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Around Arendt’s table: Bureaucracy and the non-permanent members of the UN Security Council

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2019

Isobel Roele
Isobel Roele*
Affiliation:
School of Law, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, UK Email: i.roele@qmul.ac.uk
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Abstract

Non-permanent members’ strategies to augment their influence in the United Nations Security Council usually seek parity of status with the permanent members. A more radical and transformative strategy would seek to change the Council itself. Working methods reform holds more potential in this respect than composition reform. At present, however, working methods reform is oriented to increasing non-permanent members’ status and focuses on redistributing administrative roles like sub-committee chairing and penholding. The price non-permanent members pay for their offices, however, is bureaucratic drudgery, which both keeps them from pursuing their own political priorities, and socializes them into the permanent members’ rhythms of work. Using Hannah Arendt’s concepts of work, labour, and natality, this contribution analyses strategies for influence in the Security Council, and offers a negative reading of Arendt’s ideas to suggest that non-permanent members should present a more obstructive counterforce in the Council, by cultivating their difference.

Keywords

bureaucracyHannah Arendtinternational organizationsSecurity CouncilUnited Nations
Type
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Information
Leiden Journal of International Law , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 117 - 137
Copyright
© Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2019 

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Footnotes

*

I am extremely grateful to the editors of this special issue for their time and effort, and for organizing the truly invigorating workshop which gave rise to this contribution. I would also like to thank Ben Poore and the reviewer whose careful reading and patient comments made this article much better than it would otherwise have been.

References

1 See discussion in A. Orford, ‘The Destiny of International Law’, (2004) 17(3) LJIL 441, at 476, 458–61.

2 UN Doc. S/PV.4701 (2003).

3 UN Doc. S/PV.2025 (1962).

4 Readers can watch the ceremony at www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCipmdnkn-c. Comments of the permanent representative of Kazakhstan, who compèred the ceremony, are also recorded in a letter to the Secretary General, see UN Doc. S/2018/254 (2018).

5 S. Ahmed, On Being Included (2012).

6 In November 2018, the ten incumbent and the five incoming non-permanent members wrote to the Council pressing for a more equal distribution of responsibilities. Their representative function was one of the arguments they gave in their favour. See UN Doc. S/2018/1024 (2018).

7 Arendt’s work has inspired many international lawyers. See, for example, J. Klabbers, ‘Possible Islands of Predictability: The Legal Thought of Hannah Arendt’, (2007) 20(1) LJIL 1; Marks, S., ‘Law and the Production of Superfluity’, (2011) 2(1) Transnational Legal Theory 1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A. Kesby, The Right to Have Rights (2012); D. Whitehall, ‘People in glass houses: lessons for international law from Margarethe von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt’, (2014) 2(2) LRIL 329; Kalpouzos, I. and Mann, I., ‘Banal Crimes against Humanity: The Case of Asylum Seekers in Greece’, (2015) 16(1) Melbourne Journal of International Law 1 Google Scholar; Cubukçu, A., ‘On the Exception of Hannah Arendt’, (2019) 15(3) Law, Culture and the Humanities 684.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 H. Arendt, On Violence (1969), 81.

9 J. Klabbers, ‘Hannah Arendt and the Languages of Global Governance’, in M. Goldoni and C. McCorkindale (eds.), Arendt and the Law (2012), 229.

10 H. Arendt, The Human Condition (1958), 198–9.

11 Roele, I., ‘The Vicious Circles of Habermas’ Cosmopolitics’, (2014) 25(3) Law and Critique 119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cf. I. Johnstone, ‘Security Council Deliberations: The Power of the Better Argument’, (2003) 14(3) EJIL 437; I. Johnstone, ‘Legislation and Adjudication in the UN Security Council: Bringing Down the Deliberative Deficit’, (2008) 102 AJIL 275.

12 UN World Summit Outcome Document, UN Doc. A/Res/60/1 (2005), at para. 153.

13 UN Doc. S/2018/1024 (2018).

14 As Judge Schwebel said, ‘the Security Council is a political organ which acts for political reasons’ rather than legal ones. Case Concerning Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. USA) Merits, ICJ Reports, 1986, dissenting opinion of Judge Schwebel, at 290, para. 60.

