Perceiving Institutional Performance: The League’s “Failure” vs. UN “Success”

• In Event: Security Institutions

Abstract

“The United Nations succeeded where the League of Nations failed.”

This is as basic an observation as exists in international relations, yet one that remains beset by untested assumptions. This paper examines the three most prominent explanations for the League’s “failure” and finds them all wanting, particularly when placed in conversation with the United Nations’ supposed “successes.”

It then argues that the UN has only “succeeded” where the League “failed” according to two dubious criteria. First, the UN has been much more capable than the League ever was of escaping blame for its shortcomings. Second, the UN has, to put it simply, “succeeded” above all by continuing to exist. Whereas the League folded in the face of its most visible and profound failures, the UN has found ways to continue to persist in the face of failures perhaps at least as profound.

More generally, this investigation highlights two disturbing findings. First, perceptions of institutional success or failure in world politics often hinge less on institutional performance—or the ability to help ameliorate the problems they were created to tackle—and more on their ability to deflect blame for their shortcomings. Second, the ability to hold institutions accountable for failures likely declines as time from institutional creation passes.

The paper concludes by discussing the troubling implications of these findings for some of the oldest and most established institutions that constitute the foundation of the so-called “liberal international order” today.

Author

• Kyle M. Lascurettes, Lewis & Clark College