The Shaping Powers of the UN Secretariat: Conclusions and Future Prospects for Studying the Role of International Bureaucracies

Abstract

This book has set out to improve our understanding of the influence of international bureaucracies in world politics. Are international bureaucracies powerful actors that are driven by their bureaucratic cultures and exert sizable influence in world politics? Are they under the tight control of member states and can they only enjoy brief instances of autonomy and influence states before they are reined in again? Or can they be both? This book offers a new perspective for our understanding of the powers and limitations of international bureaucracies by combining the strengths of two strands of literature with highly differing expectations concerning the extent of influence of international bureaucracies. In an attempt to link up the P-A’s understanding of the limits of the influence of international bureaucracies with the constructivist understanding of their wide-ranging powers, an analytical framework was constructed that allows a more nuanced and holistic understanding of the impact of international bureaucracies on world politics. The analytical framework is applied to what is assumed to be a hard case, the UN Secretariat in the area of peacekeeping. Analysing in great detail the planning and decision-making processes at UN headquarters in New York, the study sheds light on how and with what result members of the international bureaucracy interacted with states’ delegates on the Security Council and in the General Assembly’s political and financial bodies. It provides evidence that, indeed, even an international bureaucracy with limited capacities for autonomous action can be an influential actor in world politics.