United Nations and Regional Organizations: Complementarity v. Subsidiarity

Abstract

The United Nations organization was planned to be established as a single universal system of collective security. Major efforts were supposed to be taken by the UN Security Council. Regional organizations were introduced into the system as a subordinate subsidiary means – elements of the system. Over the course of the time it has, however, appeared that the UN Security Council was not able to act in the way prescribed by the UN Charter in suppressing newly emerged threats and challenges in the sphere of security. In the contrary, the role of regional organizations has increased substantially. They do the majority of tasks in the sphere of maintenance of international peace and security, often without authorization or even informing the UN Security Council, although the legality of some of these actions may be dubious. As a result, the Council itself transfers the accent in relations between the UN and regional organizations from subsidiarity to complementarity or even partnership. It is thus necessary to re-check the meaning of the concepts of complementarity and subsidiarity as well as the UN Charter provisions in the changed circumstances and to specify principles of the new system.

Alternate Norms: New Contestation Theory on Subsidiary Norms in the Changing World Order

“…Viewed through the lens of the realist tradition (Waltz 2010), subsidiarity in the international order as represented in the UN system is tightly linked to economic and military resources of the five permanent members of the Security Council. From this understanding, regional powers and organizations like the AU are subordinates expected to adopt, adapt, and implement norms created by global powers and enshrined in global organizations and institutions (Hass 1971;Douhan 2016). Liberal international norms tend to reflect the preferences of actors possessing material power.…”

UNAMID and the Legitimation of Global-Regional Peacekeeping Cooperation: Partnership and Friction in UN-AU Relations

“…Several scholars have interpreted the trend towards closer cooperation against the background of the overall 'architecture' of global and regional peacekeeping. While some emphasise the potential for a productive division of labour that puts regional organizations on more equal footing with the UN (Douhan 2016;Graham and Felicio 2006;Yamashita 2012), others see an increasing potential for friction (de Coning 2017; Moe and Geis 2020). African scholars in particular have used terms such as 'hybrid paternalism' to caution that closer cooperation will not necessarily eliminate asymmetries in UN-AU relations (Murithi 2008;Tieku and Hakak 2014).…”

“…While much of these arguments are implicitly or explicitly founded on normative theories of legitimacy and generally plausible, they often lack empirical grounding. Researchers usually apply static, external and ostensibly objective criteria, such as principles of International Law (Douhan 2016;Prinsloo and Van Niekerk 2017) or ideas about representation and subsidiarity (Gelot 2012;Vogt 2018, 382). However, in political practice, there is no checklist of legitimacy criteria that, if ticked off, guarantees public acceptance for peacekeeping cooperation (Williams 2013, 47).…”

“…This is also possible, third, because the normative framework for global-regional cooperation is ambiguous (Nel 2020, 238). Formal arrangements like Chapter VIII of the UN Charter, which places regional peacekeeping within overall UN authority, as well as informal principles of cooperation like subsidiarity and complementarity have been subject to competing and changing interpretations (Douhan 2016). Cooperation cannot rely on shared and fixed understandings of legitimate peacekeeping roles and responsibilities (Wajner and Kacowicz 2018, 496).…”