Council's Agenda Research Articles

Silencing the Guns: African Traditional Proverbs and Aphorisms for Peace and Security in 21st Century Africa

Africa is yet entangled with some Western modernity responsible for their political crises and incessant insecurity. Insecurity in Africa has historical roots from pre-colonial to post-colonial periods. The continent's hosting of the seventh United Nations Peace Support mission and over 60 percent of the UN Security Council's agenda addresses African insecurity underscore the urgent need to tackle these challenges. This paper examines insecurity in Africa and advocates for reviving African traditional methods to restore peace, utilizing proverbs and wisdom. Through analysis, criticism, and prescription, it explores the inherent insecurity problems and argues that African proverbs offer valuable insights for fostering unity. The study compares Western crisis resolution methods with African approaches, concluding that traditional African means are a more effective alternative. It highlights Africa as a potential solution to its own insecurity while recognizing the benefits of Western methods. The paper concluded that Africa has strong indigenous values and security systems capable of addressing insecurity even before colonialism. The paper recommended that African traditional security outfits are more efficient and better considered as alternative measures to solving the problems of peace and insecurity in Africa rather than adopting the Western war-war method.

The Powers of the Presidency of the Council of the EU to Shape the Rule of Law Enforcement Agenda: The Article 7 Case

AbstractResearch on enforcing compliance with the European Union's (EU's) rule of law value has focused on the roles of the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Court of Justice of the EU. However, the Council of the EU has attracted less attention. Existing scholarship has convincingly established that the rotating Presidency can crucially influence the functioning of the Council, and, accordingly, this paper examines the discretionary impact the Presidencies have towards Art.7 procedures. Drawing on official documents and statements, this paper compares how the various Presidencies from 2018 to 2022 have used their privileged position on the Council's agenda to decide whether to move forward with hearings. In doing so, they selected appropriate agenda‐shaping strategies, shaped the Commission's perceived opportunities to exercise its agenda prerogatives, avoided compromises on the trios' agendas and, sometimes, benefited from not dealing with Art.7 to pursue other agenda priorities. The Presidency's wide room for manoeuvre hinders the Council's activity in scrutinising backsliding governments.

Второй Ватиканский Собор в зеркале французской публицистики

The article is dedicated to analysis of the activities and resolutions of the Second Vatican Council Vatican of the Roman Catholic Church in the historical context of the 1960s and its presentation in the studies of the French authors. The attention paid to the opinion of the French intellectual community representatives concerning issues from the Council agenda is justified: the Catholicism in France searched a lot for the resolution of an institutional crisis, originated in the changed role of religion in the citizens life, so the restart of the relations between Church and society declared at the Council became a base for further activities. Moreover, a significant impact on the Second Vatican Council concepts was made by the ideas of the «new theology» school where the core was formed by a group of French theologians.The article shows that the Second Vatican Council and its resolutions was highly appreciated by the French authors, and that their interest towards it touched a lot of different aspects of the discussions led at the Council: social, political, cultural and theological spheres. The authors of the articles and comments discovered the particularities of key idea of the Council: creation and development of the dialogue between Church and society in the actual political conditions. French authors during many decades studied more and more aspects of the Council documents and resolutions, and it is a proof of the importance of the realized meeting for the Catholic community.

The United Nations Security Council and Human Rights: Who Ends Up in the Spotlight?

Abstract At the end of the Cold War, the United Nations Security Council broadened its view on what constitutes a “threat to international peace and security.” With the rise of the concept of human security and increased focus on human rights, the Council has been more willing to act in response to domestic political issues such as human rights abuses. Despite an increased commitment to human security, the Council's attention on these issues has been uneven. What determines whose rights capture the Council's attention? What role do efforts by NGOs to “name and shame” play in the setting of the Council's agenda? We find that human rights abuses lead to countries being placed on the Council's agenda, but human rights organization naming and shaming results in more action by the Council—in terms of both meetings held and resolutions passed.

