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Informal Groups of States and the UN Security Council

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2005

Jochen Prantl
Jochen Prantl
Affiliation:
Department of Politics and International Relations, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, England, jochen.prantl@politics.ox.ac.uk

Abstract

This article discusses the dynamics between informal groups of states and the UN Security Council. First, I argue that informal groups have proliferated in response to systemic change. Second, these groups serve as a mechanism that allows for exit from structural constraints of the Security Council and voice for stakeholders in a conflict. In effect, they may narrow the operational and participatory gap growing out of the multiple incapacities that prevents the Council from formulating an effective response to crisis situations. Third, the processes of diplomatic problem solving and its collective legitimation have become increasingly decoupled. The former tends to be delegated to informal groups or coalition of states, while the Council provides the latter. I illustrate how these findings affect one's understanding of power, legitimacy, and change in the theory of international relations.This article is the extensively revised version of a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Academic Council on the United Nations System in 2003. The project received financial support from the Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom (Grant No. R42200024335), and the Centre for International Studies, University of Oxford. The UN Studies Program at Yale University was a frequent host and home over recent years. I would like to express my gratitude for the long-term support and advice of Karl Kaiser, Bruce Russett, James Sutterlin, and especially Neil MacFarlane. I also wish to thank Mats Berdal, Richard Caplan, Sam Daws, Kurt Gaubatz, Marrack Goulding, Jean Krasno, Edward Luck, David Malone, Lisa Martin, James Mayall, Joseph Nye, Adam Roberts, Avi Shlaim, Ngaire Woods, and two anonymous referees for comments and criticism.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , July 2005 , pp. 559 - 592
Copyright
© 2005 The IO Foundation and Cambridge University Press

The U.S. intervention in March 2003 aiming at Iraq's disarmament and the change of its regime without explicit authorization of the United Nations (UN) Security Council has revived discussions about potential and limits of this international institution.1

I follow Mearsheimer's definition of institutions as a “set of rules that stipulate the ways in which states should cooperate and compete with each other.” Mearsheimer 1994/95, 8. See also Mearsheimer 2001, 14–22.

Some scholars concluded that the Security Council fails to meet its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, because the international system has transformed in a way which is “incompatible” with the original design of the UN.2 “The Security Council is dead. Long live the Council!” may be the provocative summary of the periodically recurring exchange of arguments between opponents and proponents of the Council that is often based on a superficial analysis of its actual workings and a misreading of its functions.3

Malone, for example, points to the lack of “a sound understanding of what the Security Council is good at and what it is bad at.” Malone 2004, 1.

While it is certainly true that the Council is challenged by structural constraints that will not disappear, even in case of formal adaptations, I show that conclusions of failure are premature. Analysis of the Council's workings should not exclusively focus on levels of formal cooperation. In order to gain a proper understanding of the variables that define its performance, first one needs to analyze levels of informal cooperation, as epitomized in the plethora of ad hoc groupings of states gathering outside the Council's chambers. Those informal settings emerged early in UN history and proliferated in the postbipolar era, as Table 1 illustrates. Second, one must not underestimate the importance and persistence of the “symbolic life”4

Hurd 2002; see also the account by the same author on why legitimacy matters to international institutions, Hurd 1999.

of the Security Council, which exerts a strong pull on UN member states to seek its blessing, though sometimes post hoc.

Emergence and proliferation of informal groups of states, 1956–2004

This article seeks to grasp the dynamics between informal groups of states and the UN Security Council. My assessment touches on wider questions that are at the heart of the discourse over the extent to which international organizations (IOs) are able to adapt to systemic change. While other scholars have attempted to address the causes of why states choose to act through formal IOs, such analysis provided a rather static view and neglected the effects of systemic change on IO governance.5

In this context, I define governance as “the processes and institutions, both formal and informal, that guide and restrain the collective activities of a group.”6 The article aims at establishing the importance of informal groups as part and parcel of Council governance. Here, I concentrate on informal settings such as groups of friends of the UN secretary-general and contact groups. These groupings are diplomatic devices operating with no formal mandate from the Security Council or the General Assembly. By name, a group of friends is first and foremost a gathering of like-minded UN member states supporting the implementation of good offices, peacemaking and peacekeeping mandates entrusted to the secretary general. In essence, such group may provide an element of privacy in the process of peacemaking “to redress the balance between the public and private procedures of the United Nations.”7

Former UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld emphasized this aspect in his address on “The Element of Privacy in Peacemaking,” delivered at Ohio University, Athens/Ohio, on 5 February 1958. Cordier and Foote 1974, 27.

Groups of friends constitute a platform for quiet diplomacy in the process of peacemaking on a consensual basis, making up like-minded countries that lend leverage to the efforts taken by the secretary general. These groups help to keep the parties to a conflict engaged throughout the process. In contrast, contact groups are rather self-selected ad hoc coalitions of able and willing countries, working separately from the Council and outside the UN framework. Contact groups may either operate within the objectives of the organization or act according to their own agenda. These broad division lines between groups of friends and contact groups become blurred however, when we look at empirical evidence. Here, I subsume these diplomatic devices under the term of “informal groups of states.” In essence, the formation of the groups occurs ad hoc, the meeting structure is informal, and the effect on Security Council governance varies in its degree.

In this article, I set forth three main arguments. First, informal groups of states proliferated in the 1990s in response to increasing demands on the UN to adapt to the security environment of the postbipolar world, without changing formally the constitutional foundation of the organization. These state groups are agents of incremental change. Second, informal groups of states serve as a mechanism that allow for exit from structural constraints of the Security Council and voice for stakeholders in a conflict. In effect, they may narrow the operational and participatory gap growing out of the multiple incapacities that prevents the Security Council from formulating an effective response to crisis situations. Third, the post–Cold War era has fostered an environment where the processes of diplomatic problem solving and its collective legitimation have become increasingly decoupled. The former tends to be delegated to informal groups or coalition of states, while the UN Security Council provides the latter.

The article is organized into four parts. The following section establishes the framework of analysis to grasp the dynamics between informal groups of states and the UN Security Council. Then, I examine the causes of informal groups of states, focusing in particular on the question of why informal groups of states have been proliferating in the postbipolar era. The third section applies the analytical framework to three specific conflict settings, that is, Namibia, El Salvador, and Kosovo. In the final section, I summarize the effects of informal groups of states on Council governance, highlighting implications for understanding power, legitimacy, and change in the theory of international relations.

Informal Groups of States and the Security Council: Grasping the Dynamics

Underlying my analysis is the assumption that the Security Council can best be described as a Janus-faced structure of both an open system and a closed shop. This notion reflects its sensitivity toward external change while the restrictive provisions of the Charter constrain the possibilities of formal adaptation.8

Article 24 of the UN Charter allocates primary, although not exclusive, responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security to the Security Council. Groups of friends and contact groups increasingly complement or even compete with the original functions of the Council as provided for in the Charter. Yet, the UN Charter does not have any provisions at its disposal that would grant ad hoc groupings formal access to Council consultations. The performance of groups of friends and contact groups suggests that they are able to exert considerable influence on an informal level. In this context, I define influence as “the modification of one actor's behavior by that of another.”9 This includes the modification or, in the extreme case, the hijacking, of Council decision making by ad hoc groupings. The phenomenon of influencing different stages of Council decision making by informal groups of states shall be defined as informal influence. It does not occur on a permanent basis, but differs significantly from case to case. Informal influence takes place on different levels and varies in its extent. At the same time, informal groups of states are only two out of various possibilities to influence Council decision making.10

This article does not aim at providing an encyclopedic overview on all possibilities of informal influence on Council decision making. Others have done that; see, for example, Bailey and Daws 1998. Although the influence displayed by other players such as the African Union, the European Union, the G-77, the Nonaligned movement, or the Organization of American States (OAS) is clearly important, these institutions do not match two crucial criteria of groups of friends and contact groups. They are neither informal nor ad hoc.

In this article, I adopt a predominantly rationalist theoretical approach.11

Although such a framework has been designed by scholars to assess the actual workings of international institutions, this approach clearly has its limits. It is my primary concern to establish the importance of informal groups of states as empirical phenomena rather than following a single line of international relations theory. IOs are complex settings, which cannot be analyzed through the exclusive lens of the rationalist research agenda.12

Barnett and Finnemore, for example, gain important insights by applying a constructivist approach treating IOs as bureaucracies to explain their autonomy, including their propensity for self-defeating behaviour; see Barnett and Finnemore 1999 and 2004.

Such approach would face the danger of what Lippmann has called the murder of a beautiful theory by a gang of brutal facts.13 Instead, it is preferable to develop a synergistic approach that employs theoretical strands in a complementary rather than competitive manner. I identify the causal mechanisms that contribute to the formation of informal groups of states by borrowing from insights of theories of agency and delegation. Agency theory helps us to understand the development of institutions under conditions of systemic change, which alters agency relationships.14 At the same time, and this is particularly relevant for explaining the workings of groups of friends of the UN secretary-general, one also needs to integrate a constructivist element in the analytical framework to fully appreciate the autonomous role of IO's bureaucracies in this process, that is, the UN Secretariat.

How do international institutions cope with the problem of adjustment? As organization theory has illustrated, there are considerable constraints on initiating a formal adaptation process to respond to both changes in the relative power of states and the demands of a changed security environment.15

Keohane 1984, 100–3.

Formal organizations reflect the institutionalization of the distribution of their member states' relative influence and power over governance at a certain point of time. Such institutionalization tends to result in the maintenance of the status quo, given the sunk costs and a high degree of risk aversion to initiate adaptations in response to changes in structural variables. While some scholars have taken the Security Council as an example to illustrate the stability of institutions,16 others have claimed that the Council is an unstable system because there are no mechanisms to adapt its hierarchy of influence in response to external changes.17 One needs to qualify both views. On the one hand, the Security Council is indeed affected by systemic changes, with consequences for the decision making, effectiveness, and representativeness of this international institution. In effect, systemic change endangers organizational stability. However, does this inevitably lead to the conclusion that the Council is unstable? Not necessarily. Empirical evidence is much more diverse than these two propositions suggest. Informal groups of states provide a bridge to solve this puzzle. These groups may be instrumental in incrementally adapting the Security Council to systemic change without formally altering its structure and composition. At the same time, they may alleviate unanticipated effects.18

On the problem of unanticipated effects of international institutions, see Gallarotti 1991.

In consequence, ad hoc mechanisms may accommodate the potential to serve as a stabilizing element for international institutions in transition.

The findings of this article that are related to governance in and of the UN Security Council may force a reexamination of Abbott's and Snidal's proposition that centralization and independence are key functional characteristics of IOs, which provide a powerful incentive for states to act through formal IOs.19

Empirical evidence presents a much more complex picture. It demonstrates that informal groups of states in fact decentralize the workings of the UN Security Council, with the effect of ameliorating its structural deficiencies. Seen from the perspective of agency theory, those findings have direct impact on one's understanding of the nature of delegation to IOs, including the relationship between principal and agent.20

On the delegation of tasks to IOs and the related issue of IO autonomy, see, for example, Barnett and Finnemore 1999 and 2004; Hawkins et al. 2003; Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal 2004; Pollack 1997; and Lake and McCubbins 2004.

The findings explain two puzzles: first, why states continue to delegate certain tasks and responsibilities to IOs despite the limits of the institutional problem-solving capacity; and, second, how “delegation in reverse,” that is, redelegating tasks away from IOs to other agents such as informal groups of states, can ultimately enhance IO governance. One must therefore reconsider Abbott's and Snidal's claim that the functions of centralization and independence enhance efficiency.21 Contrary to them, I argue that decentralization through the establishment of informal groups of states allows UN member states to achieve policy goals that would be unattainable in a centralized setting. However, centralization still matters. Analysis of the dynamics between informal groups of states and the Security Council suggests that the main benefits of centralization lies in the procedural legitimation of member states' actions, which remains one of the most important functions of IOs.22

It is important in this regard to distinguish between procedural and output legitimacy. While procedural legitimacy refers to the creation of broad acceptance through public discourse over and through the formal decision making leading towards a specific course of action, output legitimacy refers to the creation of acceptance through the outcomes a course of action itself is able to produce.

In order to examine the dynamics between informal groups of states and the UN Security Council, I complement my analytical framework further by incorporating concepts and methods developed in the domestic context. Here, I draw on Hirschman's typology of exit, voice, and loyalty.23

Such an analytical framework provides one with explanatory leverage to analyze institutional effects of the UN Security Council under conditions of systemic change. Exit signifies the option of leaving the UN framework, either partially or completely, in order to escape from the structural constraints of the UN. Exit is partial if it occurs within the objectives of the UN, for example, by acting under the umbrella of a Security Council resolution. I illustrate this further in the case of Namibia. Exit is complete if it occurs outside UN objectives. This may take form of (temporarily) bypassing the UN, as it has been the case during the Kosovo and Iraq wars in 1999 and 2003, respectively. Voice constitutes the possibility for stakeholders in a conflict (as well as the UN Secretariat) to articulate their interests before the Security Council and to take informal influence on its decision making. This is particularly relevant in those cases where stakeholders are not being represented on the Council, as I demonstrate in the case study on El Salvador. The decision to opt either for exit or voice is informed by the conflict setting. Underlying the notion of loyalty is the interest-based argument that achieving legitimacy eventually buttresses the position of (groups of) states. Loyalty displays four distinctive functions. First, it exerts a pull on UN member states toward compliance with the objectives of the organization. Second, it may push those players acting outside the UN framework to seek (post hoc) legitimation by the UN Security Council. Third, it activates the voice option. Fourth, loyalty may contain the extent of exit and limit the damage created by the marginalization of the organization. Table 2 illustrates the key features of exit, voice, and loyalty.

Exit, voice, and loyalty

It is important to understand that this analytical framework differs from Hirschman's typology in one important respect. The classical exit option implies that if a customer is so dissatisfied with the quality of the product or the service provided by a firm, then he or she may buy the product from a competitor. This is different in the case of the UN, as there are no peer competitors around. This is neither to suggest that the UN has a monopoly in maintaining international peace and security nor is this to argue that the organization is the exclusive provider of legitimacy. However, with its nearly universal membership, the UN enjoys an unparalleled comparative advantage in providing a forum for achieving the broadest possible international acceptance for state action taken. Procedural legitimacy is one of the most important products the UN has to sell. The termination of UN membership is therefore an extremely unlikely option, as the political cost for implementation would be considerable. Loyalty matters. In the absence of loyalty, exit would be essentially costless.

In conclusion, analysis of the interplay between levels of formal and informal cooperation highlights variations in institutional effects. Grasping those variations constitutes a key challenge to institutional theory.24

For a useful review of the “state of the art” of institutional theory, see Simmons and Martin 2002.

