A Review of the Academic Debate on Reforming the United Nations Security Council

Although member states have debated reform of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) since the organization’s inception, little attention has been paid to a full review outlining the academic debate, while exploring its underlying modes of thinking.
Writing in the Chinese Journal of Global Governance, BJARKE ZINCK WINTHER describes the academic debate’s historical backdrop and examines more recent contributions to the topic, thereby illustrating that research in support of structural reform of the UNSC has gradually moved from being the prevailing emphasis toward taking up a smaller share of the dialogue.
“Consequently, a discrepancy exists between the debates among UN member states, where calls for structural reform make up the majority, and the academic literature covering the topic,’ he writes in the research article ‘A Review of the Academic Debate about United Nations Security Council Reform’. “Subsequently, more research is needed to help explain this inclination.”
WINTHER maintains that his article does not propose that scholars are obliged to direct their research to fit with the interests of nation states. “However, research that covers an issue which significantly impacts global security must be attentive to the preferences of nation states.”
The arena of UN studies, expanding many fields, is closely tied to the diplomatic arena within the UN. “For this reason, scholars should be careful not to drive a wedge between the production of knowledge in academia and the application of knowledge in diplomatic circles.” This is particularly important if academics want to maintain the possibility of influencing global governance and policy creation, he adds.
“I propose that the task for UNSC reform research going forward is to explore new approaches so that the academic debate avoids becoming as gridlocked as the one among UN member states.”
WINTHER examines four types of UNSC-reform advocacy: ‘tenacious’ and ‘moderate’ advocacy each of structural reforms and working methods reforms. The answers found in both types of arguments for structural reform are constructed as normative propositions, arguing first and foremost, that principles of democracy and equality should be the central guides for how the international community approaches UNSC reform.
On the other side of the main dividing line, arguments in favor of working methods are based more on pragmatic considerations. Working methods proponents argue that the council was created to serve a function, and how that task is best fulfilled ought to be the primary guide for those discussing UNSC reform. “In short, structural reform arguments are based on calls for the council’s alignment with contemporary geopolitical realities, whereas working methods reform arguments are based on precautions against this.”
The central points from the four types of advocacy, however, are present in most if not all literature concerned with UNSC reform, the author states. That is, whether or not the structure of the UNSC aligns, or should align, with principals of equity and with the geopolitical realities of today.
Despite all the debates and rounds of negotiations in the UN, all the research, and suggestions on reform from academia, the issue remains unresolved. The proposed notion of convergence between the two lines of thinking found in academia is meant as an inspiration for the investigation of new approaches.
“Edward C. Luck was surely right,” WINTHER contends, “when he wrote that the proponents of structural reform need to do better in explaining how an expanded council would perform better, and those opposing structural reform in answering if no structural reform now, then when would the time be ripe?”
Therefore, research is needed that aligns the widespread quest for structural reform among member states with the critical observations from academia about the need to pay attention to how reform will impact the efficiency of the council, he states.

Winther, B. (2020). A Review of the Academic Debate about United Nations Security Council Reform, The Chinese Journal of Global Governance, 6(1), 71-101. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/23525207-12340047