The power of multi-matrix monitoring in the Pan-Arctic region: plastics in water and sediment

Litter and microplastic assessments are being carried out worldwide. Arctic ecosystems are no exception and plastic pollution is high on the Arctic Council's agenda. Water and sediment have been identified as two of the priority compartments for monitoring plastics under the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP). Recommendations for monitoring both compartments are presented in this publication. Alone, such samples can provide information on presence, fate, and potential impacts to ecosystems. Together, the quantification of microplastics in sediment and water from the same region produce a three-dimensional picture of plastics, not only a snapshot of floating or buoyant plastics in the surface water or water column but also a picture of the plastics reaching the shoreline or benthic sediments, in lakes, rivers, and the ocean. Assessment methodologies must be adapted to the ecosystems of interest to generate reliable data. In its current form, published data on plastic pollution in the Arctic is sporadic and collected using a wide spectrum of methods which limits the extent to which data can be compared. A harmonised and coordinated effort is needed to gather data on plastic pollution for the Pan-Arctic. Such information will aid in identifying priority regions and focusing mitigation efforts.

Issue Hierarchization in Agenda‐Setting: The Case of the European Council Agenda

AbstractAgenda‐setting scholars tend to search for a problem that receives the most policy attention, a so‐called primary issue. Since the concept of the primary issue is vague, this article aims to define and implement it in a framework of issue hierarchization leaning on the issue's place, space and framing on the agenda. The position and the hierarchy of issues are considered crucial elements of agenda‐setting but omitted in the literature. The article thus examines the hierarchy of issues in EU agenda‐setting, specifically on the case of the European Council agenda in the period December 2014–December 2020 using a holistic grading method. The findings show that the agenda can consist of more primary and several secondary issues at once. Interestingly, if more primary issues require policy attention, policy‐makers tend to mobilize additional resources to tackle them instead of dropping secondary issues off the agenda.

Thinking about Russian Arctic council chairmanship: Challenges and opportunities

This study aims at examining the following research questions: What has been the record of Russia's Arctic Council membership by the present-day moment? How has Russia's role evolved? What have been some of the main issues, agreements, disagreements, challenges and problems? What is Moscow's agenda during the Russian Council chairmanship in 2021–2023? The author identifies the following priorities for Russia's Arctic Council presidential agenda: climate change action; sustainable socioeconomic and environmental development; social cohesiveness and connectivity in the region; indigenous peoples; conservation of biodiversity; science diplomacy; Council's partial institutional reform. Moscow will probably try to make the Arctic Council's budget, including specific project budgets, more transparent and systemized. The Russian presidency aims to make the role of permanent participants and observers in the Council's activities more visible. At the same time, Moscow will avoid its former claims to transform the Council from an intergovernmental forum to a full-fledged international organization and bring military security problematique to the Council's agenda. Russia's chairmanship will try to strengthen the Arctic Council's role in asserting regional stewardship by responding to the challenges of a rapidly changing Arctic and the increasingly more integrated policy frameworks from local to global scales.

The rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU – Still an agenda-setter?

What role does the rotating Council Presidency maintain a decade after Lisbon? This article argues that, regardless of institutional changes, the rotating Presidency still shapes the Council agenda to a large extent. Based on an original hand-coded dataset of rotating Presidency programmes between 1997 and 2017, I show that some policies are ‘stickier’ on the Council agenda, while the others exhibit significant changes in salience over time. Since the magnitude of these shifts varies from Presidency to Presidency, the analysis focuses on domestic political factors and the country positioning vis-à-vis the European Union to determine their relationship with agenda volatility. By means of a panel model, the examination demonstrates that the government issue salience can best explain the levels of issue salience in the Presidency programmes.

Civil Conflict and Agenda-Setting Speed in the United Nations Security Council

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.

Brexit and the UN Security Council: declining British influence?

Abstract The United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union has ramifications beyond the UK and the EU. This article analyses the impact of the Brexit referendum on the UK's political capital in the United Nations Security Council; a dimension of Brexit that has received little attention thus far. Drawing on extensive elite interviews we show that the UK has considerable political capital in the Council, where it is seen as one of the most effective actors, but the reputational costs of Brexit are tarnishing this image. With case-studies on the UK's role in Somalia and Yemen we show how the UK has been able to further its interests with dual roles in the EU and Security Council, and the risks posed by tensions between trade and human rights after Brexit. We also analyse what it takes to be influential within the Security Council and argue that more attention should be paid to the practices of diplomacy. Influence is gained via penholding, strong diplomatic skill and a well-regarded UN permanent representative. The UK accrues political capital as a leader on the humanitarian and human rights side of the Council's agenda, but this reputation is at risk as it exits the EU.

