise of the countering or preventing violent extremism agenda, and the creation of a stand-alone UN Office of Counter-terrorism, ALI ALTIOK and JORDAN STREET write in a new discussion paper.

In ‘A fourth pillar for the United Nations? The rise of counterterrorism’, published by Saferworld, the authors explore the current effects and future implications of the UN’s embrace of counterterrorism, given the mounting evidence of the harmful impacts of this agenda worldwide.

“It is the duty of all states to protect their citizens, and states do have a legitimate right to defend themselves from both external and internal threats,” ALTIOK and STREET write.

“Globally, however, counterterrorism has become many states’ primary pretext for violating human rights in the name of security, portraying particular groups as a security threat. Education and empowerment for peace programs have mutated into tools for preventing young people’s

radicalization leading to violence.” 

Directly and indirectly, peace operations now play a growing role in combatting terrorism, the authors state. Mediation, peacebuilding and reconciliation efforts by the UN and UN partners are being criminalized, discouraged and crowded out. 

“Given that the UN’s work on peace, development and human rights requires building trust and legitimacy with people and communities in an increasingly authoritarian and conflicted world, such approaches put the UN’s effectiveness on the line.

ALTIOK and STREET find that the compromises the UN has struck have come to threaten its ability to uphold its Charter, putting the effectiveness of its work for peace, rights and development on the line. They identify three overarching steps UN leadership and member states can take: 

• Refocus UN strategy on peace, rights and development through stronger processes for analysis, strategy and program development.

• Protect UN credibility and impact by strengthening guidance, oversight and safeguards and standardizing the use of terror-related terminology.

• Turn evidence and experience into improvement.

The United Nations at 75: Managing and Reshaping a Changing International Order

The United Nations is marking the 75th anniversary of its founding amid a rapidly changing world order. What is the future of the organization and multilateralism more generally? 

Despite the manifold challenges to multilateralism, state AMITAV ACHARYA and DAN PLESCH, there are grounds of hope for the future of the United Nations. 

First, the demand for multilateralism has varied, the authors write in ‘The United Nations: Managing and Reshaping a Changing World Order’, published in the journal Global Governance.

In the United States, both the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations retreated from multilateralism, although to a lesser extent than Donald Trump. Domestic politics can be a double-edged sword insofar as support for the UN is concerned. “Here is a striking example: despite Trump’s rhetoric against multilateralism, the US Congress has kept funding for the UN stable,” ACHARYA and PLESCH state.

Second, the demand for multilateralism is driven by a combination of strategic, normative, and functional logics. If the idea of multilateralism as good and desirable for its own sake is discarded, then the strategic and functional reasons for it might persist or even increase to compensate for it. Rising powers such as China and India, along with traditional powers, see multilateralism as important to their status and influence.

Transnational challenges defy national boundaries, which no single nation or bloc can solve on its own. “This reality does not itself sustain multilateralism since not all agree on its importance. But this also means that the need and demand for multilateralism is not just a moral imperative, but also a practical necessity.”

Third, the demand for multilateralism varies across issues, according to the authors. A study published in 2016 showed that while demand for global governance might be strengthening in the need to address climate change, human rights, global security governance, and mass atrocities, it is weakening in health, trade, and even possibly finance (where it may be static after having risen in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial turmoil). 

Also, in some areas such as trade and finance, the demand for global governance is crisis driven. “Understanding these variations across issue areas and time is important in generalizing and devising ways of addressing challenges to the UN and its role in global governance.”

Fourth, while the decentering and fragmentation of multilateralism can create confusion, increase transaction costs, and possibly lead to reduced effectiveness of existing UN-based global governance institutions and mechanisms, it is also clear that fragmentation is driven by the demonstrated weaknesses and failures of existing mechanisms and their lack of normative and performance legitimacy. 

In this context, the emergence of new actors and frameworks of multilateralism due to the proliferation of new actors is not necessarily at the expense of the UN. “This is not a zero-sum game, but a positive-sum one, one that offers considerable scope for divisions of labor,” ACHARYA and PLESCH state.

For example, human rights laws today are enforced not only in international courts, but also through criminal prosecutions in domestic courts of former state officials, where both international law and domestic criminal law are used. 

The International Criminal Court has been joined by more than two dozen international enforcement courts in the world enforcing human rights law. This promotes human rights around the world. 

