The Most Acceptable Hypocrisy:
Legitimacy and Euphemism at the United Nations Security Council
Paper presented at the Institute for Democracy and Human Rights (IDHR)
Lunchtime Seminar Series, 30 October 203, University of Sydney.
Matthew D. Stephen
[email protected]
Work in Progress! Please do not circulate further.
Abstract
This paper examines the international politics of legitimation at the United Nations Security Council. It presents an
empirical analysis of legitimacy claims made by major states regarding the Security Council, finding that the
normative criteria for Security Council legitimacy have transformed since its original inception after the Second
World War. From an institution legitimised by its victory in the war and great power politics, the legitimacy of the
Security Council is today mostly evaluated according to principles deriving from liberal democratic principles:
accountability, transparency, representativeness, and democracy. It would be premature to attribute this
transformation of legitimation principles to a normative revolution, however. Instead, a change in vocabulary belies
continuity in the underlying realities: democratic legitimacy talk has become a form of euphemism, akin to
politeness. In this approach, legitimacy talk is neither a simple rationalisation of interests, nor an expression of
genuinely-held legitimacy perceptions, but a means for courteous intercourse over contentious international political
issues. In an era of liberal hegemony, international power politics adopts a liberal vocabulary. These findings have
implications for the rising powers debate, for legitimacy research in international politics, and for the prospects of
deliberative democracy beyond the nation state.
1
Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer
cloudy vagueness.
--George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
1. Introduction
To advance their claims, states often appeal to notions of legitimacy. At the same time,
international organizations require legitimacy in order to command support. The result is the
widespread use of legitimacy and legitimacy-related concepts in international diplomacy: what
we can call the international politics of legitimation.
The legitimation of international institutions has become a cottage industry in International
Relations. Early interventions (Barnett 1997; Hurd 1999) have spawned an increasing interest in
the role of legitimacy in international institutions and ‘global governance’ (Breitmeier 2008;
Buchanan and Keohane 2006; Føllesdal 2007; Hurd 1999; Keohane 2011; Steffek 2003; Symons
2011; Zürn 2004), the way legitimacy varies between intergovernmental and non-state
governance (Bernstein 2011; Risse 2004), an interest in legitimacy ‘crises’ (Hurd 2007b; ReusSmit 2007; Seabrooke 2007), and the legitimacy of the Security Council in particular (Hurd 2002,
2008; Morris and Wheeler 2007; Voeten 2005).1 But relatively little attention has been paid to
how the legitimation of international institutions has changed over time, and what this might
mean for the normative development of international orders more broadly. This article tackles
these questions with regard to the United Nations Security Council. In particular, this article
makes three central claims:
1. The principles of legitimation applied to the Security Council have changed dramatically
since its creation, involving a shift of emphasis from stratificatory legitimation to
democratic legitimation.
1
See also special issues of Review of International Political Economy 18(1) on “Legitimacy and Global
Governance” (2011) and International Politics 44(2) on “Resolving International Crises of Legitimacy” (2007).
2
2. The reason for this shift is related to the promulgation of democratic legitimation as a
feature of modern world society.
3. Rather than reflecting a genuine normative revolution, these changed legitimation
principles have become a euphemism for power politics.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the victorious allies promised to set up a successor to
the League of Nations in order to better “maintain international peace and security.” The Security
Council is arguably “the most powerful international organization ever known to the world of
states” (Hurd 2007a, 12), holding a unique position in terms of setting legal and political
precedent, and having been vested with the authority to identify and enforce any measure it
deems necessary to maintain international peace and security. At the same time, however, the
Security Council is almost unique in the universe of international institutions by formalising
unequal decision-making procedures favouring the Five Permanent members. This combination
of wide-ranging powers and a highly unequal mode of decision making has rendered it a
lightning rod for the international politics of legitimation.
An examination of states’ legitimacy claims about the Security Council since its founding could
give the impression that a normative revolution has occurred. The Security Council was
originally designed to enshrine the Allies’ victory over the Axis powers, and was based on an
overt norm that great powers had privileged positions within the international society of states
that made them ‘more equal than others’. Today, by contrast, the legitimacy of the Security
Council rests on different foundations, drawn primarily from the liberal democratic tradition,
such as transparency, accountability, and representation. Were these norms to be genuinely held,
we might be justified in celebrating a normative revolution in support of democratic principles as
the basis of international political authority. Unfortunately for supporters of the democratisation
of international institutions, the close alignment between legitimation claims and states’ interests
indicates that such a conclusion is ill-founded. In contrast, to account for these findings, this
article argues that the adoption of a liberal democratic vocabulary by states has developed as a
form of euphemized bargaining over Council reform in a modern normative context in which all
political authority is evaluated by legal-rational, and particularly liberal-democratic, criteria. In
this light, democratic ‘legitimacy talk’ serves neither as a simple rationalisation of interests, nor
3
an expression of genuinely-held legitimacy perceptions, but a means for courteous intercourse
over contentious international political issues in an era of liberal hegemony.
This differs from existing approaches to legitimacy talk that should be made clear at the outset.
Existing approaches to legitimacy talk in international politics tend to take one of three
approaches. Some dismiss it as ‘cheap talk’ and empty rhetoric. Others take it as imperfect but
reasonable indicators for states’ genuine legitimacy perceptions. Finally, others emphasise that
even if legitimacy talk is strategic, the credibility costs of hypocrisy make it hard for states to act
in violation of their own legitimacy claims. An alternative approach focuses on what legitimacy
talk is in the first place: a form of communication. Drawing on Bourdieu and research from
socio-linguistics, I conclude that what the major powers have really converged on is a common
pool of euphemisms for their own established or sought-after privileges in an era of liberal
hegemony. This conclusion has implications for the rising powers debate, for legitimacy research
in international politics, and for the prospects of deliberative democracy beyond the nation state.
