Dissertation
Conflict and Cooperation in the UN Security Council
Abstract
My dissertation concerns the influence of the rules and the procedures of an international organization on its policy outcomes. My work is structured in three essays focusing on the UN Security Council. The first chapter examines the nomination and election process of nonpermanent members, and finds that while UN members want Council members to represent their regional interests, the current electoral system works advantageously to pro-U.S. countries. The second chapter analyzes the agenda-setting of the Council. I find that the permanent members prevent disputes in strategically important areas from entering the agenda. However, when they wish to intervene, they bring issues to the United Nations in order to reduce the costs of intervention through burden-sharing. The third chapter examines the voting patterns of members when the Council imposes sanctions. I find that the veto power allows the permanent members to vote differently from the non-permanent members, and that increasing interests in democratization turned democracies into frequent supporters of sanctions in the post-Cold War era. Three data sets have been produced from this research: data on both elected and nominated members, Council roll-call votes, and states' contributions to the UN regular budget.
This paper examines the nomination and election process of Council non-permanent members by focusing on whether elected members' policy preferences differ substantially from those of the permanent members such that they actually increase the heterogeneity of the Council. I argue and find that regional groups have a significant influence on the composition of the Security Council, and that countries representing the interests of the region are more likely to be elected as Council members. However, when I look at overall elected members, I find that countries with policy preferences closer to that of the United States are more likely to be elected, suggesting that the current electoral system works advantageously to pro-U.S. member states. The results also indicate that international norms have some influence on the selection process and that countries with a reputation for free-riding or transgressing international security norms are less likely to be elected. This paper provides two data sets: one on the elected members and the other on the candidates.
Chapter 2: Setting the Agenda of the UN Security Council
This paper analyzes how the interests of the permanent members influence the Council's agenda-setting by focusing on domestic disputes between 1946 and 2008. I develop a game-theoretic model to examine the conditions under which the interests of the permanent members increase or decrease the likelihood that a domestic conflict enters the agenda. I argue that the permanent members prevent disputes in strategically important areas from entering the Council's agenda; however, when they wish to offer some measures of conflict management in other areas, they bring issues to the United Nations in order to reduce the costs of intervention through burden-sharing. Using a newly collected data set on the agenda of the Security Council, I subject hypotheses derived from the formal model to empirical testing. I find that the Security Council is less likely to become involved in conflicts in alliance partners of permanent members or conflicts where a permanent member has already intervened whereas it is more likely to handle disputes generating a large number of refugees and battle deaths. I also find that international norms play some roles in shaping the Council's agenda. The principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs discourages the Council from intervening in domestic conflicts, and this leads the Security Council to become more actively involved in conflicts that escalated into international wars. This suggests that the Security Council is more likely to intervene if it is given justification for its involvement.
Presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association.
Chapter 3: The Voting Patterns of the UN Security Council and the Impostion of Multilateral Sanctions
The third chapter analyzes the voting patterns of Council members when the Council decides
to impose sanctions. I examine whether the structural privilege granted to the permanent members
influences their voting patterns and if so, how it affects their voting decisions. In order to examine
the voting patterns of Council members, I have collected the Security Council roll-call votes and
data on the draft resolutions attempting to introduce sanctions based on the official documents of
the United Nations. I find that despite the anticipated criticism following the use of the veto, the
permanent members tend to cast negative votes more frequently than the non-permanent members
in order to prevent the sanctions' imposition against their allies or trading partners. I also find that
democratic countries tended to oppose sanctions more frequently than other members during the
ColdWar while they became frequent supporters of sanctions in the post-ColdWar era, suggesting
that increasing interests in democratization gave them an incentive to use sanctions as a tool to
alter the target's regime type.
Presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association.