UN Security Council Elections as an Incentive for Compliance

Abstract

Standard economic theory would predict that costly demands placed by the United Nations on its members should be rewarded. Similarly, when rewards are not attractive enough, countries are not expected to comply with such demands. In this paper, we study whether the rewards offered by the United Nations are seats at the Security Council. We show empirically that countries that have greater demands placed upon them by Security Council resolutions are more likely to be elected. Furthermore, although countries comply with resolutions leading up to their election, compliance decreases after they are elected. Finally, we show that countries that have not been in the Security Council recently, and thus are due for election, have additional requests made of them.