15 UN Charter, Art. 27(3).

16 W. M. Reisman, ‘The Constitutional Crisis in the United Nations’, (1993) 87(1) AJIL 83, at 85.

17 K. Mahubani, ‘The Permanent and Elected Council Members’, in D. Malone (ed.), The UN Security Council (2004), 256, at 256–7.

18 UN Charter, Art. 24(1).

19 A. Roberts and D. Zaum, Selective Security: War and the United Nations Security Council Since 1945 (2008).

20 H. Arendt, The Human Condition (1998), 7.

21 As Anne Orford shows in International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect (2011), 94–7.

22 UN Charter, Art. 24(3).

23 The ‘Green Book’ of Working Methods Handbook contains multiple entries relating to consultations and dialogues, available at www.un.org/securitycouncil/content/working-methods-handbook.

24 UN Charter, Art. 29.

25 See, e.g., Roele, I., ‘Disciplinary Power in the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee’, (2014) 19(1) Journal of Conflict and Security Law 49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 A sense of the vast body of rolling business can be gained by reading the monthly digest of the Security Council Reporting and Mandate Cycles, prepared by the Security Council Secretariat Branch of the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs. The 2019 edition runs for 113 pages, available at www.un.org/securitycouncil/sites/www.un.org.securitycouncil/files/general/reportingandmandatecycles_122018.pdf.

27 See Arendt, supra note 8, at 81–2.

28 J. Klabbers, ‘Possible Islands of Predictability: The Legal Thought of Hannah Arendt’, (2007) 20(1) LJIL 1, at 11.

29 See Arendt, supra note 10, at 244.

30 Ibid., at 234.

31 UN Charter, Art. 23(2).

32 See Arendt, supra note 10, at 9.

33 Ibid., at 7.

34 Ibid., at 237.

35 Ibid., at 209; ibid., at 67.

36 UN Charter, Art. 23(1).

37 Theodor Adorno’s negative dialectics changed the direction of conceptuality, ‘to give it a turn toward non-identity’, see T. Adorno, Negative Dialectics (1973), 12.

38 A. Hood, ‘The United Nations Security Council’s Legislative Phase and the Rise of Emergency International Law-Making’, in K. Rubenstein and H. Nasu (eds.), Legal Perspectives on Security Institutions (2015).

39 See Arendt, supra note 10, at 222.

40 For criticisms of the Council on similar grounds see N. Krisch, ‘International Law in Times of Hegemony: Unequal Power and the Shaping of the International Legal Order’, (2005) 16(3) EJIL 369; J. Alvarez, ‘Hegemonic International Law Revisited’, (2003) 97(4) AJIL 873.

41 M. Koskenniemi, ‘The Police in the Temple: Order, Justice and the UN; A Dialectical View’, (1995) 6(3) EJIL 325.

42 A draft General Assembly resolution for Security Council reform was sponsored by all four states, among others. UN Doc. A/59/L.64 (2005).

43 UN Charter, Art. 23(2).

44 UN Doc. S/2016/619 (2016).

45 UN Doc. S/2017/507, at paras. 140–2.

46 See Section 3.2 below.

47 Turkey in co-operation with the International Peace Institute. Sweden held the retreat in April 2018 in Dag Hammarskjold’s private estate. See www.government.se/articles/2018/04/note-to-the-press-on-the-secretary-generals-security-council-retreat-in-backakra-sweden/.

48 Langmore, J. and Farrall, J., ‘Can Elected Members Make a Difference in the UN Security Council? Australia’s Experience in 2013–2014’, (2016) 22 Global Governance 59, at 68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 Farrall, J. and Prantl, J., ‘Leveraging diplomatic power and influence on the UN Security Council: the case of Australia’, (2016) 70(6) Australian Journal of International Affairs 601.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For more on Groups of Friends and Contact Groups, see Section 3.2 below.

50 The November 2018 letter from the non-permanent members urges the Council to recognize and make use of their regional and thematic experience and expertise. UN Doc. S/2018/1024 (2018).

51 See Mahubani, supra note 17, at 253 (quoting UN Doc. S/PV.4677 (2002)).

52 These are formal regional groupings in the UN system, and are listed on the UN’s Department for General Assembly and Conference Management, available at www.un.org/depts/DGACM/RegionalGroups.shtml.