Disasters, climate change, and securitisation: the United Nations Security Council and the United Kingdom's security policy

Since climate change was included on the United Nations Security Council's agenda in 2007, there has been much debate about whether or not it has been securitised. This paper starts from the premise that climate change has undergone a partial securitisation-that is, a gradual process wherein political choices are made to frame certain issues in particular ways. Climate change has been reframed from a purely developmental and environmental concern to one that impels foreign policy and security domains. This paper makes a novel contribution to disasters, climate change, and security studies by arguing that explicit and implicit links to natural hazard-related disasters have been employed as part of a gradual process of securitisation, or, more specifically, the partial securitisation of climate change. This is demonstrated by drawing on two cases: United Nations Security Council debates between 2007 and 2017; and the United Kingdom's security policy between 1997 and 2017.

Caring for Churches, Orphans, and Widows in Late Merovingian Francia. Contemporary and Carolingian Perspectives

This study examines the brief reference in the early 9th - century Annales Mettenses priores to an ecclesiastical synod ostensibly convoked in the last decade of the 7th century by Pippin II. The annals suggest that the council's agenda was devoted to the protection of churches, orphans, and widows. While this council is not attested by any contemporary sources, Pippin's collaborations with the episcopate are well documented, and his involvement in conciliar convocation is possible if not demonstrable. Nevertheless, the annalist's description of the council's agenda is more suggestive of the era in which the annals were written-the first decade of the 9th century-than late Merovingian Francia, by closely echoing both the phrasing and ideology of Charlemagne's imperial capitularies, which stressed Charlemagne's own responsibility for the care of the vulnerable, a responsibility that superseded traditional episcopal prerogatives. While the council's existence cannot be definitively proven or disproven, the description of its agenda should be read in the context of the annalist's efforts to rewrite Merovingian history from a triumphalist Carolingian perspective.

The Business Model in Integrated Reporting: Evaluating Concept and Application

AbstractA key feature of the International Integrated Reporting Council's (IIRC) agenda to improve corporate reporting is to encourage companies to use Integrated Reports to disclose their underlying business models. However, extant research suggests that the IIRC's distinctive business model concept is not well understood. This paper aims to unpack and critically evaluate the core features of the IIRC's business model concept. To unpack the IIRC's business model, the paper conducts a structured comparative analysis of the IIRC's model against eight influential alternatives in prior business model research. The paper then evaluates the extent to which Integrated Reporting's distinctive business model is: (1) internally coherent and consistent; and, (2) consistent with the IIRC's broader reporting objectives. The paper identifies tensions in both these areas. Since the IIRC's business model is central to its agenda to improve corporate reporting, these tensions are relevant to both Integrated Reporting research and broader discussions about whether, or how, disclosing business models advances mainstream reporting frameworks.

The logic of protection: narratives of HIV/AIDS in the UN Security Council

ABSTRACTWhen HIV/AIDS was first addressed by the UN Security Council in 2000, it was seen as the culmination of a successful securitization process and a pivotal moment for introducing human security. However, concern for the epidemic was paired with problems in including a nonmilitary issue on the Security Council’s agenda and the fear that peacekeepers were vectors of HIV. Reports of peacekeepers being involved in sexual exploitation and abuse added to these problems. This article aims to understand how gender has informed the efforts to address these issues and to rehabilitate peacekeeping forces and the Security Council from the legitimacy challenges that arose in this context. The article argues that including nonmilitary issues on the Security Council agenda requires adjustment to fit a war/peace logic. Drawing on feminist theories on security and protection, the analysis shows that the security narrative on HIV/AIDS did not form a coherent protection logic until the 2011 reformulation, when HIV/AIDS was constructed as part of the problem of wartime rape. This reformulation is interpreted as an appropriation of gender equality to reproduce a military security doctrine.

