The Power of the Weak: How Informal Power-Sharing Shapes the Work of the UN Security Council

Mikulaschek, Christoph

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2881425

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 83 publications

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“…In contrast, institutional complexity can benefit the weak. In the days before governance complexity, when each regime was self-contained, the weak's only leverage came from their capacity to say "no" (Schneider 2011;Mikulaschek 2016) or exercise an outside option, one that was typically not good enough to elicit a good inside offer. With governance complexity, they can now punch above their weight by invoking an inside option and leveraging a payoff that is disproportionate to their outside option.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bargaining strategies for governance complex games

Verdier

2021

Rev Int Organ

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Global governance complexes offer member states opportunities for “regime shifting”: playing off an institutional forum against another with the goal of improving one’s relative bargaining position. I probe the internal validity of this strategy. The model makes two contributions to the governance complex literature. Formally, first, the analysis goes beyond current “outside-option” models of regime shifting, involving a permanent break of negotiations, to “inside-option” models, involving temporary disagreements. Substantively, second, the article models two scenarios of regime shifting, one that works for the weak and another that works for the powerful, and then “tests” the claim held by some in the literature that powerful countries are more likely to avail themselves of the possibility of regime shifting than weaker countries. I conclude that regime shifting is more likely to work for the weak than for the strong.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bargaining strategies for governance complex games

Verdier

2021

Rev Int Organ

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“…It is also possible that the bias of the UN Security Council in favor of certain armed groups might manifest in perceptions of individual UN peacekeepers (Talentino 2007;Benson and Kathman 2014;Rhoads 2016). Research shows that member states use their position on the Security Council to influence where UN peacekeepers are posted (Mikulaschek 2017). However, these theories apply to political elites and armed groups rather than citizens disputing over local issues.…”

Section: Discussion: Investigating the Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is for this reason that most modern UN peace operations have become long, drawn-out affairs, even after nominal peace treaties have been signed. The length of peacekeeping operations in Liberia (2003Liberia ( -2018 and Cote d'Ivoire (2003-2017, both considered successes within the UN, reflect the inherent challenges of building sustainable institutions in the long-term. In the Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur, the UN has spent more the fifteen years with little to show in terms of state capacity.…”

Section: A Micro-level Theory Of Intergroup Cooperation Under Peacekeepingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peacekeeping and the Enforcement of Intergroup Cooperation: Evidence from Mali

Nomikos

2022

The Journal of Politics

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Despite the abundance of evidence that peacekeeping works, we know little about what actually makes peacekeepers effective. Recent work suggesting that local agendas are central to modern conflicts make this omission particularly problematic. The article demonstrates that the presence of peacekeepers makes individuals more optimistic about the risks of engagement and the likelihood that members of outgroups will reciprocate cooperation. I use data from a lab-in-the-field experiment conducted in Mali, a West African country with an active conflict managed by troops from France and the United Nations (UN), to show that UN peacekeepers increase the willingness of individuals to cooperate relative to control and French enforcers. Moreover, I find that UN peacekeepers are especially effective among those participants who hold other groups and institutions in low esteem as well as those who have more frequent contact with peacekeepers. Follow-up interviews and surveys suggest that perceptions of the UN as unbiased rather than other mechanisms account for its effectiveness.

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“…The persistence of institutional inequality through international institutions requires constant attention, taking direct initiative, and exhausting bargains at the side of great powers. Another bunch of recent studies dealing with the UN Security Council shows that elected members resist institutional inequalities and seek to realize their own interests as against that of great powers (Binder & Golub, 2020; Langmore & Farrall, 2016; Mikulaschek, 2016). The elections of UNSC non‐permanent members during the early Cold War period not only shows how the US was in perpetual struggle to ensure its privileged position in the Council but also documents the counter‐struggle of weak states in elevating independent states to the Council.…”

Section: Why Elected Members Matter and How Great Powers Get Themmentioning

confidence: 99%

Controlling International Institutions: How the US Engineered UNSC Non‐permanent Members in the Early Cold War

Balcı

2022

Global Policy

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How did the US shape the composition of the UN Security Council during the early Cold War period? By focusing on the election of non‐permanent members to Council seats, this paper investigates what role the US played in the nomination and election of candidate countries. In doing so, the study relies heavily on US diplomatic archives since those archival materials are rich in terms of voting preferences of UN members, negotiations between the US and its allies, and Washington's intensive lobbying for candidates. Investigating contested elections from 1946 to 1964, we find that although the US had an extensive influence on determining Council's non‐permanent members, its power to influence election outcomes dramatically weakened from the late 1950s onwards. This finding has important implications for the recent literature on the UN Security Council.

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The Power of the Weak: How Informal Power-Sharing Shapes the Work of the UN Security Council

Cited by 9 publications

References 83 publications

Bargaining strategies for governance complex games

Bargaining strategies for governance complex games

Peacekeeping and the Enforcement of Intergroup Cooperation: Evidence from Mali

Controlling International Institutions: How the US Engineered UNSC Non‐permanent Members in the Early Cold War

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