Abstract
The UN Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) exercises soft rather than hard power to change states’ behaviour through monitoring and capacity-building activities. Through the lens of Michel Foucault’s disciplinary power, these activities are reconceived as practices of surveillance and correction that aim at the normalization of states according to model dictated by the efficacy of the collective security system. While the processes of normalization rely on the consent and cooperation of states, and therefore are difficult to characterize as repressive, they nevertheless involve complex power relations, which deserve the attention and scrutiny of international lawyers. The CTC has prided itself on its guiding principles of even-handedness, transparency and cooperation, but the disciplinary lens reveals practices of ranking, lack of accountability and a residual willingness to resort to coercion where the self-corrective ideal fails that call into question the effectiveness of these principles in guiding the CTC’s work.
Published Version
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