Just Different Hats? Comparing UN and Non-UN Peacekeeping

In the past two decades, regional organizations and coalitions of states have deployed more peace operations than the United Nations. Yet most quantitative studies of peacekeeping effectiveness focus on UN peacekeeping exclusively, a decision owed to data availability more than to theories about the differential impact of UN and non-UN missions. As a result, we know little about the effectiveness of non-UN peacekeeping in mitigating violence.
CORINNE BARA and LISA HULTMAN introduce and analyze monthly data on the approximate number of troops, police, and observers in both UN and non-UN peacekeeping operations between 1993 and 2016.
“Using these data, we show that when accounting for mission size and composition, UN and regional peacekeeping operations are equally effective in mitigating violence against civilians by governments, but only UN troops and police curb civilian targeting by non-state actors,” the authors state in ‘Just Different Hats? Comparing UN and Non-UN Peacekeeping’, published in the journal International Peacekeeping.
“We offer some theoretical reflections on these findings, but the main contribution of the article is the novel dataset on non-UN peacekeeping strength and personnel composition to overcome the near-exclusive focus on UN missions in the scholarship on peacekeeping effectiveness.”
The authors have explored the similarities and differences between UN and non-UN peacekeeping. By providing comparable data on the approximate monthly number of peacekeepers for both UN and non-UN missions, they are able to examine issues relating to their different strengths, compositions, and effects. “One question we ask is whether UN and non-UN missions deploy to different contexts. Our descriptive statistics shows some evidence for this.”
On average, the UN deploys to more violent conflicts than non-UN actors, BARA and HULTMAN state. However, in situations in which the UN and non-UN actors intervene into the same conflict, the non-UN actor is most often the first responder. “This article could not explore these differences and temporal dynamics in more detail, but the question of how the effectiveness of earlier missions influences the effectiveness of missions that take over later deserves more research.”
The effects of these missions also vary. “If we take the size of missions into consideration, is there a difference in the effect between UN and non-UN missions? Our findings suggest that there is, at least when it comes to reducing one-sided violence by rebel groups,” the authors state.
This example is a reminder that the category of non-UN peacekeeping is admittedly a rough mix of different types of missions and that the heterogeneity of non-UN missions ought to be further explored. Moreover, whether missions are deployed by the UN or another organization is perhaps not their most distinguishing feature. Certain UN and non-UN missions may be more comparable to each other than missions within these two organizational categories.
“The data we present here offers the possibility to explore differences between and among UN and non-UN missions further, and hopefully an impetus to overcome the step-motherly treatment of non-UN peacekeeping at least in the quantitative study of peacekeeping effectiveness.”

Civil Conflict and Agenda-Setting Speed in the UNSC

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) can respond to a civil conflict only if that conflict first enters the Council’s agenda. Some conflicts reach the Council’s agenda within days after they start, others after years (or even decades), and some never make it. So far, only a few studies have looked at the crucial UNSC agenda-setting stage, and none have examined agenda-setting speed, MARTIN BINDER and JONATHAN GOLUB state.
“To fill this important gap, we develop and test a novel theoretical framework that combines insights from realist and constructivist theory with lessons from institutionalist theory and bargaining theory,” the authors state in a research article titled ‘Civil Conflict and Agenda-Setting Speed in the United Nations Security Council’ published in International Studies Quarterly.
Applying survival analysis to an original dataset, the authors show that the parochial interests of the permanent members (P-5) matter, but they do not determine the Council’s agenda-setting speed. Rather, P-5 interests are constrained by normative considerations and concerns for the Council’s organizational mission arising from the severity of a conflict (in terms of spillover effects and civilian casualties); by the interests of the widely ignored elected members (E-10); and by the degree of preference heterogeneity among both the P-5 and the E-10.
“Our findings also have important implications for the Council’s legitimacy, in terms of both performance legitimacy and procedural legitimacy,” BINDER and GOLUB state. “[I]n our conceptualization the UN is more legitimate if devastating conflicts reach the agenda faster.”
For the UNSC’s performance legitimacy, it makes a big difference whether a crisis reaches the Council’s agenda rapidly and is discussed in public, or whether a crisis goes on for a long time without any exposure at a UNSC meeting and no chance of further action. “Our findings are consistent with a legitimate Council that takes its mandate seriously, addressing more promptly conflicts that produce substantial human suffering and massive negative externalities for neighboring countries.”
But the findings also help to assess an important element of the Council’s procedural legitimacy by demonstrating how issues reach the agenda, the authors contend. Do parochial interests of the powerful permanent members skew agenda-setting speed? “We show that narrow P-5 interests definitely affect the speed of agenda setting in important ways, but also that the Council does not appear to be an entirely illegitimate P-5 dominated elite club in which the elected members trade away their influence in exchange for bribes. Instead, the P-5 need to reach out to the E-10, rendering the agenda-setting process more inclusive of a larger set of interests.”
Future research should investigate whether there is a systematic link between the speed with which conflicts reach the UNSC’s agenda and the effect this has on the UN’s success in terms of conflict resolution, peacekeeping, or sanctions, BINDER and GOLUB state. “Pursuing these avenues would contribute to better understanding of how international organizations work, their effectiveness, and their legitimacy.”