The paper proceeds as follows. A first section provides a theoretical clarification of the role of
legitimacy in regard to the Security Council. This emphasises the relationship between the
Council’s unequal decision making procedures and the need for the Council to enjoy some level
of legitimacy in order to function effectively. Secondly, the article opts for an historical approach
to examine whether and how the legitimacy of the Council has changed over time. Based on
major states’ speeches in the UN General Assembly, I contrast the most salient legitimacy criteria
at the time of the Council’s founding, with the legitimacy criteria used today in the context of its
reform. Illustrating a shift in vocabulary but not in substance, the article then accounts for this
shift. Contrary to existing accounts, I argue that ‘legitimacy talk’ is not simply rationalisations or
pointless communicative emissions. Rather, legitimation serves as a linguistic lubricant for the
commodious exchange of claims and information about preferences, on other words, a form of
politeness in major power politics. As such, the politics of democratic legitimacy operates as a
social lubricant, reducing the transaction costs of hard bargaining.
2. The Politics of Legitimation at the UN Security Council
4
After the Second World War the allied ‘united nations’ negotiated a new international
organisation to replace the League of Nations. The United Nations Organisation emerged
substantially from the political deals between Britain and the United States (Cull 1996). The idea
was then presented to the Soviet Union at successive wartime conferences, including at the
Dumbarton Oaks Conference2 in August to October 1944, when the UN Charter was agreed. The
Security Council was the centrepiece of the new UN. The Security Council would embody
Roosevelt’s idea for a ‘trusteeship of the powerful’, whose permanent membership would be the
result of hard bargaining between the three wartime allies of the US, UK, and Soviet Union. The
result was ultimately a compromise between Roosevelt’s vision for ‘four policemen’ to patrol
their respective spheres of influence, Churchill’s preference for a system based on regional
representation that could entrench the status of the British Empire, and Stalin’s agnosticism about
the international institution, as long as it preserved a Soviet veto (B. Cox 2009, 94–98;
Hildebrand 1990; Mazower 2009). Later, the Big Three agreed to add two other members. France
was added as a permanent member on Britain’s initiative, and China by the United States (who
had also championed Brazil). Eventually, Stalin agreed to these additions despite considerable
initial opposition (B. Cox 2009, 96–98). Having established the five permanent members of the
Security Council each with a veto power, the other members were to be elected for staggered
two-year terms from five loosely geographic constituencies. The lesser states were forced to
accept this unusual state of affairs as the price of an international organization that could
incorporate all of the major victorious military powers. As Nico Krisch summarises, on offer was
“an organization with Great Power privilege, or no organization at all” (Krisch 2008, 136). The
resulting institution was therefore a departure from the aspirant norm of sovereign equality as
well as post-war idealism for a strong institution in charge of world peace (Hildebrand 1990;
Luck 2008; Mazower 2009).
The legitimacy of the Security Council is attenuated in particular by two institutional features: its
high level of authority, and its unequal decision-making procedures. An expanding Security
Council agenda since the Cold War has seen the power of the Council widen, as it defines new
issues as affecting ‘international peace and security’, and acquiring the right to refer situations to
the international judicial authority of the International Criminal Court (Statute of Rome, Article
2
Officially referred to as the Washington Conversations on International Peace and Security Organization.
5
13.b.). These powers require legitimation if they are to be respected and observed. Moreover, the
Security Council in particular faces challenges of legitimacy due to its institutionally unequal
decision-making procedures. The UN’s most powerful organ has institutionalised inequality
through special rights for five permanent veto-wielding members (Article 23, para. 1). This
degree of institutionalized privilege makes the Security Council truly “exceptional in the
landscape of international organizations” (Krisch 2008, 135). Consequently, the UNSC reflects a
clear procedural hierarchy with formalised privileges for certain members. The Council’s
violation of the deep norm and legal principle of sovereign equality appears even to conflict with
the United Nation’s own commitment to be based “on the principle of the sovereign equality of
all its members” (Article 2, para.1), but the veto power was designed “both to preserve the
institution and to insure that it could not be turned against one of its principal founders” (Luck
2008, 81). The combination of sweeping powers combined with unequal decision making
procedures has made the Security Council into a lightning rod for legitimacy claims related to
the normative ordering of international society, and is as a prime example of how international
organisations serve as “the major venue within which the global legitimation struggle over
international regimes is carried out today” (Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986, 773). Indeed, it has
been argued that the structure of the Council makes it especially dependent on its legitimacy to
ensure compliance:
Without legitimacy, a society must rely on other tools to maintain order, notably coercion and inducement.
This is particularly problematic for the Security Council, which cannot reliably use coercion to exert
compliance with its decisions, and it has no resources to use as inducements (Hurd 2008, 203).
But what criteria for political legitimacy are salient in states’ evaluations of the Security Council?
A sociological approach to this question must not begin with normative standards derived from
political philosophy but from the criteria and symbols adopted by actors in practice. The
substantive content of these criteria and symbols can arguably tell us much about the changing
nature of the legitimation of international institutions and about the normative content of
international society more broadly.
Notions of legitimacy cannot usually be directly observed but evidence for them can be observed
in public communication. Some norms are so deeply ingrained as to be taken for granted, and
6
therefore hard to detect explicitly, and “to an important extent, institutions may exist in the minds
of people and need not be written down anywhere” (Duffield 2007, 8). Legitimacy can remain an
unspoken background condition of social interaction, requiring textual analysts to be attentive to
what remains ‘unsaid’ in a text. But as others have shown, “States (and people) appear to find it
irresistible to provide a justification for their behaviour” (Hurd 2007b, 203), and this need for
justification “leave[s] an extensive trail of communication among actors that we can study”
(Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 892).