Some bilateral and plurilateral arrangements create stricter standards for intellectual property protection and tougher enforcement penalties for intellectual property infringement than existing Trade-Related Aspects on Intellectual Property measures. Hence, they support the goals of global trade governance, if not its primary multilateral institution. 

In finance, a key development is the emergence of ‘cooperative decentralization’ as a form of fragmentation, resulting from the 2008–2009 financial crisis. These regional and plurilateral financial arrangements worked with the International Monetary Fund. Opinion is divided on the benefits and costs of this form, with critics skeptical of their ability effectively contain crises while others see them as durable and positive forces in global financial regulation.

In climate change, the authors state, the proliferation of initiatives does not replace or weaken the UN’s role. At the same time, as academic literature has pointed out, institutions are sticky—it’s easier to modify them than to create new ones. 

Hence, as existing multilateral institutions come under pressure, they will not be displaced, but new arrangements may emerge with respect to aspects of environmental degradation such as industrial pollution and deforestation. Fragmentation can be creative, leading to innovation in problem solving.

Fifth, despite the current pessimism about global governance, the demand for multilateral action is wider than ever before—a key factor supporting the future of the UN. A good deal of recent literature on agency is concerned with the proliferation of actors, especially looking beyond the state-centric focus of the early literature to capture the role of transnational civil society and the private sector, and so forth. 

But the issue of agency goes well beyond bringing the nonstate actors in. Equally important is that the US role in creating and maintaining the global governance architecture has been more limited and less positive while the contribution of others including Europeans and the developing countries (and the weaker actors more generally) is less appreciated but more substantial and extensive than is usually captured in the academic literature and policy debate. 

This is clear in the area of human rights, Responsibility to Protect, climate change, and internet governance, the last being an understudied area where the US role has come under intense criticism after the revelations by intelligence analyst David Snowden in 2013 of massive and systematic US surveillance of the internet.

“However, these factors are not enough to keep the UN going in the long term,” ACHARYA and PLESCH write. “Critically, leaders must pay more attention to selling the benefits of multilateralism and the UN to domestic audiences. To this end, a comprehensive and nonpartisan assessment audit of the benefits of multilateralism for countries is necessary to reduce political partisanship and bias in the debate over the necessity and importance of the UN.”

Acharya, A., & Plesch, D. (2020). The United Nations, Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations, 26(2), 221-235. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/19426720-02602001