Small States Can Take Small But Important Steps to Improve UN Peacekeeping

With its peacekeeping missions struggling to fulfil ambitious mandates in hostile environments, the United Nations urgently requires sustained action toward boosting performance and regaining global trust.
For this, the organization needs tangible support and engagement from its member states, including smaller states with specialized military capabilities, write LOUISE RIIS ANDERSEN and RICHARD GOWAN in a policy brief published by the Danish Institute for International Studies.
“Recent studies show that United Nations peace operations save lives and often offer better value for money than other multinational stabilization missions,” the authors state in the brief titled ‘Small States Can Take Small But Important Steps to Improve UN Peacekeeping’.
“At the same time, it is widely understood both inside and outside the UN that peacekeeping needs fundamental reform.”
The UN’s four main missions in Africa – in Mali, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – often lack the political capital and military heft to contain major violence and advance faltering peace processes.
Against this backdrop, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched his initiative ‘Action for Peacekeeping’ (A4P) in March 2018 as a plea for Member States to recommit to UN peacekeeping and help:
- refocus peacekeeping with realistic expectations
- make peace operations stronger and safer
- mobilize greater support for political solutions and for well-structured, well-equipped, well-trained forces.
While A4P presented no radical proposals about the future of UN peace operations, ANDERSEN and GOWAN state, it has turned out to be a useful framework for the UN secretariat in pursuing a range of reforms on issues such as assessing the performance of peacekeeping units and improving the safety of peacekeepers.
“Moreover, at a time when great-power rivalry and rifts in the Security Council are standing in the way of larger questions being addressed, A4P offers a useful set of openings for medium- and small-sized member states that are aiming to strengthen existing UN operations.”
Apart from providing troops and equipment, small states can assist the UN in 1) improving the conduct and discipline of peacekeepers; and 2) linking blue helmet operations to long-term efforts to ‘sustain peace’ in the countries where they serve. The UN has highlighted a need for more community liaison teams to address discipline problems, such as sexual abuse by peacekeepers, and member states could work with the secretariat to develop these.
A4P also highlights the need for member states to help ensure that ‘transitions from peacekeeping operations’ are successful. This entails working to ensure that peace is sustained after the peacekeeping operation has been withdrawn and the UN has reconfigured its engagements in the country. This is especially important in cases such as Sudan and the DRC, where such transitions are on the short- or medium-term horizon and where the UN military missions may be replaced by some form of special political mission or peacebuilding mission, the authors state.
Member states can assist the UN by increasing bilateral security assistance to the affected countries (by, for example, tailoring security-sector reform efforts to enhance the legitimacy of local authorities) and putting pressure on multilateral actors such as the World Bank to invest additional resources in peacebuilding.
“By bringing resources to bear in this way, even countries that do not deploy many peacekeepers can boost peacekeeping,” ANDERSEN and GOWAN state.

Reaching Climate Security: How Climate Change Moved Up the UN Security Council Agenda

