[Download] "Myths of Membership: The Politics of Legitimation in UN Security Council Reform." by Global Governance # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Myths of Membership: The Politics of Legitimation in UN Security Council Reform.
- Author : Global Governance
- Release Date : January 01, 2008
- Genre: Politics & Current Events,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 287 KB
Description
The need to expand the UN Security Council is usually justified as necessary to update Council membership in light of changes in world politics. The mismatch between the existing membership and the increasingly diverse population of states is said to delegitimatize the Council. This rests on an implicit hypothesis about the source of institutional legitimacy. This article surveys reform proposals and finds five distinct claims about the connection between membership and legitimacy, each of which is either logically inconsistent or empirically implausible. If formal membership is indeed the key to institutional legitimacy, the causal link remains at best indeterminate, and we may have to look elsewhere for a theory of legitimation. We must also look for explanations for why the language of legitimation is so prevalent in the rhetoric of Council reform. KEYWORDS: legitimacy, Security Council reform, United Nations, diversity, inequality. Among the competing proposals for reforming the UN Security Council, one theme is a near constant: that the Council's legitimacy is in peril unless the body can be reformed to account for recent changes in world politics. This consensus is driven by a number of developments: geopolitical changes (in the distribution of military and economic power), systemic changes after decolonization (which multiplied the number of UN members), and normative changes (in the value given to diversity, equity, and representation). The result, summarized in the New York Times, is that the Security Council "is indisputably out of date." (1) Most arguments in favor of Council expansion identify the gap between Council membership and international realities as a threat specifically to the legitimacy of the Council. The gap is an objective fact, but the link to legitimacy is what gives it its political salience and has made it a controversial matter in world politics. This article investigates this link. Conventional wisdom holds that the Council's outdated membership causes delegitimation but the causal mechanics behind this delegitimation are rarely explained.