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Abstract
AbstractThe United Nations Security Council (UNSC) can respond to a civil conflict only if that conflict first enters the Council's agenda. Some conflicts reach the Council's agenda within days after they start, others after years (or even decades), and some never make it. So far, only a few studies have looked at the crucial UNSC agenda-setting stage, and none have examined agenda-setting speed. To fill this important gap, we develop and test a novel theoretical framework that combines insights from realist and constructivist theory with lessons from institutionalist theory and bargaining theory. Applying survival analysis to an original dataset, we show that the parochial interests of the permanent members (P-5) matter, but they do not determine the Council's agenda-setting speed. Rather, P-5 interests are constrained by normative considerations and concerns for the Council's organizational mission arising from the severity of a conflict (in terms of spillover effects and civilian casualties); by the interests of the widely ignored elected members (E-10); and by the degree of preference heterogeneity among both the P-5 and the E-10. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of how the United Nations (UN) works, and they have implications for the UN's legitimacy.
Highlights
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is designed to respond quickly to conflicts and crises
In terms of the relative explanatory power of different factors, we find that the effect of the E-10 on agenda-setting speed can be greater than that of the P-5, and that parochial interests and general preference heterogeneity appear to play a bigger role in UNSC agenda setting than do conflict characteristics and the UN’s organizational mission
Agendasetting speed matters: including a conflict on the Council’s agenda is a necessary condition for further Council action; it sends a costly signal to relevant audiences; once included on the agenda, conflicts tend to become “sticky”; and Council members themselves attach a great deal of importance to the Council’s agenda-setting processes
Summary
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is designed to respond quickly to conflicts and crises. Drawing on constructivist IO scholarship, we expect that the speed with which a conflict reaches the Council’s agenda is driven by humanitarian considerations and emerging norms of humanitarian intervention (Sandholtz 2002; Finnemore 2003; Carpenter 2005) In line with this theory, scholars have pointed to conflict severity—in terms of human suffering and destabilizing spillover effects resulting from a conflict—as a prominent explanation for UN action (de Jonge Oudraat 1996; Gilligan and Stedman 2003; Beardsley and Schmidt 2012; Hultman 2013; Binder 2017). H2b: The stronger the spillover effects a civil conflict generates for neighboring countries or regions, the faster the conflict will enter the Council’s agenda
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