Elected Influence? Thematic Issues and the UN Security Council

• In Event: Legislative Politics of the United Nations

Abstract

Do delegations elected to the UN Security Council use the rotating presidency strategically to achieve their goals? If so, how? Prior studies argue that institutional rules affect the output of numerous international institutions, including the Security Council. The Council presidency rotates alphabetically and elected members get, at most, two chances to set the Council's monthly agenda. Council presidents must make strategic choices about which issues to place on their calendar reflecting their priorities. Since the end of the Cold War, the Council has expanded its definition of international security beyond matters of war and peace to include human security, climate change, and HIV/AIDS. The growth in the number of thematic issues (those not tied directly to a particular country or conflict) has given elected members a greater opportunity to engage in policy entrepreneurship (Keating 2015; Allen and Yuen 2020), For that reason, we focus on thematic issues recognizing that elected members have advanced issues like responsibility to protect (R2P), gender equality, and the plight of refugees and that the scheduling of these issues is more flexible (compared to national issues which may be tied to regular mandate renewals for peacekeeping missions). This paper is a first cut at examining new data on Council presidencies and the agenda items they select for discussion each month. We know that elected members schedule more thematic agenda items (Allen and Yuen 2020), but are those items distinct from those selected by the permanent members? Secoldy, we explore whether or not presidents from the same region advance similar issues or if national interests lead elected members to focus on unique issues.

Authors

• Susan H. Allen, University of Mississippi

• Amy Yuen, Middlebury College