The energetic evolution of climate change as a United Nations Security Council issue has caught the interest of scholars and students alike. From an initial tentative debate to resolution paragraphs, the topic of has raced up the agenda of the organ, albeit not without its share of controversy.
“There is still no consensus on whether the Security Council is the right arena for climate discussions,” writes SOFIE BERGLUND in the research paper ‘Reaching Climate Security: How Climate Change Moved up the Security Council Agenda’, published by the Swedish Institute of International Affairs.
“While some states argue that action on climate change is central to international security and conflict prevention, others fear it could legitimize interference in states’ sovereign decision making on development choices.”
As global emission curves continue stubbornly to point upwards despite multilateral agreements to limit temperature rise, a Security Council directive on immediate, holistic action is viewed by some as crucial to preventing the worst global climate change forecasts from coming true, the author states. Sweden (in 2017-2018) and Germany (in 2019-2020) are two of the most recent examples of non-permanent members urging the Security Council to adopt a more ambitious agenda on climate security matters.
Indeed, it seems that Sweden’s approach to incorporating climate change awareness into the Security Council mandate was particularly fruitful. Despite the reluctance of some permanent members, climate change made it into several resolutions, and a climate security mechanism and an expert network group were formed during its two-year membership of the Council.
What led the Security Council to agree to make climate change part of its resolution vocabulary? As Germany picks up from where Sweden left off, backed by several risk assessments that highlight climate change as one of the biggest threats to global security, will concerns and objections soon just be muffled things of the past?
BERGLUND offers an overview of the progress of the climate security debate in the Security Council and examines the defining moments leading up to where we are today. It then looks at the future of climate change as a Security Council issue, focused on the ambitious commitments of Germany, a current non-permanent member, and the positions of the permanent members. The paper concludes with remarks on the opportunities and pitfalls ahead.
“While states that favor climate security being discussed in the Security Council have faced significant obstacles, their work has been persistent and has accelerated in recent years,” the author states. The variety of hosts of open debates and Arria-formula meetings on the matter is worthy of note, highlighting broad support for increased action by the Council. The positions of the veto powers are, as in most Council matters, the biggest impediment to getting agreement on a resolution focused solely on climate change-related security risks.
The first resolution to include the phrase ‘climate change’ was adopted after the Council was brought face to face with the security impacts of climate change. It therefore seems to have been key to Sweden’s work to approach the matter geographically, locating first one location particularly at risk of further destabilization from climate change, and then another, instead of forcing a new topic area onto the Council agenda.
Security Council Resolution 1373, which required all states to take action to criminalize terrorism, followed in the emotional aftermath of 9/11. This suggests that a resolution on limiting climate change might follow an extreme weather event or humanitarian disaster. What such an event might be to trigger Council action is unclear, as immense disasters have already taken place without generating such a response. However, given that climate change now appears in resolutions and is being debated by more actors, a greater Security Council response to environmental disasters appears more likely in the future. The current state of global climate politics, however, most notably the failure to reach a satisfying agreement at COP25 makes a resolution on climate security within the near less probable. More likely is a Council statement arising from the joint initiatives of states, urging national governments to treat climate change as a security risk.
In sum, this has two primary implications. First, although the position of some of the veto powers says otherwise, there is momentum for climate action at this level. The growth in membership of the Group of Friends on Climate Security is one expression of this, as well as the continuing work to establish mechanisms to facilitate communication between science and policymaking. This encourages continuing work to keep the topic on the agenda.
This progress does, however, risk obscuring concerns about giving the Security Council a mandate to act on climate change and although the issue is pressing, states need to be mindful of these concerns when moving forward. Action on climate security could, as shown in this text, add legitimacy to a contested Security Council, but if not handled mindfully, it risks giving rise to even more criticism of the undemocratic processes of the Council.
Second, in connection with the urgent nature of climate change, the obstacles are still significant and states cannot rely solely on the Security Council to provide an immediate response at this time. Instead, the alliances of like-minded states built within and outside the Council should take the lead on climate action in other forums, without necessarily losing momentum in the Council.
Despite the severe obstacles, the author states, there are good reasons for policymakers and academics not to neglect the Security Council as a forum for raising climate-related security matters. The debates and opinions signal an international desire for a more holistic approach to climate change that includes areas not traditionally considered appropriate for discussion in that body. Advances have already been made and, as Germany and other states have signaled, climate security will be raised again in the Security Council in the near future, making it an important area for future research and analysis.

Overcoming Opposition at the UNSC: Regional Multilateralism as a Form of Collective Pressure