3. Concepts and Method
The members of the Security Council are states; the addressees of Security Council decisions are
states. Although there is increasing evidence that international institutions are affected by the
legitimacy perceptions of actors beyond the strictly inter-state sphere of international society
(Clark 2007; Meyer 2009; Meyer et al. 1997; Zürn, Binder, and Ecker-Ehrhardt 2012), states
remain “the privileged constituency of legitimation for intergovernmental institutions” such as
the Security Council (Bernstein 2011, 34). Consequently, this article focuses on the legitimation
statements made by states.
In addition, what follows accords particular attention to the statements made by the larger and
more influential members of the United Nations. Legitimacy does not operate on a ‘one man, one
vote basis’ but is differentiated according to the status and influence of the actors concerned
(Schneider, Nullmeier, and Hurrelmann 2007, 129). Historically in International Relations, the
legitimacy of international orders has been seen to be dependent on the perceptions of the ‘great
powers’, without whose agreement international orders become unstable (Kissinger 1957;
Philpott 1999). Major powers and other states can adopt different criteria with which to evaluate
international institutions (Binder and Heupel 2011; Zürn and Stephen 2010), eroding the
consensus for a legitimate international order. From the point of view of the authority of the
Security Council, some countries’ legitimacy perceptions are more important than others’. In
particular, states with significant military resources can threaten the whole collective security
system upon which the Security Council rests. Furthermore, the implementation of Security
Council decisions is particularly dependent on those states that (1) contribute substantially to the
Council’s budget, and (2) that contribute the soldiers necessary to implement UNSC decisions
7
(notably peacekeepers for peacekeeping operations and conventional military forces for
enforcement actions). To limit the statements made to a tractable amount, preference is therefore
given to the statements of major powers (primarily, the Permanent Five members and the Group
of Four).
Methodologically, studying the international politics of legitimation relies on forms of ‘content’
or ‘discourse’ analysis. A range of methods and epistemologies have now been developed in the
social sciences for the analysis of social communication, ranging from critical discourse analysis
through to quantitative content analysis (for a review, see Fairclough 2003; Krippendorff 2004;
Wodak and Meyer 2009). Here, I opt for a historically contextualised examination of debates
occurring at the UN General Assembly, emphasising interpretation and personal judgement in the
evaluation of texts and their wider meaning (Bull 1966; R. W. Cox 1996, 49–59; Hollis and
Smith 1991; Little 2000; Shapcott 1984; Weber 1949) in preferences to the methodology of
standardised coding (for an example applied to the Security Council, see Binder and Heupel
2011; Krippendorf 2004; Mayring 2000). Advances in computational techniques of content
analysis have fuelled an enthusiasm for ‘distant’ readings of texts that have high levels of
systematization and reproducibility, but are difficult to reconcile with the nuance that a close
reading attentive to social context and semiotics can reveal (Wagner-Pacifici, Mohr, and Breiger
2012).
I adopt an approach that has at its centre the ‘legitimation statement’ as the primary unit of
analysis. Such an approach asks of states “Which criteria and arguments do they use to assess
their regime and to justify these evaluations?” (Schneider, Nullmeier, and Hurrelmann 2007,
127). Here, I am less interested in whether statements about the Security Council are positive or
negative, and more interested in the standard by which it is assessed.3 I examined statements
made by states in the context of General Assembly debates relating to the Security Council.
Statements at the UN General Assembly constitute a primary means for a state to publically
communicate, in a public and strategic setting, their viewpoints on matters of relevance to the
Security Council generally.
3
A quantitative overview of positive or negative evaluations of the Security Council is provided by Binder and
Heupel (2011).
8
In order to identify on what principles of legitimacy major states evaluated the Security Council,
a low-tech and easy to implement approach of qualitative content analysis of statements in the
UN General Assembly was adopted. Statements were examined anecdotally with a view to
identifying legitimation statements of relevance to the Security Council, and to adduce the wider
normative assumptions that lie behind these statements. An anecdotal approach can be justified
where the goal is not to reduce large amounts of text into a tractable summary or to draw
conclusions from the frequency of a statement’s occurrence (see Bauer 2000). Rather, the
emphasis was laid on identifying the Leitmotivs that underlies a state’s legitimation claims in the
General Assembly. A fuller interpretation can only emerge when placing such legitimation
statements in their wider discursive context, and interrogating the politics and power relations
embedded in them (Fairclough 1989; Wodak and Meyer 2009).
In order to identify changes in the legitimatory repertoire, this approach was applied at two time
intervals: those statements made in the first two years of the General Assembly’s existence
(1946-1947), and those made more recently (2005-2006). The earlier phase covers the earliest
period of the Council’s existence, when the United Nations was not taken for granted but openly
debated. The second phase covers the period of most intense discussions of the Security
Council’s reform, during the 59th and 60th General Assemblies. In both of these time periods, the
General Assembly debates included reflection on the Security Council’s annual report to the
General Assembly. During these debates the contending positions on Security Council working
methods, policies, membership, and structure are justified and legitimated by UN members. They
serve as a key resource for the study of (de-)legitimation as an international political process.
4. Results
T1: Victorious Great Power Entitlement
Upon its founding, the legitimacy of the United Nations Security Council had little to do with
democratic representation or accountability to the general membership. Rather, an examination of
its historical origins and early debates about the Council reveal that it was founded on the
legitimacy accorded to the United Nations by virtue, of their defeat of the Axis powers, and in
9
particular to the allied great powers who were seen as indispensable to that military victory. This
reflects a widespread understanding that ‘great powers’ have special entitlements and
responsibilities in international society, but also that such privileges could serve the common
good.