53 L. Sievers and S. Daws, SC Procedure (2014), 130. The transition into the Council is ‘brutal’.

54 The editors of this special issue also point to the importance of non-permanent members’ ‘diplomatic capacity’, J. Farrall et al., ‘Elected member influence in the United Nations Security Council’, in this issue, doi:10.1017/S0922156519000657.

55 Available at protocol.un.org/dgacm/pls/site.nsf/BlueBook.xsp.

56 Prantl, J., ‘Informal Groups of States and the UN Security Council’, (2005) 59(3) International Organization 559, at 569–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 The Handbook is periodically updated and advertised on the Council website, available at www.un.org/securitycouncil/content/introduction.

58 This is discussed in brief below at Section 3.2.

59 OIOS, Audit Report: The Security Council Affairs Division in DPA (2010), Assignment No. AP2010/560/01, available at usun.state.gov/sites/default/files/organization_pdf/159757.pdf.

60 UN Doc. E/AC.51/2007/2/Add.2 (2007), at para. 15; UN Doc. E/AC.51/2007/2/Add.2 (2007), at para. 12.

61 Its first fieldtrip to Cambodia and Viet Nam was in the summer of 1964, though in recent years visits have proved more difficult to organize, according to Security Council Report, ‘Security Council Visiting Missions’ (2018), available at www.securitycouncilreport.org/un-security-council-working-methods/visiting-mission.php.

62 See Farrall et al., supra note 54. See also, Krisch, supra note 40; Alvarez, supra note 40

63 See Mahubani, supra note 17.

64 Under Kofi Annan the relationship between the permanent members and the Secretariat could be frosty. Annan strongly supported the body’s reform. K. Annan, Interventions: A Life in War and Peace (2012), Ch. IV.

65 ‘Ten Elements for Enhanced E10 Coordination and Joint Action’ agreed in September 2018. See L. Sievers and S. Daws, SC Procedure: Online Update to Ch. 3, s. 3 (2018), available at www.scprocedure.org/chapter-3-section-3i.

66 The UN publishes a list available at www.un.org/securitycouncil/content/countries-never-elected-members-security-council.

67 www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/least-developed-country-category/ldcs-at-a-glance.html.

68 UN Charter, Art. 32; Security Council Provisional Rules of Procedure, Rules 37 and 38 (UN Doc. S/96/Rev.7 (1982)).

69 UN Doc. S/2017/507 (2017).

70 There is an increasing body of writing questioning the value of transparency. Tsoukas, H., ‘The Tyranny of Light’, (1997) 29(9) Futures 827 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Strathern, M., ‘The Tyranny of Transparency’, (2000) 26(3) British Educational Research Journal 309 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A. Bianchi and A. Peters (eds.), Transparency in International Law (2013); F. Johns, ‘The Deluge’, (2013) 1(1) LRIL 9.

71 The materiality of international law is explored in J. Hohmann and D. Joyce, International Law’s Objects (2018).

72 Glambek, I., ‘The Council Chambers in the UN Building in New York’, (2005) 15 Scandinavian Journal of Design History 8.Google Scholar

73 Ban Ki-moon, ‘Remarks at the inauguration of the renovated Security Council Chamber’, 6 April 2013, available at www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2013-04-16/remarks-inauguration-renovated-security-council-chamber.

74 Speech given by His Royal Highness The Crown Prince at the launch of Norway’s candidacy for a seat on the United Nations Security Council 2021–22, 22 June 2018, available at www.kongehuset.no/tale.html?tid=163838&sek=26947&scope=27248.

75 UN Doc. S/PV.575 (1952), at 2.

76 Available at www.norway.no/en/missions/un/norway-and-the-un/norways-rich-history-at-the-un/norways-permanent--place-in-the-security-council/.

77 Available at www.flickr.com/photos/norwayun/sets/72157631290329704.

78 The distinction has been criticized, especially by S. Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (2003), at 130–3.

79 See Arendt, supra note 10, at 136–9.

80 Ibid., at 126

81 Ibid., at 209. Ibid., at 67.

82 Ibid., at 159.

83 Ibid., at 52.

84 See Section 3.2 below.

85 See generally D. Graeber, The Utopia of Rules (2015).

86 A. Riles, ‘Outputs: the promises and perils of ethnographic engagement after the loss of faith in transnational dialogue’, (2017) Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 183, at 187.

