No Trace of Speechlessness within the Security Council

Abstract

Since 1995, Germany has on four occasions been a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Even when it was not a member, it regularly participated and spoke in this most important UN body. This article analyses a new dataset of over 65,000 speeches held by Security Council members and other actors during all meetings from 1995 until 2017. Based on a computer-assisted analyses of all speeches, the authors show which topics Germany spoke about most intensively and how its priorities differed from those of the Five Permanent Members (P5) or those of the UN secretariat.