The Security Council was one of the principal organs of the United Nations, which emerged from
the coordination efforts of the Allied powers during the Second World War. The United Nations
was the term adopted on New Year’s Day 1942 in the White House, by the 26 countries at war
with the Axis powers. “The declaration committed the signatories not to make a separate peace
with the enemy and to the principles of the Atlantic Charter” (Plesch 2008, 140). Indeed, the
official but seldom-used English language title of the United Nations is the United Nations
Organization (UNO), which was designed to distinguish it from the ‘united nations’ wartime
alliance (Plesch 2008, 158). The United Nations was the preferred term in military
communications and in public speeches to refer to the wartime coalition. Indeed, it was to the
United Nations that the Axis powers would formally surrender (Plesch 2008, 144–148). Even in
the UN Charter agreed in San Francisco, Articles 53 and 107 contained references to ‘enemy
states’, and still does.4
Contextualising the historical origins of the United Nations in this manner underlines that the UN
Security Council was, in its initial phases, largely self-legitimating as the coalition of major
powers that had fought the war and secured the principles enshrined in the Atlantic Charter. This
can also be seen in the early debates of the General Assembly.
When the General Assembly met for the first time in London in January 1946, its speakers often
referred to the status of the United Nations as the defeater of fascism and ‘our enemies’. In the
first Plenary Session of the General Assembly, Prime Minister Clement Attlee of the United
Kingdom spoke of “the malice of our enemies wreaked upon this ancient city[,]” and reminded
delegates that the United Nations had its origins in discussions “while our enemies were still in
the field against us” (A/PV.1, 39). The delegate from the USSR was more explicit about linking
4
Articles 53 and 107 have been fossilized in the UN Charter to this day, resulting in the unlikely situation that even
today, countries such as Germany, Italy and Japan qualify as ‘enemy states’ due to their being states “which during
the Second World War has been an enemy of any signatory of the present Charter” (UN Charter, Article 53.2).
10
the United Nations, and in particular the ‘big three’ powers, to the victory in the war, telling the
General Assembly,
The United Nations was created while the flames of the Second World War were still raging. It was created
by the same anti-Hitler coalition that was headed by the United States of America, Great Britain and the
Soviet Union, which bore on their shoulders the brunt of the struggle against our common enemy and which
were anxious to create an effective international organization for the defense of post-war peace and security
(A.PV/42, 836; also A/PV.84, 92).
The Security Council was in this way associated with having vanquished the attempt by German
and Japanese “enemies of mankind to establish world domination” (A/PV.84, 92). Similarly, the
candidature of the Foreign Minister of Norway for the office of President of the General
Assembly was justified by the Soviet Union on the basis of “the role of Norway in the war
against our common enemy. Norway was one of the first victims of German aggression. The
Norwegian people as a whole have shown that they are good fighters for democracy and they
have shown a good example of resistance to the German invaders” (A/PV.1, 43).
Even a small state like New Zealand linked the Council and the privileged position of its
permanent members to their part in winning the war, and indicated that explicit inequalities in its
decision making procedures were perfectly legitimate:
…we, and those who think as we do, recognize and acknowledge at once that the great Powers who played
the predominant part in winning the war must similarly play the predominant part in winning the peace. […]
We agree therefore that some means must be devised to give to the vote and the voice of each Member of
the United Nations such weight and authority as are proportionate to the size and status of that Member
(A.PV/39, 785).
The point here is not that these legitimacy claims were universal. Indeed, dissenters such as Peru
would argue that the United Nations “should become more and more an association of all
peoples, through their representative elements which are their Governments; and less and less an
instrument for perpetuating the political and material advantages derived from victory” (A/PV.36,
721). Rather, such claims indicate that for at least a portion of the state members, such legitimacy
claims were deemed justified or even persuasive in the eyes of the society of states.
11
The other major legitimacy principle emerging from early debates in the General Assembly
sought to associate the Security Council with the legitimacy attendant on its permanent members
as ‘great Powers’. What can be called the ‘great power norm’ suggests that states who possess the
highest level of resources have special rights and responsibilities in international politics:
recognition was explicitly tied to power (Suzuki 2008). As such, the great power norm conflicts
with traditional understandings of sovereign equality. When the General Assembly met for the
first time in London in January 1946, the predominance of the Great Power norm in legitimating
the structure of the Security Council was readily apparent.
The very first address to the General Assembly by its Chairman, Dr. Zuleta Angel of Columbia,
was filled with references to the ‘great Powers’ upon whom the general membership depended
for their collective security. It was considered a “self-evident fact that the chief responsibility for
the maintenance of peace rests upon those nations which have the greatest resources available for
this purpose[,]” meaning “The five great Powers which, by virtue of Articles 24 and 27 of the
Charter, and by the very nature of things, will shoulder the chief responsibility for the
maintenance of peace and security” as defined by “the immense power of their military, financial
and industrial resources” (A/PV.1, 38). Similarly, the small state of Norway referred to the veto
as “only the technical expression of the fact that this Organization is based upon co-operation and
agreement between the permanent members of the Security Council. […] If we keep constantly in
mind that agreement among the permanent members of the Security Council is the very basis of
the United Nations, the veto question itself loses much of its importance” (A/PV.28, 755).
Time and time again, the ‘great Powers’ were attributed special rights and responsibilities by
virtue of their material resources, which was seen to legitimate the institutional structure of the
Security Council. Brazil gave the clearest explanation of the logic:
Brazil, although theoretically opposed to the veto, accepted it in a constructive spirit in order to get results.
We thought that, whereas all States are equal before the law theoretically, their responsibilities as regards
the maintenance of peace are in direct proportion to their means of action and, consequently, vary greatly.
For that reason we decided that it was necessary to place trust in the great Powers (A/PV.36, 716).