Political attention in the Council of the European Union: A new dataset of working party meetings, 1995–2014

Little firm knowledge exists about the allocation of the Council's political attention across policy areas and over time. This article presents a new dataset of the date, duration, and policy coding of more than 70,000 meetings of Council working parties, covering all areas of the Council's policy activities between 1995 and 2014. In terms of both scope and resolution, the data allow for the generation of unprecedented insights into what issues occupy the Council's agenda, how that varies between and within policy areas, and how that changes over time. After discussing conceptual issues and explaining the construction of the dataset, the article demonstrates its usefulness and versatility through analyses of the Council's political attention at various levels of aggregation.

From Summitry to EU Government: An Agenda Formation Perspective on the European Council

AbstractWhile some observers have claimed that the European Council has become the key institution in European Union politics, others have argued that the Council's role has remained relatively stable over time. In this article, we argue that an analysis of agenda formation dynamics in the European Council may help us understand better how the European Council works and how its role has evolved over time. Building on theories of agenda‐setting, we identify two ideal‐typical modes of agenda formation: selective targeting and routine monitoring. Based on a comprehensive dataset of coded European Council Conclusions in the period 1975–2011, we show that the substantive content of the European Council agenda shows little change over time. However, in terms of agenda formation dynamics, we find a marked shift toward routine monitoring of issues. This supports the claim that the European Council is developing into the EU's de facto government.

Agenda responsiveness in the European Council: public priorities, policy problems and political attention

The existence of political responsiveness in multi-level systems like the EU remains an open question despite significant recent research on the topic. This article studies whether the European Council responds to the shifting policy priorities of European citizens. More specifically, it explores the synchronic and diachronic associations between what people consider to be the most important problems and the political attention devoted to these issues from 2003 to 2014. The economic crisis after 2008 appears to have made the ranking of public concerns and the European Council agenda more alike. However, a detailed examination of the shifts in prioritisation of single issues over time reveals little evidence for dynamic issue responsiveness. Recently the European Council has paid more attention to the issues that the public considered the most pressing problems but the convergence could possibly be driven by the intensity of the underlying policy problems.

Why Are Some Policy Agendas Larger than Others?

Most research on policy agendas is based on the assumption that space on the agenda is fixed and, hence, focuses on how problems compete for this limited agenda space. This article holds that policy agendas may be limited but not fixed, meaning that problems may not always be traded off but confronted through a larger policy agenda. Based on an extensive collection of local council agendas from 98 Danish municipalities over time, this article investigates variations in agenda size across local governments and examines the extent to which this reflects the local problem environment. The analysis reveals that a large council agenda arises in response to an unfriendly problem environment, particularly if there are many committees to channel problems onto the agenda and, to a lesser extent, if center‐left parties hold office.

Avoiding Paralysis: The Eastern Enlargement and the Council of the European Union

Why does the Council of the European Union continue to function without apparent problems, despite the increase in the number and heterogeneity of its members brought about by the Eastern enlargement? We argue that the reason why the Council has not become paralysed lies in the increased delegation of its agenda load from the ministerial meetings downwards to the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper). We assess our argument on the basis of quantitative analysis of the amount of the so-called A-points (decided by Coreper) and B-points (decided by ministers) on the Council agenda in the years 2000 through 2007. Studying the delegation mechanism deeper, we argue that two design features of Coreper — its permanent nature and its broad scope of agenda coverage — enabled the delegation from ministerial meetings to take place and thus helped the Council cope with the larger and more heterogeneous membership.

Byrokratizace rozhodování v Evropské unii po východním rozšíření

This article seeks to describe some important changes that have oc- curred in EU decision-making procedures since its eastern enlargement and to explain how it is that the decision-making process continues to function relatively smoothly in the EU even after a sharp increase in the number of Member States and despite generally shared fears to the contrary. The analysis focuses on the main decision-making body in the EU, the Council of the Eu- ropean Union, where it was expected the biggest problems would occur after enlargement, including the prediction that the increase in EU membership could result in the obstruction of decision-making in the Council. The authors argue that the Council managed to avoid this problem by shifting a major part of the Council's agenda from the political level of ministerial proceedings to the Council's main administrative body, the Committee of Permanent Repre- sentatives. The authors test their hypothesis about the Council's adjustment using a large quantitative data sample encompassing more than 4000 acts that the Council of the EU took decisions on between 1999 and 2009.