Genocide Rhetoric in the UN Security Council

The Politicization of the Genocide Label

The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide notes a finding of genocide requires member-states and competent organs of the UN to prevent and punish such acts. However, despite this obligation, and the fact that the Convention provides a detailed definition of what acts constitute genocide, the use of euphemisms in referring to situations involving the apparent commission of genocide remains widespread.
“When an atrocity is not recognized as a genocide, a dangerous precedent is set for future acts of semantic avoidance, and the ability of areas affected by genocide to recover is severely hampered, MICHELLE E. RINGROSE writes in the journal Genocide Studies and Prevention.
The UN Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes asserts that past acts of genocide, serious human rights violations, and crimes against humanity are prominent indicators of a heightened risk of future genocides. This claim is supported by research demonstrating that a history of violence and aggression makes the engagement in future violent acts as a means of responding to conflict and hostility more likely, RINGROSE states in her article titled ‘The Politicization of the Genocide Label: Genocide Rhetoric in the UN Security Council’.
“Given that governments which deny genocide are three times more likely to commit another genocide, international recognition is central to maintaining peace and security.”
The author explores the ways in which language is used by P5 nations in the Security Council to avoid genocide recognition using the Srebrenica genocide as a case study. Srebrenica is an ideal case study to examine such rhetorical positioning for a number of reasons, she notes. First, the atrocities that occurred in Srebrenica constitute the largest genocide in Europe since the Holocaust and symbolize a failure of intelligence collection during peacekeeping operations, thereby undermining the credibility of western governments and the UN.
Second, Srebrenica occurred on the heels of the Rwandan genocide a year earlier, and thus the discussion at the UN, concerning Srebrenica, arose in an environment where the UN P5 and the international community more generally, were all coming to terms with the consequences of their inaction in Rwanda.
Third, in recent years, there has been a turn towards formal recognition of Srebrenica as a genocide by the UN, providing an interesting opportunity to consider the historical context of the use of the term genocide by the P5 over time.
Through an analysis of diplomatic language utilized by UN P5 nations concerning how and whether to label Srebrenica a genocide, RINGROSE explores the intersections of language, power, and politics.
To do so, this article first considers the significance of an attention to language and its use by P5 members in particular, before introducing the specific case of Srebrenica while focusing on the history and context of the use—or avoidance—of the term ‘genocide’. After establishing this context, the article turns to an examination of the language used by P5 members in debates concerning Srebrenica.
This language is analyzed through the lens of framing theory, an approach adopted from its common use in mass-media communications theory to serve as a method of analyzing how particular nations frame and represent narratives around the genocide label.
The analysis proceeds in two parts. The first part involves an exploration of the explicit use of the term ‘genocide’ by P5 nations. The second part then considers situations where P5 nations employ euphemisms to avoid using the term.
“Together, an analysis of these discourses demonstrates how UN Security Council P5 members use language as a mechanism to frame a conflict in a particular way that aligns with their own national political interests,” the author states.
Through this analysis, the article reaffirms the importance of explicit semantic genocide recognition, not only as an important legal determination, but one that also affects acknowledgment of the significance of a given atrocity event, and post-conflict growth and mediation processes.
“The discourse analysis of 32 UN Security Council debates related to the Srebrenica genocide between 1995 and 2015 discussed in the article demonstrates how the P5 nations selectively framed this event according to each nation’s own beliefs and strategic interests,” RINGROSE states.
Moreover, the politicization of the rhetoric used in referring to the Srebrenica genocide appears to also have varied according to domestic policy considerations, Security Council power politics, and the complexities of language use within an international arena, wherein multiple actors are involved over time, she adds.
Future studies of language use within Security Council debates should focus on other acts of genocide in order to ascertain if the trends identified in this article are replicated. An analysis of language used in other documents relevant to the Srebrenica genocide, such as International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia or International Court of Justice decisions, would also provide a helpful dataset.
While some may argue the use of language within the UN Security Council is mere incidental semantic variation, the continued avoidance of the genocide label within the Security Council in relation to the Srebrenica genocide supports the thesis that the P5 nations use language as a mechanism to frame a conflict in a particular manner that aligns with their own political interests, the author states.
“As such, this article reaffirms the importance of genocide recognition as more than a legal issue. Rather, such recognition, or lack thereof, in various fora, including the official statements of the P5 Security Council nations, has the ability to increase or decrease communal violence and revenge, and to either help alleviate or perpetuate, transgenerational cultural trauma associated with denial.”

Ringrose, Michelle E. (2020) ‘The Politicization of the Genocide Label: Genocide Rhetoric in the UN Security Council,’ Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal: Vol. 14: Iss. 1: 124-142.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.1.1603

Successes and Failures of UN Peace Operations

What does ‘success’ in peace operations mean? Is it purely the absence of hostilities, or should it also be measured in terms of civilian suffering? Did a United Nations peacekeeping mission succeed because it fulfilled its mandate of monitoring elections or did it fail because it was not able to prevent civilian massacres in the areas where peacekeepers were deployed?
Writing in Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. History, D.B. PUSHKINA examines the existing measures of the UN’s effectiveness, proposes a new scale of measurement of successes and failures of UN peacekeeping operations and examines six cases in Africa (UNTAG in Namibia, ONOMOZ in Mozambique, UNAMIR in Rwanda, UNOSOM in Somalia, MINURCA in the Central African Republic, ONUB in Burundi) across proposed measures.
The definition of success the author offers in the article – ‘Successes and Failures of United Nations Peace Operations’ – comprises limiting violent conflict, reducing human suffering, preventing conflict from spreading, and preventing war from recurring.
That definition, according to the author, does two important things: 1) it acknowledges the different nuances, voices, and forces – international and domestic, societal and institutional – affecting whether a mission may or may not be considered successful; 2) it insists that the human dimension remains the primary criterion for such considerations.
“A more nuanced consideration of ‘success’ and a close look at so many cases is relevant not only to conceptual debates about these issues but also to ‘real’ policy in the past, present, and future.”
The six UN peacekeeping missions in Africa originated after the end of the Cold war and have been completed at the time of writing. She finds that two out of those missions succeeded across most of the criteria, two failed and two fell into the gray area of partial success-partial failure.
“The most important observation that can be made from this classification is that in several cases the overall assessment does not overlap with mandate implementation,” the author states. For example, ONUB in Burundi, despite fulfilling most of the mandate’s objectives and classified by the UN as one of its most successful missions is placed in the partial success/failure group, mostly due to the current instability in Burundi, hence, UN’s weaker contribution in progress towards positive peace.
Concerning various criteria of success, UN peacekeeping has been particularly unsuccessful in preventing genocide and/or civilian massacres. Varying success was demonstrated in limiting violence, preventing violent deaths and refugee and IDP resettlement/preventing outflows. UN missions have been fairly successful in preventing conflicts from spreading and creating regional instability.
Regarding conflict resolution measures, UN missions performed better in preventing reoccurrence of war within two years after departure, but UN peacekeeping has been less successful at contributing to progress towards positive peace.
The difference between evaluation of the missions based solely on mandate implementation versus on their contribution to limiting violence, reducing human suffering, preventing conflict spread, preventing the recurrence of war and contributing to progress toward positive peace leads to a deeper understanding of whether the UN Security Council is making the right decisions for particular situations and whether UN peace operations are indeed utilizing all of their potential for bringing stability to the world.
Successful missions offer support for an optimistic outlook. Partial successes, especially those of missions deployed amid ongoing wars, reinforce this optimism but offer a word of caution to avoid too demanding expectations of UN troops. “Finally, failed missions should never be forgotten or under-analyzed in order not only to avoid mistakes in the future but also not to place all blame on peacekeepers as opposed to the decision-making bodies.”

Pushkina D. B. Successes and Failures of United Nations Peace Operations. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. History, 2020, vol. 65, Iss. 1, рр. 261–277.
https://doi.org/10.21638/11701/spbu02.2020.115

Why Do States So Avidly Seek a Nonpermanent Seat On the United Nations Security Council?

Why do states seek a nonpermanent seat in the UN Security Council? The obvious answer is that the UN Charter confers on the Security Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.
Despite their formal power, ANN-MARIE EKENGREN, FREDRIK D. HJORTHEN and ULRIKA MÖLLER remind us, there are important limitations to the influence Council members are able to wield. For one, the capacity of the Council to exercise its authority is highly contingent on the voluntary cooperation of states, which in turn depends on the perceived legitimacy of the Council.
Moreover, a number of circumstances contribute to monopolizing effective decision-making power with the Permanent Five (P5), reducing the role of the Elected Ten (E10) to considering “previously cooked decisions.” In addition to the veto, the P5 has access to the institutional memory of the Council, has more experienced diplomatic staff, and has competence in practices such as ‘penholding’.
Yet this does not appear to have curbed the enthusiasm of other UN members for seeking an elected seat. Instead, there has been an increase in competition, leading to more intensive and elaborate election campaigns. The competitive challenge facing aspiring members is compounded by the increase in UN membership, from 104 in 1963 to 193 in 2018.
Member States seeking an elected seat are now up against more competitors and need to win the support of more countries to secure the required number of votes. Accordingly, securing a nonpermanent seat has been described as “more of a prize than ever”. It might seem, therefore, that the gains of an elected seat outweigh the costs of competing for it. But what exactly do aspiring members hope to achieve?
Departing from the overarching assumption that power and influence is at stake, EKENGREN, HJORTHEN and MÖLLER investigate what states think they will achieve by serving on the Council. Their article, ‘A Nonpermanent Seat in the United Nations Security Council: Why Bother?’, published in the journal Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations, 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, the authors state. 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.
The most interesting findings of the study are reached by comparing: (1) stated reasons for wanting a seat with estimations of the power-enhancing benefits brought by a seat; and (2) reasons ascribed to other states for wanting a seat with the stated reasons for one’s own state. When diplomats were asked why a seat was of interest, they rated the opportunity to influence the agenda as the main reason. When asked about the benefits of holding an elected seat, they were modest in their ratings of this type of influence. Conversely, they were optimistic in their assessment on the opportunity to establish networks, but this was not among the most important stated reasons for wanting a seat.
The pattern for status was similar, although the difference was not as accentuated; status was not a main reason for wanting a seat, but expectations that an elected seat brings status were rather high.
It might seem puzzling that a main reason for wanting a seat was to influence the agenda when assessments of the opportunity to do so were so modest, EKENGREN, HJORTHEN and MÖLLER state. However, this indicates awareness of the actual obstacles facing the elected members and that influence is still greater with than without a seat. Moreover, it may be that improved relations and status are seen by states as (direct or indirect) forms of influence too, making the discrepancy between influence as a reason for seeking a seat and the reported lack of influence on Security Council decision-making less of a puzzle.
Regarding the expectation of stronger relationships with other actors, the results indicate that this was a by-product of the seat and not the main reason for seeking a seat in the first place. The expectation of improved status should be considered in light of the view expressed by many states that any increase in status is temporary and perhaps also limited to UN circles in New York. Hence, the conceptualization of power-enhancing benefits through networking and social interaction helps us understand states’ expectations once the seat is won.
The sense of obligation and ambition to take responsibility for the multilateral order expressed by many diplomats can be interpreted as a will to pursue and promote specific values and norms through the seat, the authors state. By contrast, when diplomats were asked about other states’ reasons for wanting a seat, their will to influence was to a much lesser degree paired with the wish to contribute to the multilateral order, and the aspirations for status were stated as much more important.
The difference in responses regarding their own and other states can mean several things. For one, it could be that, when asked about other states, respondents were more honest and that the interest in status in fact applied to their own state as well. On the other hand, it could be that states generalize based on the existence of a few well-known examples of status seekers. Moreover, the tendency to attach less weight to the wish to influence for promoting values and norms and more weight on status seeking of other states might be interpreted as if states perceive a competition over status in these international settings that they do not want to admit.
Some states might also connect status seeking with small-state behavior and this might be easier to admit for other states than for their own. In addition, some states might want a seat to preserve a certain status and to remain relevant in global politics, while others seek a seat to improve their status and become more relevant.
Seeing status as a power-enhancing benefit paved the way for an intriguing finding in terms of the discrepancy between stated reasons for one’s own state and other states, according to the authors. It points to the relevance of the ongoing move within the literature toward incorporating a social dimension to the understanding of power and influence. The tendency to ascribe collective goals for seeking influence to one’s own state, but not to other states, is another finding that points to the remaining relevance on the debate between international relations theories on self-interested and collective purposes for action as well as with regard to the importance of values and norms in world politics.
“All three conceptualizations of power-enhancing benefits have proved useful in our analysis, albeit to a varying extent and in different ways,” the authors contend. For example, the prevalence on influence as a reason for seeking a seat in the Security Council may be seen to reflect the conceptualization of power that leans toward a material understanding of power consistent with neorealism. On the other hand, the reported emphasis on values and reform seems more in line with the neoliberal view. Finally, the reported presence and relevance of status considerations might be said to reflect more of a social understanding of power in line with the constructivist view.
Although previous studies on the candidatures and election of members to the Security Council have only briefly addressed the question of why states seek an elected seat, the authors state, there are no empirical studies focusing specifically on this topic. “Our article addresses this gap by focusing on the expectations that states have on an elected seat in the Council.”
Even with the modest response rate taken into account, it gives a substantial contribution to our understanding of why states run for a seat. “We believe this article opens the way for important future research on states’ reasons for international cooperation and interaction, in relation to a seat in the Council as well as in relation to other forms of international representation.”
Looking ahead, EKENGREN, HJORTHEN and MÖLLER state, it would be relevant to investigate how states with different characteristics relate to the three different power-enhancing benefits and by doing so control for some possibly important background variables: Do middle-range powers have greater expectations (than smaller states) on the opportunity to influence the agenda in different institutional settings? Do states with a lower level of international integration have greater expectations regarding the opportunity for social interactions? Do smaller states have greater expectations of status through an elected seat in the Council, or in other international organizations?
In addition, structured case comparisons would be beneficial for the purpose of analyzing whether and how the campaigns for international representation reflect the described expectations. Do states with high expectations on influence, networking, or status invest more time and money in the campaigns? And are the campaigns designed differently depending on what states hope to achieve through a seat?

Ekengren, A., Hjorthen, F. D., & Möller, U. (2020). A Nonpermanent Seat in the United Nations Security Council, Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations, 26(1), 21-45. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/19426720-02601007