12
The United States similarly articulated that “The great Powers bear special responsibilities
because of their strength and resources. While these responsibilities bring with them special
advantages, the great Powers must recognize that restraint is an essential companion of power
and privilege” (A/PV.82, 26). India, represented at the General Assembly even before its formal
independence from the British Empire, had already begun championing its case for representation
in the Security Council on the basis of its status as “a major country” (A/PV.37, 731). Even
Mexico, speaking on behalf of the ‘small and medium-sized nations’, acknowledged: “We realize
that with those Powers rests the main responsibility for safe-guarding the peace, and we
recognize, with a clear sense of reality, that they should have certain special privileges”
(A/PV.35, 707); Chile criticised the veto system but took it as self-evident that “the main
responsibility for the maintenance of peace” rested with ‘the five great Powers’ (A/PV.28, 752);
Argentina argued “Is it not a fact that the great Powers have promised the world to act in good
faith? It is precisely their economic and military power which places upon them the obligation to
fulfill that promise” (A/PV.37, 725).
These statements suggest that the legitimacy accorded to the Security Council in the first year of
its functioning were widely associated with two key principles: firstly, that its membership had
fought and won the war for the benefit of humankind, and that the presence of the permanent
members in positions of privilege within the Council was justified largely because of their unique
prestige owing to their status as major powers. The ‘great Powers’ were entrusted with special
rights due to their ‘military, financial and industrial resources’ and due to their having played ‘the
predominant part in winning the war’. Indeed, the notion that the great powers were entitled to
special status was part of ‘the very nature of things’. This does not imply that the legitimacy of
the Security Council was not contested, even at this early stage, or that rival standards of
legitimacy were also invoked. Frequent criticism of the veto was also expressed, highlighting that
the major powers were not living up to their responsibilities (the Argentine representative
referred to it in 1946 as “not a privilege but an absurdity”, A/PV.37, 730). But the historical
record, and the texture of early debates about the Security Council, indicate that the legitimacy of
the Council cannot easily be separated from its members’ victory in the war and its nature as a
“big power oligarchy” (Luck 2008, 63).
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T2: Rational-legal Authority / Effectiveness and Democracy
Today, the standards of legitimacy applied to the Security rest on very different foundations. The
texture of current debates has taken on the universalistic traits of legal-rational forms of
legitimacy, with a strong emphasis on democratic legitimation in particular. The dissatisfaction of
some members of the United Nations with the veto power, even from the institution’s inception,
indicated that its legitimacy has never been beyond question. But the end of the Cold War opened
up new space for its legitimacy to be renegotiated. Particularly since 1992, when the General
Assembly unanimously tabled the item of ‘Question of equitable representation on and increase
in the membership of the Security Council’, the Security Council seems to have operated within a
perpetual slow-running ‘legitimacy crisis’: a “critical turning point when decline in an actor’s or
institution’s legitimacy forces adaptation (through re-legitimation or material inducement) or
disempowerment” (Reus-Smit 2007, 167).
Attempts by the UN membership to re-legitimate the Security Council have primarily occurred
through various attempts to reform the structure and working methods of the Council, including
the question of membership expansion. Major antagonists in the current international politics of
legitimation of the Security Council are the Council’s five permanent members, and the members
of the G4 coalition who aspire to permanent status (Brazil, India, Germany and Japan). Here, I
examine the legitimacy claims of these states in the 65th and 66th Plenary Sessions of the General
Assembly (covering the period 2010-2011). In this process, these states are unable to resist
framing their claims in generalisable terms of justification by appealing to principles of
legitimation. But these are very different to the principles on which the Council was founded.
The most striking indication of this change in the legitimation repertoire is the complete absence
of either of the claims to legitimacy common in the post-war period. References to the ‘great
Powers’ were a standard part of diplomatic vocabulary in the early years of the United Nations;
today, this term has been erased from public rhetoric. Likewise, the legitimacy afforded from
member states’ roles in the war effort have never been invoked by any of the established or
aspiring powers in their legitimacy claims relating to the Security Council.5 Instead, debates
5
Although, according to India’s Hardeep S. Puri, in 2012 the Russian representative did apparently comment on the
issue of Council reform: “We deserve to be there because we won it in our history on the battlefield” (Puri 2013).
14
about the Security Council in the General Assembly today reflect widespread appeals to
democratic principles of political authority. This can be seen vividly in the sort of legitimation
statements that characterise debates at the General Assembly in recent years.
A common form of democratic legitimation that is applied to the Security Council today is
deliberation (Bernstein 2011; Buchanan and Keohane 2006; Coleman and Porter 2000; Esty
2007). This form of legitimacy derives from the capacity of an institution to facilitate public
debate and contestation, facilitating the ‘force of the better argument’ and leading to publicly
reasoned decisions (Zürn and Stephen 2010, 94). Brazil mentions this in connection to the
Council having open debates and public meetings, which canvass “a broad spectrum of opinion
on the issues before it and, in fact, enhances the quality of the Council’s deliberations.”
(A/59/PV.25); Russia’s defence of the Council now includes talk of “open debates” on diverse
themes and “fruitful deliberations with the larger United Nations membership” (A/60/PV.47).
And the United States considers that the Security Council currently “permits useful and
manageable discussions and debates” (A/60/PV.96).
Accountability is another form of rational-legal legitimacy that can be considered a prerequisite
for democratic governance in international institutions (Buchanan and Keohane 2006).
“Accountability means that decision-makers are formally responsible for what they do” (Zürn
and Stephen 2010, 94). Many of the critiques of aspiring permanent members are framed in terms
of redressing the accountability deficit of the Security Council, while the statements of the
permanent members also acknowledge the importance of accountability in the Council’s
functions. Brazil has argued that “the addition of new permanent members selected by the
Assembly would establish a direct link of accountability between the new permanent members
and the general membership” (A/59/PV.111). Transparency can be considered a cognate concept
of accountability and is also increasingly applied to assess the legitimacy of international
institutions; both by scholars (Bernstein 2011; Coleman and Porter 2000) and in statements by
major states in General Assembly debates. Germany has identified a need for “more
transparency, more inclusiveness and accountability” (A/60/PV.48); and while disagreeing on
many other things, the demand for ‘more transparency’ unites India, Japan and the United
Kingdom, among others (A/59/PV.111; A/59/PV.112; A/60/PV.48).