87 The context of Ahmed’s discussion is university commitments to diversity, see Ahmed, supra note 5, especially Ch. 4.

88 See generally J. Harrington, ‘The Working Methods of the UN Security Council: Maintaining the Implementation of Change’, (2017) 66(1) ICLQ 39.

89 UN Doc. S/1994/1279 (1994).

90 The Non-Aligned Movement has long pressed for the rules of procedure to be formalized.

91 UN Charter, Art. 27(3).

92 See Sievers and Daws, supra note 53, at 429.

93 UN Doc. S/2006/507 (2006); UN Doc. S/2010/507 (2010); UN Doc. S/2017/507 (2017).

94 UN Doc. S/PRST/2015/19 (2015). At the open debate on the matter earlier that month, 43 non-Council states requested to participate, suggesting that the issues discussed were seen as important to the UN membership more generally. See UN Doc. S/PV.7539 (2015).

95 See Orford, supra note 21.

96 Dykmann, K., Lewis, J. M. and Bentzen, S. R., ‘When Managerialism Meets Internationalism: Administrative Reform in the United Nations in the 1970s’, (2014) 37(12) International Journal of Public Administration 856.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

97 UN Doc. S/2017/507 (2017), at para. 1.

98 See Arendt, supra note 8, at 81–7.

99 UN Charter, Art. 29.

100 Established under Res. 1540 (2004) and 1373 (2001), respectively.

101 See Arendt, supra note 10, at 38.

102 Owens, P., ‘Not life but the world is at stake: Hannah Arendt on citizenship in the age of the social’ (2012) 16(2) Citizenship Studies 297, at 297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

103 See Arendt, supra note 10, at 44.

104 Above, at paragraph leading to note 81.

105 See Arendt, supra note 10, at 122.

106 Of the incoming 2018 intake, only Poland attended this meeting.

107 UN Doc. S/PV.7616 (2016). The speaker’s description is not only figurative. Committee meetings are usually held in the conference rooms, most of which are underground in the first basement of the Conference Building in New York.

108 It seems Panama’s concerns were taken to heart. None of the permanent members currently chair a subsidiary body (though the UK is involved in questions relating to women, peace and security and to the protection of civilians) and they often serve as Vice-Chairs, see UN Doc. S/2016/2/REV.4 (2016).

109 UN Doc. S/2018/2 (2018).

110 UN Doc. S/2012/937 (2012).

111 See Roele, supra note 25; Roele, I., ‘Side-lining Subsidiarity: UN Security Council “Legislation” and its Infra-Law’, (2016) 79(2) Law & Contemporary Problems 189.Google Scholar

112 UN Doc. S/2016/658 (2016).

113 See Sievers and Daws, supra note 53, at 129.

114 UN Doc. S/2014/393 (2014).

115 UN Doc. S/2016/170 (2016).

116 UN Doc. S/Res/1904 (2009); see also Farrall et al., supra note 54.

117 D. Hovell, The Power of Process (2016).

118 Remarks by Kimberly Prost, Ombudsperson, Security Council Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee, to the 49th meeting of the Committee of Legal Advisors on Public International Law (CAHDI) of the Council of Europe, 20 March 2015, available at www.un.org/sc/suborg/sites/www.un.org.sc.suborg/files/cahdi.pdf.

119 Annelise Riles comments that for bureaucrats, a meeting without an output is an illegitimate meeting. See A. Riles, ‘Outputs: the promises and perils of ethnographic engagement after the loss of faith in transnational dialogue’, (2017) Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 183, at 187.

120 Annelise Riles also notes a slightly different affective dimension of UN documentation. ‘Each document, each survey, each position paper is the product of countless others, and for a while, at least, until the feeling fades into frustration, this imbues the events with a weightiness that is almost dwarfing’. See A. Riles, ‘Models and Documents: Artefacts of International Legal Knowledge’, (1999) 48(4) ICLQ 805, at 812.

121 Half of the Library Building – the side that constitutes the campus’ South perimeter wall – closed down for security reasons.

122 See Section 2.2 above.

123 L. Sievers and S. Daws, SC Procedure: Online Update to Ch. 5, s. 6 (2019), ‘The “lead country” or “penholder” practice for drafting outcome documents’, available at www.scprocedure.org/chapter-5-section-6b.