Military interveners often seek endorsements from regional international organizations (IOs), in addition to approval from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), to reassure international and domestic audiences. Toward that end, interveners should seek the endorsement of continent-wide regional IOs with the broadest and most diverse membership, which are most likely to be independent.
In practice, however, interveners often seek endorsements from subregional IOs with narrow membership and aggregate preferences similar to their own, writes STEFANO RECCHIA in the Journal of Global Security Studies. This should weaken the reassurance/legitimation effect significantly.
In his research article titled ‘Overcoming Opposition at the UNSC: Regional Multilateralism as a Form of Collective Pressure’, RECCHIA argues that such narrower regional endorsements are sought not so much to reassure skeptical audiences, as to pressure reluctant UNSC members to approve the intervention by putting those members’ relations with regional partners at stake.
To illustrate this argument and probe its plausibility, the author reconstructs France’s successful efforts to obtain UNSC approval for its interventions in Côte d’Ivoire (2002-2003) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2003) at a time when the United States was hesitant to support France because of the two countries’ falling-out over the Iraq War.
“Both cases provide strong evidence that France used regional endorsements to overcome opposition at the UNSC,”  RECCHIA states. In the Côte d’Ivoire case, it is possible that Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) regional support pressed a hesitant US administration to come on board, not only by putting Washington’s relations with regional partners at stake, but also by depriving the administration of the argument that this was an illegitimate intervention.
By contrast, in the DRC case, the European Union (EU)’s endorsement can less plausibly be seen as having legitimized the intervention internationally, as the EU could in no way signal regional consent from within Africa. Hence, in the DRC case, it is very likely that if the United States ultimately voted in favor of the French-led intervention at the UNSC, in spite of clear misgivings, it did so to avoid harming US political and economic relations with other EU members.
The motivation for seeking regional endorsements theorized in the article – pressuring hesitant UNSC members –was especially visible in the Côte d’Ivoire and DRC cases. Yet since the mid-1990s, France has systematically sought endorsements from regional IOs for its interventions in Africa before requesting UNSC approval, for the most part working through ECOWAS and/or the EU.
“It is likely that in many of these cases, French leaders viewed regional multilateral endorsements as a way of smoothing the path toward UNSC approval by stepping up pressure on hesitant UNSC members,”  RECCHIA states.
In the run-up to the 2011 Libya intervention, for example, the main advocates of military action, France and the United Kingdom, secured endorsements from two regional multilateral bodies – the Gulf Cooperation Council and the League of Arab States. These regional bodies were in a position to put pressure on China and Russia, the principal UNSC holdouts in this case.
“This raises the question whether military interveners are free to ‘forum shop’ and seek the endorsement of regional IOs whose opinion on how to respond to a particular crisis ‘happens to coincide with their own’”.
The goals that military interveners pursue through regional multilateral endorsements should influence which particular organizations they approach. If the goal is reassuring skeptical audiences internationally and domestically, then interveners should seek the endorsement of regional IOs that appear especially legitimate in terms of the breadth and diversity of their membership and/or that can plausibly claim to represent the ‘collective will’ of the region targeted by the military action.
If, instead, the goal is to exert political pressure on hesitant UNSC members, then interveners should seek the endorsement of regional IOs whose members are enmeshed in close political, military, and economic relations with the principal holdouts on the UNSC; the diversity and ‘representativeness’ of the regional IO’s membership should be secondary. The ability of a military intervener to ‘forum shop’ is thus likely to be constrained by the types of benefits it hopes to achieve through regional backing.

Recchia, Stefano (2020) Overcoming Opposition at the UNSC: Regional Multilateralism as a Form of Collective Pressure. Journal of Global Security Studies, ogaa013, https://doi.org/10.1093/jogss/ogaa013

China’s Evolving Approach to UN Peacekeeping in Africa

Beijing’s peace and security discourse, including its emphasis on non-interference and sovereignty, has remained relatively constant over the last decades.
However, China’s practice in Mali and South Sudan, as well as in Africa more generally, has evolved significantly, CEDRIC DE CONING and KARI M. OSLAND in a new report published by the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.
China is supporting international efforts to improve the peace and security landscape in these countries. China is also bilaterally influencing developments through significant investments in infrastructure, agriculture, health and education, the authors state in the report titled ‘China’s Evolving Approach to UN Peacekeeping in Africa’.
“However, it is its active engagement in supporting international and regional mediation and the assertive way that Beijing has chosen to use peacekeeping that are the most telling indicators of how much its actual practice on the ground has evolved beyond its official rhetoric,” DE CONING and OSLAND write.
“At the same time China has been developing its own unique approach to peacekeeping and peacebuilding, based on a theory of change that sees peace as emerging from development. Taken together, these developments reflect turning points in how China chooses to contribute to international peace and security, and are indicative of how China is adapting to its new global power status.”