15
Perhaps the most ubiquitous standard of legitimacy now applied by major powers to the Security
Council are the democratic principles of participation and representation. Participation implies
that those who are affected by a decision should have a say in it; representation is a mechanism to
ensure that the interests of a wider constituency are translated fairly into a smaller number of
decision makers—a principal-agent relationship. This standard of legitimacy have often been
invoked regarding in relation to international institutions as well (Coleman and Porter 2000, 389;
Keohane 2011, 104; Zürn and Stephen 2010, 94). The speeches by the P5 and G4 countries
during the 59th and 60th Plenary Sessions invoked representation on average twice in every
speech, and it was the criterion of representation that underpinned the unanimous adoption of the
agenda item ‘Question of equitable representation on and increase in the membership of the
Security Council’ in the General Assembly in 1992. The logic of representation was explained by
the Brazilian delegate: “In short, better representation confers greater legitimacy, and greater
legitimacy increases the efficiency and efficacy of the work of the Council” (A/59/PV.25). For
some observers, representation has become so central to the legitimation of the Council today that
it has become “a proxy for legitimacy” (Lowe et al. 2008, 33). Underlining this dramatic shift in
the vocabulary of legitimation is also the fact that ‘democracy’ itself has become a term used to
call into question the legitimacy of the Security Council. The ‘democratization of international
relations’ has been a term used by Brazil and China in their discussions of Council reform
(A/59/PV.111; A/60/PV.95). In fact, all of the Permanent and G4 countries have used democracy
as a standard in their evaluations of the Council and the criteria for its reform.
Until now we have considered the salient forms of legitimacy applied to the Security Council that
are part of the ‘input’ side of political legitimacy – participation in the decision making process
which ensures that political choices are “derived from the authentic preferences of the members
of the community” (Scharpf 1999, 6). But ideas of political authority being legitimated through
legality, its ability to carry out its duties (to be effective), and to rule based on expertise, are all
‘output’ forms of legitimacy that are represented in major power debates of the Security Council
(Bernstein 2011, 33–43; Coleman and Porter 2000, 389; Scharpf 1999, 21–28; Zürn and Stephen
2010, 94). For example, India has criticised the Council for overstepping its legal mandate
(A/60/PV.50), the United States and Russia has insisted that the first task of Council reform is to
increase its effectiveness (A/59/PV.112), and the United Kingdom has urged that the Council
“engage more in dialogue with non-Council members and other experts, both to build up greater
16
expertise and to respond to others’ concerns” (A/60/PV.48). Others would add that the protection
of human rights is another form of output legitimacy relevant to international institutions (Zürn
and Stephen 2010, 94), and indeed, even this most power-based institution has begun to be
assessed by countries such as Brazil, China, France, and the United States according to whether it
can uphold human rights (A/60/PV.48; A/60/PV.49; A/59/PV.111).
While the legitimacy deficit facing the Security Council has been widely remarked upon (Clark
2011, 153; Hurd 2002, 2008; Morris and Wheeler 2007), less attention has been paid to the
changes in the legitimacy criteria that are used to evaluate the Council. The preceding
considerations suggest that in the time between the Council’s founding and its current legitimacy
difficulties, the public legitimation of the Security Council has transformed. The evidence
suggests that the state parties to the UN Charter understood the legitimacy accorded to the
Council by virtue of its permanent members’ role in the Second World War, and their
overwhelming material resources were regarded as the primary basis for their institutional
privileges. Today, the Council is frequently assessed, even by its defenders, on the basis of its
democratic credentials: its transparency, accountability, its impartiality, its ability to ‘represent’
the UN membership. But democracy “was not a founding principle of the UN” (Keohane 2011,
105), and sceptics note that this new legitimacy vocabulary flies in the face “of the declared
intentions of the original Charter drafters who ‘explicitly rejected the notion that the Security
Council should be representative, democratic, or equitable” (Clark 2011, 165, citing Luck 2005,
p. 3). How did this transformation come to pass, and what does it mean for the nature of
legitimacy in international society more broadly? To elucidate these questions we must
interrogate the role of legitimacy talk more closely.
5. Legitimation as Euphemisation
These observations immediately raise two questions: why has this shift in the legitimation of the
Security Council occurred? And why do states find it necessary to frame their demands in terms
of democratic legitimacy? To answer these questions requires placing legitimacy talk in its
context within social communication.
17
When states discuss what makes the Security Council legitimate, and when they advance claims
about the legitimacy of the Council, they are forced to appeal to standards that are more widely
shared in the society of states. Where explicit appeals to great power entitlements could suffice in
the immediate post-war period, legitimacy talk today is loath to invoke explicit inequalities as a
legitimate procedural norm. The shift in the public legitimation of the Security Council indicates
that a normative shift has occurred, away from power-based legitimation and towards democratic
legitimation. Here, I do not test but suggest an explanation for this change in terms of the
diffusion of universalist cognitive models, before shifting to the role of these cognitive models in
framing acceptable appeals to legitimacy that appear primarily as euphemisms for power politics.