124 L. Sievers and S. Daws, SC Procedure: Online Update to Ch. 5, s. 6 (2019), ‘A historical overview of the “lead country” or “penholder” practice’, available at www.scprocedure.org/chapter-5-section-6c.

125 UN Doc. S/PV. 8175 (2018), at 22.

126 The Security Council Report published an invaluable list of penholders as of January 2018, available at www.securitycouncilreport.org/un-security-council-working-methods/pen-holders-and-chairs.php.

127 M. Loiselle, ‘The Penholdership System and Elected Members of the Security Council: Setback or Improvement for the Rule of Law?’, in this issue, doi:10.1017/S0922156519000621.

128 UN Doc. S/1999/165 (1999).

129 UN Doc. S/PV. 8175 (2018), at 3.

130 The first formal mention is in UN Doc. S/2014/268 (2014).

131 UN Doc. S/2017/507 (2017), at para. 78.

132 UN Doc. S/2012/937 (2012).

133 UN Doc. S/2017/507 (2017), at para. 79.

134 Ibid., at para. 82.

135 UN Doc. S/PV. 8175 (2018), at 17.

136 UN Doc. S/Res/ 2165 (2014).

137 See Sievers and Daws, supra note 65.

138 See Ahmed, supra note 5, Ch. 3. See also Ch. 4 on the concept of non-performatives.

139 See Ahmed, ibid., at 126.

140 See Section 3.1 above.

141 See Riles, supra note 120; A. Riles, The Network Inside Out (2000).

142 The term is used in Rules 32 and 35 of the Council’s Provisional Rules of Procedure.

143 The distinction is made by Sievers and Daws, supra note 123.

144 In the words of its chief architect, Wallace K. Harrison. See G. A. Dudley, A Workshop for Peace (1994).

145 UN Doc. S/2017/507 (2017), at paras. 140–2.

146 UN Doc. S/2016/619 (2016).

147 Above, at text to note 46.

148 As discussed in Langmore, J. and Thakur, R., ‘The Elected but Neglected Security Council Members’, (2016) 39(2) The Washington Quarterly 99, at 108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

149 UN Doc. S/2017/468 (2017).

150 Ibid. The first session of the Hitting the Ground Running workshop in 2017, for example, asked ‘Which benchmarks should be employed to gauge the extent to which the Council has or has not been successful over the past year?’ (at 6) and ‘Are there implementation steps that should be regarded as priorities for the coming year?’ (at 8).

151 These are discussed by Langmore and Farrall in their analysis of Australia’s 2013–2014 term, supra note 48, at 59.

152 J. Prantl, The UN Security Council and Informal Groups of States (2006).

153 Prantl, J., ‘Informal Groups of States and the UN Security Council’, (2005) 59(3) International Organization 559, at 575.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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155 UN Doc. S/Res/1973 (2011).

156 Lobel, J. and Ratner, M., ‘Bypassing the Security Council: Ambiguous Authorizations to Use Force, Ceasefires and the Iraqi Inspection Regime’, (1999) 93(1) American Journal of International Law 124 CrossRefGoogle Scholar

157 B. Boutros-Ghali, Supplement to an Agenda for Peace, UN Doc. A/50/60 - S/1995/1 (1995), at paras. 83–84.

158 T. Whitfield, ‘Groups of Friends’, in D. Malone (ed.), The UN Security Council: From the Cold War to the 21st Century (2004), 311, at 320.

159 Ibid., at 319.

160 See Section 2.2 above.

161 See Sievers and Daws, supra note 65.

162 See Adorno, supra note 37.

163 C. Mouffe, Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically (2013), at 9–15.

164 UN Doc. S/2016/619 (2016), Note by the President of the Security Council, 15 July 2016.

165 Arendt discusses superfluity in The Origins of Totalitarianism (2017) notably, but not exclusively in relation to concentration camps. The first ‘superfluous men’ she identifies are the Boers (at 246). Housekeeping and superfluity are not the same thing in Arendt’s work, but they have in common the fact that both are ‘work performed without product’ (at 599). Moreover, the gendered nature of housekeeping suggests an othering which, while not on par with the absolute othering of superfluity, speaks to the way the E10 have been hived-off from the P5, and treated as lower-orders.

166 Marks, S., ‘Law and the Production of Superfluity’, (2011) 2(1) Transnational Legal Theory 1, at 24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar