Rules, Power of Chair, and Superpower Control in the UN Security Council

• In Event: The United Nations

Abstract

Does a chair state of international organizations (IOs) mitigate powerful countries’ control? If so, when and how? The accumulative literature revealed a variety of ways of controlling IOs by powerful states, but few have focused on how the authority of chairs interacts with powerful states’ control. I present two arguments in this article. First, because of a chair’s large authority, powerful countries try to buy off the chair state to control IOs. Second, even under the pressure of powerful countries, a chair state can substantially exercise its authority and show its uniqueness when the chair has a) sufficient power and b) distinct preferences. I test these arguments in a place where power politics are the most rampant and thus the chair is supposed to matter least likely: the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). By leveraging the alphabetical-order rotation of the president of the UNSC, I first show that the US strategically distributes its foreign aid to control the president of the UNSC. Then, by applying the Structural Topic Model (STM) to the resolutions from 1992 to 2020, I show that when the president is a) sufficiently strong and b) has a different preference from the US, the UNSC resolutions uniquely contain more ceasefire-related elements. These findings shed light on a new way of state control of IOs, the ostensibly powerless president of the UNSC, and the conditions of the chair’s authority.

Author

• Yuji Masumura, The University of Texas at Austin