Sociological institutionalist theorists have extensively highlighted the diffusion of common
standards of Western rationality that emphasise scientific rationality, progress, and formal
equality in the development of a common ‘world society’ that has markedly accelerated after
1945 (Meyer 2009; Meyer et al. 1997). An effect of the diffusion of these cognitive and
ontological models of world society is to discredited particularist models of political authority
and authority derived from history, in favour of universalist models of legitimacy through the
impersonal promulgation of ‘legitimacy myths’ such as democracy, freedom and equality (Meyer
et al. 1997, 160). While this can be used to explain the surprising degree of institutional
isomorphism displayed by diverse nation states around the world, “The logical extension of this
argument is that there seems to be a universal understanding that political authority has to tap the
modern sources of legitimacy” (Zürn and Stephen 2010, 95). The shifting legitimation of the
Council can then be explained by the altered normative structure of world society, which has seen
the ascendancy of ‘legal-rational’ forms of legitimacy over its rivals (Weber 2010), with
Finnemore noting that “Laws, rules, and institutions have a legitimacy of their own in
contemporary politics that derives from their particular rational-legal, impersonal character”
(2009, 60). This would signal a broader shift from historical and stratificatory norms to
democratic norms as the basis for the normative justifiability of all modern political orders—
“expressed as general principles to be applied everywhere” (Meyer et al. 1997, 162). In the
context of the Security Council, this has the effect that “Even substantively unequal rules may
take on an egalitarian cast when they are promulgated in impersonal form, since it suggests that
the same rules apply to everyone” (Finnemore 2009, 69).
18
Moreover, the rise of liberalism as the major normative standard of world society has lent this
legal-rational script a distinctly liberal and democratic flavour (Bernstein 2000; R. W. Cox 1981;
Meyer et al. 1997, 167–168; Van der Pijl 1998; Risse 2002; Stephen 2011). It is now more
legitimate to say ‘the addition of new permanent members will increase the transparency,
accountability and representativeness of the Security Council’ than it is to say ‘the most powerful
states are entitled to special rights and responsibilities’. In short, arguments of great Power
privilege have become discredited, so states must adopt a new democratic vocabulary of
legitimation.
Accepting that the normative structure of Security Council legitimacy has changed does not
necessarily imply that states are honest in their legitimacy claims, however. Given contending
states’ interests over Council reform, significant incentives exist for states to engage in
dissembling rhetoric. Indeed, democratic ‘legitimacy talk’ has widely been harnessed to pursue
the institutional interests of individual states. The G4 coalition present their demands for special
privileges in terms of transparency, accountability, representation and democracy; the opponents
of the G4’s ambitions use the same vocabulary to oppose the addition of new permanent
members; and the Permanent Five defend both their own privileges and their concessions for
reform in the same criteria for input legitimacy and effectiveness. Moreover, it would be
surprising indeed if such a normative consensus prevailed, that reform has been hitherto so
unsuccessful. Despite such an apparent normative consensus, and despite the presence of Council
reform on the General Assembly agenda (for more than 20 years) and the convening of both a
Working Group and Intergovernmental Negotiations on Council reform, “Member States have
fought a bitter war of attrition and reform fatigue seems widespread” (von Freiesleben 2008, 19).
And it would remain a curious anomaly, why it is not just democratic but also autocratic states
who have adopted the vocabulary of representative democracy in their public evaluations of
Security Council legitimacy (Binder and Heupel 2011, 21).
Ian Hurd suggests we require a considerable grain of salt: “most of the ‘legitimacy talk’ around
which reform arguments are constructed is a false front, covering up the political interests of
states” (Hurd 2008, 213). If legitimacy claims align so closely with self-interest, what status does
this ‘legitimacy’ have at all? Three potential answers present themselves.
19
First, some have argued that legitimacy is still significant for international institutions because
states who dissemble too openly in their statements will face the potential for their rhetoric to
double-back in the form of a ‘hypocrisy trap’ or ‘rhetorical entrapment’ (Finnemore 2009, 72–76;
Risse 2000; Weaver 2008). As Hurd explains (2008, 213), “public statements about a principle of
legitimation might be turned around by others in ways the speaker never intended but from which
they can’t escape.” A major difficulty with this explanation emerges, however. Hypocrisy refers
to a situation in which an actor’s actions diverge from the ideas it espouses. States in the UN do
not display hypocrisy in this sense, because their legitimation statements are closely aligned to
their own interests. Appeals to the democratic quality of the Security Council are appealed to by
virtually all participants, who seek reciprocally to align their legitimacy claims with their
interests. Consequently, rhetoric and action reinforce one another.
A second, alternative account would be to dismiss legitimacy talk as empty rhetoric. Carr argued
that states use ‘ideological power’ to alter the distribution of material and normative goods of the
international system (Carr 1946, 102–45), while Morgenthau was even more dismissive, saying
that legal norms are only so good as the state power that backs it up (Morgenthau 1948). But this
only begs the question: if legitimacy is empty rhetoric, why do states and international
institutions bother with it at all?
A third explanation is arguably more promising. This focuses on the functional role of
‘legitimacy talk’ in facilitating inter-state communication. The alignment of interests and
legitimacy claims suggests that much of the legitimation politics regarding the Security Council
today can then be understood as reciprocal exchanges of what Pierre Bourdieu described as
‘euphemisation’ (1977, 191): the use of polite expressions in order to conceal the underlying and
unpleasant realities. According to Bourdieu, euphemisms are an attempt to negotiate the gap
between what it is we want to say, and what is ‘allowed’ to be spoken. It is particularly important
in order to mediate power relations in social discourse. In the context of the Security Council, it is
better to advance claims in a euphemised form, using a democratic vocabulary which has attained
nearly universal recognition as legitimate, rather than in the form of direct self-interest or great
power privilege. Hence, states advance their interests through the cover of euphemism to save
face. An alternative explanation for the proliferation of legitimacy talk, therefore, lies in the role
of legitimacy and norms in facilitating a common façade of courteous interaction in international
20
politics. This allows for the eliciting of contentious issues while reducing the prospect for the
open clashing of wills.
Euphemism reflects a public discourse of ‘politeness’. Politeness in communication is closely
bound with the idea of ‘face’ and ‘saving face’, both for the person speaking as for the person
potentially subject to criticism (Brown and Levinson 1987, 61–4). This is a characteristic of all
developed linguistic groups: “The modification of verbal and nonverbal behaviour to avoid
conflicts is an important communicative activity in all cultures” (Janney and Arndt 2005, 21), and
it has been studied as a ‘universal in language use’ (Brown and Levinson 1987). The proliferation
of legitimacy talk, by appealing to common normative frames to justify demands, is neither
dissembling nor hypocrisy, but a form of what Watts (2005) calls ‘politic verbal behaviour’. This
verbal behaviour manipulates language for specific purposes. Politeness also functions as a mask
for one’s true thoughts; in doing so it facilitates the operation of a smooth ‘public transcript’ for
contentious disputes in global governance. Watts’ (2005, 45) citation of Sell’s description of
politeness in 18th century Britain seems particularly relevant:
…probably the best thing most people would say about politeness is that it is a social lubricant less nocuous
than alcohol, probably useful, like free alcohol, for the corps diplomatique. Or, still more likely, that it is a
velvet glove within which to hide one or another kind of iron fist… (Sell 1991, 211).
Most sociolinguistic interpretations of politeness emphasise its role in reducing friction in
personal interactions, also by offering muted ways to express criticisms or demands (Watts 2005,
45–7). In this way politeness and the reciprocal use of euphemisms to exchange ideas is another
method for communities to regulate internal aggression, while simultaneously allowing recourse
to aggression. This is the core of the diplomatic protocol, which constitutes the most basic
normative element of international society. Democratic legitimacy has become a common
vocabulary with which contending interests over the reform of the Security Council can
communicate. It serves as a public transcript to dignify what would otherwise be venal and selfserving demands.
Most tellingly, amidst all of the appeals to democratic ideals in the legitimation of the Security
Council, there live on less frequent appeals to the cryptic concept of ‘global realities’. Japan has
21
added that “To be effective, it [the Security Council] must be changed to better reflect the
realities of today’s world” (A/60/PV.50). Similar references to ‘realities’ can be seen in the
speeches of nearly all major powers today.6 The fact that these realities are never explained
explicitly indicates that while they are widely understood as a cypher for a new distribution of
power, it would be regarded as impolite to speak of openly. In this way, legitimation is not
necessarily a reflection of ‘true’ legitimacy perceptions, nor is it a pointless communicative
emission. Rather, it serves as a linguistic lubricant for the relatively commodious exchange of
information, claims, and preferences: in other words, a form of politeness.
6. Conclusion
International institutions exercise authority and are increasingly assessed according to normative
criteria of political legitimacy. The Security Council combines high levels of international
authority with peculiar decision making procedures favouring the Permanent Five powers, and
therefore requires legitimacy. But the basis on which this situation has been publicly legitimated
by the major powers has dramatically changed since its founding. The initial legitimacy of the
Security Council emerged substantially from its members’ roles in fighting the Second World
War, and from the power resources of the five allied ‘great Powers’. Today, the public
legitimation of the Security Council focuses more centrally on democratic criteria. This can be
accounted for by the changing nature of legitimation in global society, favouring legal-rational,
and especially liberal, forms of legitimacy. Nonetheless, a closer inspection of legitimation
politics reveals that much contemporary legitimacy talk is a euphemised form for power politics.
This reveals a dynamic process in which common standards of legitimacy evolve over time, but
which at any given moment are also the battlegrounds for contending political interests and
visions who seek to mediate their differences through a common language of civility.
What are the broader implications of these findings? Three may foregrounded within the confines
of this conclusion. First, the reallocation of international power resources occasioned by the ‘rise’
of powers outside the privileged corridors of the Security Council poses a problem for the
6
For examples from the 65th and 66th General Assemblies, see A/65/PV.49 and A/66/PV.51 (United States),
A/66/PV.52 (United Kingdom), A/65/PV.48 and A/66/PV.51 (Japan), A/65/PV.49 (India), A/65/PV.48 (Germany),
and A/66/PV.51 (Brazil).
22
legitimacy of the Council, as major states at least tacitly recognize the role of power resources in
legitimating the composition of the Council. But while this affects the ‘level’ of legitimacy the
Council enjoys, it is unlikely to prompt a broader normative re-structuring of the criteria of
Council legitimacy. Both the G4 and the existing permanent members use the same vocabulary of
legitimation, even if they argue for very different things.
Second, researchers of the authority of international institutions should be cautioned from
exaggerating the role of legitimacy as a completely independent mechanism to increase political
capacity (Hurd 1999, 383–9; Reus-Smit 2007, 167). Indeed, legitimacy perceptions and selfinterest may not only be hard to separate methodologically, they may be ontologically related as
well. In any concrete matter of human affairs, legitimacy perceptions and self-interest “are
unlikely to be either mutually exclusive, distinct, fixed over time, or, indeed, necessarily clear to
the actor” (Morris 2004, 266–7; Scott 1985, 38–41). It then becomes fruitless to argue over
whether states are revealing their ‘true’ legitimacy perceptions, when self-interest and legitimacy
perceptions are related to each other in complex and often self-reinforcing ways. Whether the
Council is ‘legitimate’, or simply serving instrumental interests, becomes a moot point.
Thirdly, theorists of deliberative democracy should be cautioned from taking too seriously the
use of democratic criteria by states to assess the legitimacy of international institutions. Taking
states’ interest in democratic legitimacy at the Security Council at their face value risks
conflating strategic discourse for honest reflections of underlying interests or preferences (for
discussions, see Frieden 1999; Scott 1990; Zürn 1997). An age of international democracy is less
likely than the strategic use of democratic euphemisms for power politics. The Security Council
is a prime example of how an institution may continue on, unclothed by legitimacy, due to a
combination of historical inertia, lack of ready alternatives, and its serving of a common interest
amongst a critical mass of international society. More than this: the Security Council remains ‘the
only game in town’.
23
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