It helps to qualify arguments on the costs and benefits of acting through formal IOs. Such research agenda could be easily expanded. Future research desiderata would include the extension of the database by conducting a comparative analysis of the dynamics between informal groups and central decision-making bodies in organizations such as the European Union, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, or World Trade Organization (WTO).

Informal Groups of States: Causes

The breakdown of the bipolar system has provided the permissive political context to engage the UN conflict resolution machinery in a plethora of conflicts that had remained unaddressed during the Cold War.25

This was especially because of the increased cooperation of the P5 on important security issues from 1987 onwards. Although such cooperation would be established practice by 1990, it stayed selective on a case-by-case basis; see Hume 1994.

The quantity and quality of crisis settings widened and, for a certain time, overstrained the role of the UN Security Council leading to a problem of overload. This has been often accompanied by a sheer lack of interest or disagreement on the part of the Council's five permanent members (P-5) on what action should be taken. The UN and its member states have been constantly facing hard choices regarding which conflicts to address. In addition to problems of overload and reluctance by the P-5 to become engaged, the structural conditions of the Council constitute a serious constraint in the development of consistent policies and standards, as the following section elaborates.

Why did informal groups of states proliferate in the post–Cold War era? In this section, I develop the argument that ad hoc arrangements constitute policy alternatives that emerged in response to systemic change. Although informal groups are not a unique feature of the postbipolar international system,26

Table 1 illustrates this point further.

they proliferated in this period responding to a set of external and internal factors that had led to a crisis in Council decision making, effectiveness, and representativeness. Seen from the perspective of principal-agent theory, UN member states redelegated tasks to informal arrangements to escape from structural deficiencies of the UN conflict resolution machinery. Agency theory helps one to understand the causal mechanisms that contributed to the greater recourse to informal arrangements. Multiple strategic constraints inhibit the efficient running of the Council's conflict resolution machinery. Such problems include the varying capacity and resources of UN member states to contribute to the Council's work program, the biannual rotation of elected members of the Security Council, lack of political will to address conflicts, lack of support from permanent and elected members to implement resolutions that have been adapted by themselves, and the Security Council working methods and practices. I proceed on two levels of analysis. First, I shed light on external factors such as crisis settings the Security Council has been increasingly confronted with in the postbipolar era. Second, I examine internal factors that prevent the institution from formulating an effective crisis response.

The Complexity of Crisis Settings

The pattern of UN involvement in the postbipolar era is characterized by conflict settings on an intrastate rather than an interstate level. One can observe a shift away from border conflicts between states to conditions of internal violence that often spill over into neighboring countries in the region.27

Wallensteen 2002, 203–30.

Conflict scenarios involve a different mix of actors, ranging from regular armies over militias to armed civilians. These scenarios may include the failure or collapse of state authority, with an absence of governance, accompanied by the breakdown of law and order. Furthermore, civil strife affects the economies of neighboring countries, with economic growth rates shrinking and diseases such as Malaria and HIV/AIDS spreading.28

Complex crisis settings require differentiated responses from the international community, a varying mix of policies and flexible sequencing of different kinds of interventions such as peace enforcement with aid and reform.29

Ibid., 185.

Negotiated settlements that end conflicts are usually not only military arrangements to cease armed violence; they also include a variety of other tasks. These address both military and civilian issues, such as the supervision of cease-fires, (regional) disarmament, demobilization of armed forces, integration of former combatants into civilian life, humanitarian relief, establishment and training of police forces, reform of institutions, and the organization and supervision of elections. The repair of the causes and consequences of state failure has to be a long-term commitment.30 UN operations increasingly have had to combine peacekeeping with peace building functions, reflecting the complex arrangements that ended the armed conflict.

The increasing demands of the changing security environment affected both the Security Council and the Office of the Secretary-General. The Security Council responded by extending the scope of Article 39, adopting far-reaching mandates to deal with the complexity of crisis situations.31

The secretary-general was pushed into a position where “the management aspects … have become more demanding and more politically charged.”32 He had to oversee multifunctional operations involving the complete spectrum of preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping, peace enforcement, peace building, including humanitarian aid, refugee assistance and electoral campaigns, which he increasingly entrusted to special representatives acting on his behalf. While the UN had established only thirteen peacekeeping operations in the thirty years between 1948 and 1978, the fading bipolar international system created the permissive political context to establish twenty-six operations in the short, seven-year period between 1988 and 1995.33 The quality and quantity of crisis settings fostered the trend toward the redelegation of tasks to flexible mechanisms that would allow for dealing with these complex and sensitive operations in a decentralized way.

Structural Constraints of the UN Security Council

The UN presents, as Doyle has rightly observed, “an almost textbook case of multiple strategic incapacities produced by both institutional incapacity and lack of support from its member countries.”34

Doyle 2001, 539.

Looking through the prism of the UN Security Council, the body lacks an external federator that may serve as the uniting moment to develop a “commonality of interests.”35

Ibid.

It is first and foremost a political body, with its resolutions and statements reflecting the bargaining and trade-off of the various interests involved in the decision-making process. Another factor that has to be taken into account is the lack of a “cultural consensus”36

Ibid.

that constitutes an impediment to the application of consistent policies toward crisis situations. Any thorough analysis of the potential and limits of the Council should move beyond the focus on external structural conditions and also include a deeper examination of its internal constraints. The following subsection concentrates, therefore, on three crucial factors: first, the varying capacity of UN member states to contribute to the Council's work; second, the biannual rotation of elected members as an impediment to formulate long-term policies; and third, structural constraints of the Security Council, resulting from adaptations to systemic changes. These constraints are likely to endure independent from any formal adaptation of the Council's membership.

As far as the capacities of UN member states are concerned, only few delegations serving on the Council have the necessary (human) resources—taking into account, for example, the size of their permanent missions—to deal in depth with the plethora of conflicts placed on its daily agenda. Table 3 shows the number of professionals on staff of member states serving on the UN Security Council in the period from 2000 to 2004. The size of permanent missions such as Bangladesh, Jamaica, Mauritius, or Mali ranged, for example, in the year 2001 between six to eight professionals. Those numbers may illustrate the extremely limited resources of some UN member states to bear the additional burden of a two-year term on the Council. At the same time, they demonstrate the dominance of the five permanent members to set the Security Council's agenda and to define the chain of action.37

Caron 1993, 564.

Although the focus on the number of professionals on staff is just one indicator among others to assess the potential influence of a delegation in defining the chain of Security Council action, it is nevertheless an obvious one. The question of resources becomes especially relevant at times when the number of conflicts on the Council's agenda and the frequency of its meetings tend to be high. However, a certain degree of accumulated expertise and experience, based on special skills or knowledge, or privileged access to information, may compensate to some extent for the sheer lack of resources. The size and effectiveness of foreign ministries to back up permanent missions with information or the degree of centralization in the foreign policy apparatus is another point of consideration.38

This is especially prevalent in the case of France.

Size of permanent missions: Number of professionals on staff, 2000–04

Second, the biannual rotation of nonpermanent members constitutes another structural constraint, which prevents the formulation of comprehensive approaches to crisis settings. Consequently, much of the crisis response occurs ad hoc and in a rather incremental way. The very concept of nonpermanent membership is an impediment to any long-term commitment toward a conflict, especially a civil war. Given the fact that the average civil conflict goes on for about seven years, with a need for continued commitment lasting well into the decade of postconflict peace, the development and pursuance of long-term policy goals within the framework of the Security Council remains a difficult task.39

At the same time, these structural conditions add to the preponderance of the P-5 on the Council, in addition to their prerogative to cast a veto on Council action.

The third internal constraint relates to adaptations in the Council's working methods and procedures in response to systemic changes. In essence, the breakdown of the bipolar system exacerbated structural limitations of the UN Security Council that had originated much earlier when the UN had to adapt to change resulting from decolonization, which constituted “the most important single process in international relations since the Second World War.”40

Between 1945 and 1965, UN membership rose from 51 to 117 member states, with the proportion of Asian, African, and Caribbean states increasing from 25 percent to roughly 50 percent.41

For the growth in UN membership, see Figure 1.

The Nonaligned movement (NAM) and the Group of 77 (G-77), created in 1961 and 1964, respectively, became an important hub of coordination between the so-called Third World countries. The balance of power in the Western dominated General Assembly gradually shifted in favor of the postcolonial states.

Growth in UN membership, 1945–2002

In consequence, pressure increased to adapt the composition of the Security Council in order to achieve a more balanced geographical representation of countries on that body. The enlargement of the Security Council, coming into effect on 31 August 1965, had wide-ranging implications for its inner-institutional balance of power and diplomacy, with the dominance of Western countries waning.42

In effect, the ideological battles taking place between North and South in the General Assembly were transferred into the Security Council.43

In fact, the formation of the Western Contact Group on Namibia in 1977 occurred in direct response to those structural deficiencies, as I will elaborate further below.

The frequent recourse to Article 31 of the Charter that allowed UN member states, not being members of the Council, to participate in the formal meetings of the body reinforced the development of the Council toward a mini-Assembly.44

Article 31 of the UN Charter reads as follows: “Any Member of the United Nations which is not a member of the Security Council may participate, without a vote, in the discussion of any question brought before the Security Council whenever the latter considers that the interests of that Member are specially affected.” United Nations Department of Public Information 1997.

Related requests increased from the 1960s onwards.45

Bailey and Daws 1998, 155. At peak times, especially when the Security Council discussed matters related to decolonization and Apartheid, as much as 50 percent of the total UN membership participated in its formal meetings. For example, on 1 June 1983, a total number of sixty-four delegations, not being members on the Council, participated in this meeting; see UN Document S/PV.2451, 1 June 1983.

As a direct result, Council members sought retreat to the so-called informal consultations of the whole. Neither the UN Charter nor the Provisional Rules of Procedure of the Security Council refer to such a possibility. Figure 2 shows the sharp increase of informal consultations between 1972 and 1982.46

Figure 2. The year 1978 appears as watershed, with the number of informal consultations tripling from 38 meetings in 1977 to 113 the following year. This increase occurred because of the completion of a separate room in 1978 built for the sole purpose of holding informal consultation. This de-facto formalization contributed to a significant increase of the informal consultations of the whole.

Nonmembers of the Council do not have access to those meetings. However, the retreat to informal consultations has not been able to overcome the structural constraints of the Council. Various diplomats of permanent missions and officials of the UN Secretariat pointed already in the early 1980s to the downside of these informal consultations that had been inherent in the process, that is, “deliberate stalling, inaction, watered-down resolutions, secrecy, over-formalization of an informal process, and lack of outside input.”47

Cited in Feuerle 1985, 294.

Consequently, the institutional and procedural adaptations in response to changes resulting from decolonization negatively affected Security Council governance.48

The Western Contact Group on Namibia, established in 1978, constitutes the precedent case where a group of UN member states chose the exit option to escape those structural deficiencies. This became frequent practice in the 1990s.

Formal meetings and informal consultations of the Security Council, 1972–82

In the post–Cold War era, this negative trend worsened, with the UN Security Council operating in a permissive political context that allowed for dealing with more and more complex conflict settings than ever before in the history of the UN. In effect, the situation challenged the capacity of the Council to fulfill its role as the primary instrument for the maintenance of international peace and security, generating an Article 24 crisis with essentially three dimensions.49

First, the crisis of representativeness pertains to the perception that the composition of the Security Council is neither geographically balanced nor does it reflect the current distribution of relative power among UN member states. Second, the crisis of effectiveness relates to the growing mismatch in the Security Council between the willingness to take decisions and the allocation of resources for their implementation. Those problems had been most prominent in the cases of Srebrenica and Rwanda. Third, the crisis of decision making refers to the selectivity of the Security Council in addressing some conflicts while ignoring others. Especially after the failed intervention in Somalia, Council members had become more reluctant to engage in conflict settings on the African continent. Although this trend has reversed somewhat recently, the overall problem of selectivity remains.

In conclusion, informal groups of states emerged early in the history of UN peacemaking out of the structural deficiencies the UN Security Council has been facing at various levels. They proliferated out of the demands the UN have been confronted with after the breakdown of the bipolar system. The permissive political context that allowed for the greater engagement of the UN in combination with the complexity of crisis settings and the multiple structural constraints of the Security Council, fostered the development toward an Article 24 crisis, affecting Council decision making, effectiveness, and representativeness. UN member states redelegated tasks away from the UN to informal arrangements. Governance in the Council changed significantly, as much of the work was done within the decentralized setting of those informal frameworks, with minimal involvement of other Council members. Figure 3 illustrates the causal relationship between systemic change, problems of the UN Security Council to adapt accordingly, the resulting Article 24 crisis, including the recourse to informal groups of states as a mechanism that allows for exit from structural constraints and voice for stakeholders in a conflict.

Proliferation of informal groups in the post–Cold War era: Causes

In the following section, I apply the analytical framework of exit, voice, and loyalty to specific conflict settings to illustrate my argument. The conflict settings of Namibia (exit) and El Salvador (voice) constitute precedent cases that illustrate the contextual and situational parameters contributing to the establishment of the Western Contact Group and the Group of Friends of the Secretary-General respectively. Both informal devices served as models that would be applied in subsequent crisis settings.50

While the Western Contact Group served as a model for the Contact Group on former Yugoslavia, formed in 1994, the group of friends mechanism was subsequently applied in other conflict settings such as Haiti (1992), Western Sahara (1993), or Guatemala (1994).

The Kosovo case (exit versus loyalty) illustrates the changing role of the Security Council at the end of the 1990s, with the functions of diplomatic problem solving and collective legitimation becoming separate from one another. I demonstrate how recourse to informal groups of states may eventually keep states engaged in an organizational setting that is challenged by systemic change.

The Cases of Namibia, El Salvador, and Kosovo

Exit and voice are distinctive policy options accommodating different needs. The decision to opt for either exit or voice is informed by the specific conflict setting. This section demonstrates the explanatory leverage of exit, voice, and loyalty as analytical framework by applying it to the cases of Namibia, El Salvador, and Kosovo.51

These cases are fully elaborated in Prantl forthcoming.

Exit: The Western Contact Group on Namibia

The process leading toward the independence of Namibia in 1990 illustrates the problems of the UN to adapt to systemic change well before the breakdown of the bipolar system. As mentioned earlier, the process of decolonization resulted in a significant increase of membership that shifted the balance of power in the General Assembly and the Security Council. In addition, with the admission of postcolonial states, decolonization turned into an ideological issue that contributed to a situation where direct UN involvement had proven ineffective. These structural conditions complicated the process toward the further dismantling of the colonial system and generated a push toward exit, as epitomized in the establishment of the Western Contact Group in 1977.52

The Western Contact Group comprised Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom, and United States. For a good overview on the workings of the Western Contact Group, see Brenke 1989; Jabri 1990; Karns 1987; and Vergau 2002.

The emergence of the informal group coincided with the nonpermanent Council membership of Canada and the Federal Republic of Germany in 1977–78. At this time, several General Assembly resolutions had been adopted under massive pressure of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), criticizing the attitude of Western countries toward Apartheid in general, and their stance toward the situation in Namibia and Rhodesia in particular. Furthermore, growing recourse to Article 31 of the UN Charter that granted nonmembers the possibility of participation in formal meetings of the Council effectively transformed the body into a mini-General Assembly, with negative repercussions for dealing effectively with the conflict.53

Prantl forthcoming.

From this perspective, the decision to opt for exit occurred in response to these external and internal factors. The specific setting of the conflict informed the choice of the five Western Council members to escape those structural deficiencies and to work outside the UN framework. The Contact Group provided a platform for informal cooperation beyond the East-West and North-South antagonism within the General Assembly and the Security Council. It locked the parties to the conflict into a process orchestrated by Contact Group members and frontline states.54

The frontline states were Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia.

The Contact Group operated without an explicit mandate of the Security Council and negotiated a settlement proposal for Namibia's independence outside the UN framework, though within the objectives of the organization.55

The Western Contact Group explicitly based its initiative on Resolution 385, adopted in January 1976, which had already provided a framework of objectives for a negotiated settlement. The settlement proposal became later endorsed by Resolution 435, adopted in September 1978.

The cooperation between the Western Contact Group and the UN turned out to be crucial because the organization provided the seal of legitimacy to the Western initiative. The Western Contact Group and, later, after the adoption of the linkage approach, the United States alone sought to legitimize the substance of negotiations via the process of Council decision making.56

The Reagan administration adopted the linkage approach in 1981 and made progress in the question of Namibian independence dependent on a prior withdrawal of Cuban troops from the neighboring country of Angola. Then the preservation of Resolution 435 as the legitimate basis for the settlement of conflict became the primary concern for Contact Group members and the UN secretary-general. Preventing the complete exit of the superpower was achieved by tacitly acknowledging the U.S. policy of linkage without publicly approving it. See Crocker 1999; and Prantl forthcoming.

At the same time, the UN assumed responsibility for implementing and monitoring the settlement plan. At the end of 1988, the process enjoyed the broad cooperation of Contact Group members, frontline states, Cuba, the Soviet Union, South Africa, and the OAU. In effect, such strategy was key to gaining wider acceptance of the implementation process by UN member states.

Voice: The Group of Friends of the Secretary-General on El Salvador

Contrary to the process leading toward Namibian independence, the formation of the Group of Friends of the Secretary-General on El Salvador57

The group consisted of Colombia, Mexico, Spain, and Venezuela, later joined by the United States. At that stage the Friends became known as the “4+1.”

has to be explained in the context of the shifting balance of power between the UN Secretariat and the Security Council during the transformation of the bipolar system. The actual and perceived predominance of the P-5, especially of the United States, bore the danger of compromising the impartiality of the UN secretary-general especially in those conflict settings where his good offices had been required. In contrast to the first case study, where the Western Contact Group led the negotiation process outside the UN framework, in the case of El Salvador, the UN Secretariat took over the leading role as intermediary to reach a negotiated political solution to the conflict in El Salvador.58 Established in December 1989, the Group of Friends served as a means at the disposal of the secretary-general and his representatives to support the UN's efforts to mediate an agreement between the conflicting parties, that is, the government of El Salvador and the rebel forces, the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN).59

This case, therefore, sheds light on the role of IOs as active agents. It also illustrates the tensions between what IOs want and what states want, which has been a serious shortcoming in the work of international relations scholars thus far; see Barnett and Finnemore 2004. At the same time, the case shows that the constructivist and principal-agent analysis are mutually enforcing rather than exclusive; see Prantl forthcoming.

The Group of Friends primarily accommodated the interest of the FMLN, which aimed at preventing potential micromanagement of the Council. Choosing the voice option, as epitomized in the formation of the Group of Friends, amplified the leverage of the UN intermediary in the negotiations with the parties to the conflict. The Group of Friends mechanism on El Salvador allowed the Secretariat to exclude the Security Council from the peace process to the greatest possible extent.

Seen from the perspective of U.S. foreign policy, the case of El Salvador also demonstrates that “support for multilateral negotiations can be more effective and less costly than the unilateral use of force.”60

Karl 1992, 164.

Despite the primary rationale of the Group of Friends to balance U.S. preponderance inside and outside the UN Security Council, the United States adopted a pragmatic approach by extending the Friends mechanism to an informal “four-plus-one” formula. Informal participation in the Group of Friends secured control over the peace process without becoming the protagonist. Choosing multilateral means with the assistance of an informal setting constituted the preferred strategy of the U.S. administration for achieving its policy end of graceful exit from El Salvador. The joint efforts taken by the UN Secretariat, Group of Friends, and U.S. administration reflected a productive mutual dependency that produced the momentum for an agreement that generated the perception of having achieved a “peace without losers.”

Exit versus Loyalty: Quint, G-8, and Troika during the Kosovo War61

The Quint is composed of the five key allies within NATO, that is, France, Germany, Italy, UK, and the United States. During the Kosovo crisis, they coordinated positions on NATO's air campaign and cooperated to maintain the coherence of the Atlantic Alliance. The Group of Eight (G-8) consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, United States, and Russia. The Troika was composed of then President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari as EU Envoy, Russian Envoy Victor Chernomyrdin, and then U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott; on the workings of these informal settings, see Albright 2003; Joetze 2001; and Talbott 2002.

The Kosovo conflict is a textbook case that amply illustrates the Article 24 crisis of the UN Security Council at the end of the 1990s. The military and political management of the crisis was being conducted outside the UN framework without explicit authorization of the Security Council. The Western Alliance chose the exit option by employing NATO because the Security Council was or appeared to be deadlocked.62

After the failure of Contact Group efforts from late 1997 to spring 1999 to negotiate a political settlement of the ongoing crisis in Kosovo, Group of Eight (G-8) and Troika started to define the diplomatic response to the ongoing crisis while NATO sustained the military pressure on the regime of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. While the Quint provided a bridge between the political and military tracks of conflict management, the trilateral diplomacy of the Troika aimed at closing the various gaps that existed between efforts taken by the European Union, the G-8, NATO, and the UN.

NATO intervention in Kosovo without authorization of the Security Council pushed the exit option to its extreme, while generating a maximum pull on the key actors to seek post hoc legitimation for their action taken. Despite the marginalization of the Security Council in the management of the crisis, loyalty mattered. The prospect of reinvolving the UN constituted an important precondition for the resolution of conflict. In addition, G-8 and Troika were instrumental in providing a platform for the reinvolvement of the UN. Exiting the UN framework allowed to employ military force, which the Western Alliance considered to be necessary to achieve political outcomes. Informal settings such as Quint, G-8, and Troika were instrumental in merging the military and political track of conflict management.

The Kosovo case illustrates the decoupling of the processes of diplomatic problem solving and its collective post hoc legitimation. It underlines the importance and persistence of the “symbolic life”63

of the UN Security Council. While the decoupling of the substance of conflict management from the process of its legitimation significantly increased the political costs of intervention, the prospect of reengaging the UN via the adoption of Council Resolution 1244 helped to create broader acceptance and the perception of legitimacy. Consequently, loyalty contained the negative repercussions of exit. Quint, G-8, and Troika delivered substantial outcomes, with the UN Security Council producing legitimacy through its formal decisions. The adoption of Council Resolution 1244 merged process and substance of conflict settlement. In conclusion, the dynamics between Quint, G-8, and Troika on the one side and the UN Security Council on the other side were mutually reinforcing. If exit resulted in a deprivation of legitimacy, loyalty contributed to its restoration.

Informal Groups of States: Effects

The previous section has analyzed the dynamics between informal groups of states and the UN Security Council by applying the analytical framework of exit, voice, and loyalty to the conflict settings of Namibia, El Salvador, and Kosovo. These examples illustrated the causes behind the emergence of informal groups of states and their proliferation in the post–Cold War era. I have also identified patterns of interaction with the Security Council. In this section, I address the question of what one can learn from the cases of Namibia, El Salvador, and Kosovo. What are the effects of informal groups of states?

In the following, I organize my arguments around three broad themes that are key concepts in the theory of international relations: (1) power, (2) legitimacy, and (3) change. I argue that, despite the various constraints to amend IOs in response to systemic change, informal groups of states have initiated an informal adaptation process by taking on certain problem-solving functions in the resolution of conflicts. Table 4 summarizes how informal groups of states impact on the relative power between UN member states and on processes of legitimation.

Informal groups of states: Effects

Power

Informal groups of states affect the balance of power between UN member states. In this context, I follow Dahl's definition that “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do.”64

Dahl 1957, 203.

Consequently, I treat power as a dependent variable. The distribution of relative influence changes with different issue areas and with different periods of time, as the three case studies on Namibia, El Salvador, and Kosovo have illustrated. Depending on the specific case, informal groups of states affect power relationships at the UN in the following ways: (1) they amplify the relative influence of stakeholders, which are not being member of the Security Council; (2) informal settings balance the preponderance of the five permanent members on the Council; (3) ancillary to the previous point, they also have the potential to disguise U.S. hegemony.65

This specific proposition may also apply more generally to China and Russia.

1. Amplifying the influence of stakeholders. Informal groups of states are instrumental in positioning stakeholders that do not have a seat on the Security Council. Their influence ranges from consultations with Council members to a much stronger involvement, which comes close to a kind of “informal membership.”66

Hurd has offered a useful starting point to elaborate on the concept of informal membership. However, the terminology is quite problematic because it suggests a “quasi-membership” on the Council, which covers only one end of the spectrum where influence on Security Council decision making is particularly strong. Empirical evidence shows a much more diverse picture; see Hurd 1997.

Working through those diplomatic devices, UN member states can signal their level of commitment to contribute to the solution of conflict. Participation in those diplomatic devices also translates into a greater share of informal voting power on the Council. Informal groups may prenegotiate and draft Council resolutions and statements in such a precise manner that substantial change is almost impossible in subsequent stages when the matter comes under official consideration in the Council.

Seen from the perspective of a stakeholder participating in such diplomatic device, the probability of making a difference increases because decisions taken are usually based on consensus within the group. It is important to understand that working through informal groups of states not only has a strong payoff for those states not being represented on the Council, but also for its elected members. In a recent article on “Power and Satisfaction in the Security Council,” O'Neill has illustrated that their influence in terms of voting power is just tiny.67

Following his observations, I claim that, seen from the perspective of elected members of the Security Council, engagement in informal groups of states bears a considerably higher potential for determining outcomes than formal participation in the workings of the Security Council. In addition, informal settings provide a flexible format that is often preferable to the formalized procedures of the Security Council.

2. Balancing P-5 preponderance. The transformation of the bipolar system generated the permissive political context for the greater engagement of the UN in conflict settings. The formation of the Group of Friends on El Salvador occurred in response to the shifting balance of power between UN Secretariat and Security Council during this transformation period. The conflict setting almost excluded any deep involvement of the UN Security Council, given the strong resistance of the FMLN. The case of El Salvador is indicative of how group of friends are able to recalibrate the strategic balance between stakeholders, Secretariat and Security Council. Decentralization of problem solving through informal groups of states prevents any micromanagement of the conflict by the Council. In effect, it balances the preponderance of the P-5.

At the same time, the formation of such diplomatic devices signals a preexisting level of commitment by a group of UN member states to contribute to the solution of conflict. By setting the agenda, informal groups of states may reduce dependency on the P-5 and other members of the Council to address conflicts. Engagement of informal groups decreases the probability of a widening gap between declaratory and operational policy of the Security Council. The preexisting level of commitment by a group of member states suggests that political will for the solution of conflict exists, compliance with resolutions adopted by the Security Council will be secured, and the necessary means for implementation be provided. Ultimately, informal settings tend to increase “the likelihood and robustness of cooperation.”68

Oye 1986, 21.

3. Disguising U.S. hegemony. Choosing multilateral means by employing multilateral gatherings with small numbers is a promising strategy for achieving policy ends at relatively low costs.69

Ikenberry has observed that, for a leading state, institutional agreements are attractive as “they potentially lock other States into stable and predictable policy orientations thereby reducing the need to use coercion to secure the dominant State's foreign policy aims.”70

See Ikenberry 2002, 122; and Ikenberry 2003, 51–54.

Extending Ikenberry's argument to the narrower context of informal groups of states, this observation becomes even more true. In addition, informal settings are instrumental in making U.S. foreign policy more predictable. The “minilateral” solution offers a trade-off between inclusiveness and efficiency.71 Although it is evident that “the price that the leading State must pay for this institutionalized cooperation is a reduction in its own policy autonomy and unfettered ability to exercise power,”72 minilateral settings potentially reduce the political cost of action even further, since the number of players is restricted to key actors. The cases of Namibia and El Salvador illustrate a pattern of U.S. foreign policy to seek, on the one hand, maximum flexibility and unrestricted freedom in the conduct of crisis resolution while, on the other hand, securing an aura of legitimacy, lent by the UN secretary general and/or the Security Council. Such approach reflects the desire “to have the best of both worlds.”73

Yale–UN Oral History Interview Transcripts, Chester Crocker, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, 20 July 1998.

Looked at from the perspective of weaker states, the redelegation of tasks to informal arrangements operating within the objectives of a resolution or mandate of the Council but outside its formal structures may help to capture the joint gains of the institution while keeping the powerful both engaged and constrained. Such redelegation may help to manage the relationship between hegemon, international institution, and weaker states.74

For an astute analysis of this relationship, see Hurrell 2005.

At the same time, and this is particularly prevalent in the Namibian case, weaker states may expose a high degree of acquiescence to the policies of the hegemon to avoid its defection.

In conclusion, U.S. exceptionalism is a factor that has to be taken into account and cannot be ignored in the resolution of conflicts with U.S. involvement. Informal groups of states have the effect of disguising U.S. preponderance and avoiding the appearance of unilateral action. As a result, they may create greater acceptance of U.S. foreign policy.

Legitimacy

This subsection examines the effects of informal groups of states on understanding legitimacy.75

Clark provides an extensive treatment of the practice of legitimacy in international relations; see Clark 2005.

Why is the UN Security Council so important in this regard? The Security Council carries a large degree of symbolic power that helps to create a perception of legitimacy, as Hurd has observed.76

He argues that “[t]he symbolic power of the Security Council is evident in the energy states expend on having the Council pay attention to issues of concern to them.” Hurd 2002, 39.

The most visible symbolic recognition may be observed when analyzing the electoral campaigns of UN member states to gaining a nonpermanent seat on the Council.77 The Council derives its symbolic power from the high degree of legitimacy it carries.

What is legitimacy? Franck has defined legitimacy as “a property of a rule or rule-making institution which itself exerts a pull toward compliance on those addressed normatively because those addressed believe that the rule or institution has come into being and operates in accordance with generally accepted principles of right process.”78

Those principles guide the ways in which units of an international system act or behave.79 As this definition illustrates, the notions of loyalty and legitimacy are interconnected. Loyalty is part and parcel of legitimacy. However, it is important to keep in mind that the perception of legitimacy, including the question of whether state action should be legitimized by a Security Council mandate or not, may differ significantly from one country to another. Legitimacy will ultimately depend on who is gaining the monopoly of interpreting a given action as just and procedurally fair.80

The exceptionalist role of the United States may serve as the most prominent example to elaborate on those different perceptions. Luck has convincingly elaborated on the distinctive U.S. conception of political legitimacy, which is based on both its domestic political culture and relative power position in the international system (in terms of military and economic power, including cultural attraction).81

Luck 2002, 51.

Senior officials in the U.S. administration consider UN blessing desirable, though not a sine qua non of state action.82

Confidential interview by author with a senior official of the U.S. State Department, Washington, D.C., 21 November 2000. This view seems to be a consistent pattern throughout various administrations. Differences between subsequent presidencies in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy relate often much more to style rather than substance.

Still, “power and legitimacy are not antithetical, but complementary,”83 as Claude has observed. It is for this reason that “rulers seek legitimation not only to satisfy their consciences but also to buttress their positions.”84

Ibid.

Paradoxically, the higher the asymmetry of power between the units of an international system the stronger the incentive for the hegemon to seek what Clark has called, a “just disequilibrium.”85

Clark 2005, 239.

The just disequilibrium reflects a bargain between the hegemon and those affected by its preponderance: while the former agrees to stay within the constitutional boundaries of the international system, the latter acknowledge the leading role of the hegemon in maintaining international peace and security.

Legitimacy equally requires, as Kissinger has argued, “the acceptance of the framework of the international order by all major powers, at least to the extent that no state is so dissatisfied that … it expresses its dissatisfaction in a revolutionary foreign policy.”86

While Franck's understanding of legitimacy helps to understand the Security Council as a rule-making institution exerting a pull on the foreign policies of states, Kissinger's definition opens the gate to grasp the relationship between legitimacy and institutional change. The legitimacy of the Council, in terms of acceptance by major powers, may fade if the institution is not able to adapt itself according to changes in the international system, especially, though not exclusively, with regard to its representativeness.

Although this has been the standard argument in support of Security Council reform over the last few years, I illustrate further below that the Article 24 crisis will not be solved simply by enlarging the membership of the UN Security Council. In the following, I elaborate on implications of my previous claim that the exit option is contained by the loyalty of UN member states toward the Security Council. I argue, first that the Council functions of diplomatic problem solving and legitimation have become decoupled. Second, I claim that these functions are separable but not separate: decoupling may eventually strengthen the output legitimacy of the Council.

1. Decoupling the processes of diplomatic problem solving and collective legitimation. The structural conditions of the postbipolar era have fostered a devolution of crisis management to ad hoc coalitions of able and willing countries or informal settings, whereas the UN Security Council still remains a pull factor by granting the platform—at least in most cases—for the “right process,” that is, the procedural legitimation for state action.87

On the supposed failure of the democratic process to produce substantive outcomes, see Dahl 1989, 163–75.

The Article 24 crisis of the Security Council makes this international institution “ineffective but indispensable.”88 Although the decoupling of crisis management from the process of its legitimation is far from being new,89

For example, in 1977–78, the Western Contact Group on Namibia negotiated a settlement proposal for Namibia's independence outside the UN framework, which was later endorsed by the Security Council; see the case study on Namibia above.

it has been a significant pattern from the mid-1990s onwards. This pattern was most visible when NATO member states intervened in Kosovo without explicit authorization of the Security Council. Similar lessons apply to the more recent U.S. intervention in Iraq. Even if the exit option is pushed to its extreme, loyalty prevents the long-term marginalization of the organization. The further states push for exit, the greater the pull of loyalty.90

This argument is not to be understood as entirely sequential. The U.S. invasion in Iraq illustrates that the pull for UN reinvolvement did not follow immediately but subsequently with the invasion forces facing growing resistance on the ground and the political (and financial) costs of the operation rising. I have to thank Joseph Nye for raising this caveat.

Procedural legitimation by the UN Security Council may well be seen as the embodiment of a normative constitutional bargain that enables the “international community,” that is, the actors of the international system, to tolerate policies without having necessarily reached full agreement on the substance of the matter and without having necessarily direct participation in the decision-making process. This primacy of procedure helps to create the broadest possible acceptance and ultimately contributes to the stability of international order.91

Parsons 1977 underlines the importance of “procedural primacy” to explain the workings of domestic institutions.

Ultimately, the decoupling of the functions of diplomatic problem solving and legitimation illustrates the changing role of the Security Council in the conduct of post–Cold War international affairs. Seen from this perspective, the UN ultimately becomes a prism through which to view a wider transformation of the international system. In this context, informal diplomatic devices, interacting with formal IOs, are instruments to steer the uneven process of systemic change.

2. Strengthening procedural and output legitimacy of the UN Security Council. This subsection further develops the argument that informal groups of states may strengthen the procedural and output legitimacy of the Security Council. While informal settings are able to produce substantial outcomes, it is the Council that provides legitimacy through its formal decisions. The functions of problem solving and legitimation are separable, though not separate. In fact, they are mutually dependent and may be reinforcing.

At the same time, decentralization of the workings of the Security Council enlarges the ownership of its decision-making process. Woods has succinctly pointed out that “the longer-term considerations of effectiveness require a more active and participatory membership than the traditional hierarchical vision, and herein lies a powerful reason for applying lessons of good governance to international institutions.”92

Applying the three core principles of good governance, that is, participation, accountability, and fairness,93

Ibid.

to the specific context of the UN Security Council, I suggest that enlarging the number of participants in Council governance helps to create the perception of Council decision making being accountable and procedurally fair. It enhances procedural legitimacy. In a sense, informal groups of states create a link between the Security Council and the wider membership of the General Assembly. These complementary functions of informal groups of states are however contingent upon whether informal groups of states operate within the objectives of the UN or whether they act on their own account.

In conclusion, the dynamics between informal groups of states and the UN Security Council may produce double-edged legitimacy in terms of procedure and output. The remerging of the two functions helps to achieve legitimacy as the common good, which enjoys broad acceptance.94

“The common good,” according to Dahl, “consists of the practices, arrangements, institutions, and processes that … promote the well-being of ourselves and others—not, to be sure, of ‘everyone,’ but of enough persons to make the practices, arrangements, etc. acceptable and perhaps even cherished.” Dahl 1989, 307.

It is the merger of both that must pass the litmus test of achieving wider acceptance among UN member states. Only then is legitimacy considered a common good.

Incremental Change

This subsection analyzes the effects of informal groups of states on institutional change. Given the circumstance that the UN is a prism through which one also may examine transformations of the international system, such analysis may also allow to draw wider conclusions for adaptations in the power relationships between states. In the following, I elaborate on the function of informal groups of states as agents of incremental change, examining their impact on Security Council governance. I also address the question of the extent to which the engagement of informal groups of states may constitute a compensation for formal adaptation of the institution. I argue, first, that informal settings may ameliorate the Council's Article 24 crisis in the fields of decision making, effectiveness, and representativeness. Second, any formal adaptation in the membership of the Council will not resolve the Article 24 crisis.

1. Ameliorating the Article 24 crisis of the UN Security Council. Informal groups of states ameliorate the Article 24 crisis of the UN Security Council, without formally changing its membership. In this context, exit and voice are policy options that allow for an incremental adaptation of international institutions. They serve as flexible agents of incremental change. Change is incremental because the Charter of the UN remains unaltered. Consequently, those agents are able to alleviate tensions generated by systemic change in combination with the inability of the Security Council to adapt. In effect, they constitute a safety valve to divert the inner-institutional pressure for Council reform. Informal groups of states are stabilizing elements for international institutions in transition.

Within the specific context of the UN, informal groups take on four broad functions.95

These functions are condensed from a thorough review of UN documents dealing with concepts and instruments to adapt the Organization to the postbipolar security environment. They include An Agenda for Peace (1992) as well as its Supplementary Paper (1995), An Agenda for Democratization (1996), and subsequent reports by the UN secretary general on the causes of conflict and the promotion of durable peace and sustainable development in Africa (1998–2001); see UN documents A/47/277—S/24111, 17 June 1992, paragraph 62; A/50/60—S/1995/1, 3 January 1995, paragraph 83; A/51/761, 20 December 1996, paragraph 48; S/1998/318, 13 April 1998, paragraph 24; S/1999/1008, 25 September 1999, paragraphs 9–11; and A/56/371, 18 September 2001, paragraph 9.

First, informal groups assist the UN secretary general in discharging his complex mandates such as supervising multifunctional peace support operations that involve the full spectrum of conflict transition. Second, informal groups mobilize international support in crisis management and the transition of conflicts from war to peace. Third, informal devices coordinate and bundle peacemaking and peace-implementation efforts vis-à-vis crisis settings and parties to a conflict. Fourth, informal groups of states may take on functions in the strategic coordination of the implementation of peace agreements.96

However, it seems to be the prevailing understanding in the UN Secretariat that overconceptualizing informal settings would already restrain their flexibility and limit their usefulness as agents of incremental change.97

Author's confidential interview with a senior official of the UN Secretariat, 29 October 2002.

This leads to the crucial question whether the engagement of key players through informal devices may serve as a certain kind of compensation for the lack of Security Council reform. Although informal groups of states lend stability to a dynamic process, it is unlikely that the calls for substantial reform of the UN Security Council will fade. Reform of the Council is much more about form rather than substance. Enlarging the membership will help to perceive the institution as geographically balanced and more legitimate. In conclusion, it is important to understand that enlarging the Security Council will not solve its problems of output legitimacy, i.e., effectiveness and decision making. Formal adaptations of the Council are likely to have the effect of rising, not decreasing, the significance of informal groups of states.98

This view is confirmed by a high-ranking senior diplomat of a candidate country for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council; confidential interview by author, 26 September 2000.

2. Complementing governance of the UN Security Council. Ultimately, informal groups of states may enhance governance in and of the Security Council. Although informal groups of states bear the potential of complementing governance of the UN Security Council, states do not have entered the brave new world of good governance, yet. The complementary functions of informal devices are far from being the Weberian ideal-type solution to meet longer-term considerations of effectiveness. Many of these groupings tend to be self-selected, with an exclusive participation and a virtually absent degree of accountability. In positive terms, informal groups may complement Council governance by narrowing the operational and participatory gap growing out of the multiple strategic incapacities that prevents the Council from formulating an effective response to crisis situations. The output legitimacy of the Council is strengthened, while actions taken by informal settings become more acceptable.

Any positive impact on Council governance is however dependent upon the ability to strike a balance between competing demands of inclusiveness, efficiency, informality, accountability, and transparency. In negative terms, informal groups of states will operate in competition with the UN Security Council. Then, the legitimacy of the Council is weakened, while the political costs for states acting through informal settings are increasing. The processes of diplomatic problem solving and its collective legitimation become mutually excluding.

Conclusions

This article has established the importance of informal groups of states as part and parcel of Security Council governance. In order to understand the variables that define the performance of the Security Council, I have extended my analysis to levels of informal cooperation. Informal groups have reshaped international diplomacy and altered the balance of power within the UN. Seen from the perspective of principal-agent theory, UN member states have redelegated tasks away from the Security Council to informal arrangements that allow for the better management of multiple policy externalities. In this article, I have moved further with the question of why states act through formal IOs.99

Abbot's and Snidal's analysis of the costs and benefits of IOs is rather static and has not taken into account the effects of systemic change. One needs to qualify the claim that the functions of centralization and independence enhance efficiency. This pattern may alter when IOs are challenged to adapt to systemic change. The synergistic framework of analysis that I have chosen helps to explain why decentralization through informal groups of states may enhance efficiency. Ad hoc arrangements are instrumental to escape from the structural constraints of IOs. Decentralization results in a new and rather peculiar structure of international diplomacy, in which the functions of diplomatic problem solving and legitimation have become decoupled. The two functions are separable but not separate. I have illustrated how the roles of informal groups of states and the UN Security Council may be mutually reinforcing.

The dynamics between informal settings and the UN Security Council can best be captured by applying the analytical framework of exit, voice, and loyalty, as I have demonstrated in the cases of Namibia, El Salvador, and Kosovo. In doing so, I have illustrated how conflict settings inform the choice for either exit or voice. The comparative study of the interaction between informal groups and Security Council appears to be particularly useful to understand observed variations in levels of cooperation, which constitutes a key challenge to institutional theory. The importance of the analytical framework chosen originates in the explanatory leverage it provides to draw inferences about the institutional effects of the UN Security Council under conditions of systemic change. Informal groups of states are a means of generating an (incremental) adaptation process in response to altered structural conditions. In this context, the growing recourse to informal arrangements appears as the “cheaper option” than a complete overhaul of the organization's foundations, that is, the revision of the UN Charter. The diplomatic devices are a “safety valve”100

both to divert and alleviate the pressure for substantial reform. By taking on several problem-solving functions, informal groups of states may enhance Council governance and ameliorate Article 24 crises affecting decision making, effectiveness, and representativeness of the Security Council.

In effect, the redelegation of tasks to informal groups of states may well be seen as a stabilizing element for international institutions in transition.101

In order to test this proposition further one needs to broaden the research agenda by examining in greater detail how informal arrangements affect governance in other international institutions such as IMF, World Bank, WTO, European Union, or NATO.

This proposition challenges the causal link established by certain scholars that the UN Security Council is an unstable system because it has no mechanisms to adapt its hierarchy of influence according to the shifts of relative power in the international system.102

See McCarthy 1997 and 1998; and Glennon 2003 argues in a similar vein.

Working through informal groups of states reshapes the balance between power and legitimacy, which may temper the pressure toward formal change.103

Russett 1997, 18–21.

Empirical evidence suggests that those devices are changing the role of the UN Security Council in the international system. As the UN is a prism through which one may analyze international relations, one may conclude that (as a result of the above) informal arrangements are also changing the international system itself. The international system becomes more disaggregated.104

This proposition is supported by recent academic work on the role of government networks; see Slaughter 2004.

Further study is needed to analyze the dynamics between informal arrangements and formal IOs. Examining the anatomy of this relationship will enhance one's understanding of power, legitimacy, and change in the theory of international relations.

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Figure 0

Exit, voice, and loyalty

Figure 1

Size of permanent missions: Number of professionals on staff, 2000–04

Figure 2

Growth in UN membership, 1945–2002

Figure 3

Formal meetings and informal consultations of the Security Council, 1972–82

Figure 4

Proliferation of informal groups in the post–Cold War era: Causes

Figure 5

Informal groups of states: Effects