The Contemporary World

Lecture Notes

THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE CONTEMPORARY GLOBAL

GOVERNMENT

Although many internationalists such as Bentham and Kant envisioned a

worldwide government, there is none that exists presently. There is no single entity to
whom all states must answer. Furthermore, no organization can compel a state to follow
predefined global regulations through military force. The overall behavior of states,
however, has some consistency. For instance, they largely adhere to global navigation
routes and, in most cases, respect each other’s territorial borders. Furthermore, when
they do not, which happened when Russia invaded Crimea in 2004, it causes global
worry and controversy.
Despite the lack of a single world authority, states under an international order
continue to adhere to some global rules, implying that is some semblance of world
order. The multiple intersecting processes that generate this order are referred to as
global governance.
Global governance can come from a variety of sources. Nations establish
treaties and form organizations, enacting public international law (international
standards that regulate relations between states rather than, for example, private
enterprises). International non-governmental organizations (NGOs), though not
having formal state power, can lobby individual states to behave in a certain way (for
example, an international animal protection NGO can pressure governments to pass
animal cruelty laws). Powerful transnational corporation’s can likewise have tremendous
effects on global labor laws, environmental legislation, trade policy, and more. Even
ideas, such as the need for “global democracy” or the clamor for “good governance,”
can influence the ways international actors behave.
One lesson will not be able to cover the various ways global governance occurs.
As such, this lesson will only examine how global governance is articulate by
intergovernmental organization. It will focus primarily on the United Nations (UN) as
the most prominent intergovernmental organization today.
What is an International Organization?
When scholars refer to groups such as the UN or institutions such as the IMF
and the World Bank, they usually call the international organizations (IOs). Although
international NGOs are sometimes considered IOs, the term is commonly used to refer
to international intergovernmental organizations or groups that are primarily made of
member-states.
One major fallacy about international organizations is that they are merely
amalgamations of various state interests. In the 1960s and 1970s many scholars
believed that IOS were just venues where the contradicting but sometimes intersecting
agenda of countries were discussed -no more than talk shops. What has become more
evident in recent years, however, is that IOs can take on lives of their own. For example,
the IMF was able to promote a particular form of economic orthodoxy that stemmed
mainly form the belief of its professional economics. International relations scholars
Michael N. Barnett and Martha Finnemore listed the following power of IOs.
First, IOs have the power of classification. Because IOs can invent and apply
categories, they create powerful global standards. For example, it is the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that defines what a refugee is. Furthermore,
since states are required to accept refugees entering their borders, this power to
establish identity has concrete effects.
Second, IOs have the ability to change the meaning of words. This is a more
general function that is linked to the first. Various concepts, such as “security” and
“development.” must be clearly defined. IOs are seen as legitimate sources of
information for states, organizations, and individuals. As a result, the meanings they
generate have an impact on a variety of policies. For example, recently, the United
Nations has started to define security as not just safety from military violence but also
safety from environmental harm.
Finally, IOs have the power to diffuse norms. Norms are accepted codes of
conduct that may not be strict laws but produce regularity in behavior. IOs do not only
classify and fix meanings; they also spread their ideas across the world, thereby
establishing global standards. Their members are, as Barnett and Finnemore
emphasized, the “missionaries” of our time. Their power to diffuse norms stems from the
fact that IOs are staffed with independent bureaucracies, who are considered experts in
various fields. For example, World bank economics come to be regarded as experts in
development, and thus, carry some form of authority. As a result, they can stablish
standards for the implementation and conceptualization of development projects.
Because of these immense powers, IOs can be sources of great good and great
harm. They have the ability to promote important standards such as environmental
conservation and human rights. However, similar to other entrenched bureaucracies,
they can become closed communities that refuse to question their views. For example,
Nobel Prize winner and economist Joseph Stiglitz publicly condemned the IMF for
adopting a “one-size-fits-all” approach in making recommendations for developing
countries.

The United Nations

Having examined the powers, limitations, and weaknesses of IOs, the spotlight
will now fall on the most prominent IO in the contemporary world, the United Nations
(UN). After the collapse of the League of Nations at the end of the World War II,
countries that worried about another global war began to push for the formation of a
more lasting international league. The result was the creation of the UN. Although the
organization is far from perfect, it should be emphasized that it has so far achieved its
primary goal of averting another global war. For this reason alone, the UN should be
considered a success.
The UN is divided into five active organs. The General Assembly (GA) is UN’s
“main deliberative policymaking and representative organ.” According to the UN charter,
Decisions on important questions, such as those on peace and security,
admission of new members, and budgetary matters, require a two-thirds majority of the
General Assembly. Decisions on other questions are done by simple majority. Annually,
the General Assembly elects a GA President to serve a one-year term of office.”
All member states (currently at 193) have seats in the GA. The Philippines
played a prominent role in the GA’s early years when Filipino diplomat Carlos P. Romulo
was elected GA president from 1949-1950.
Despite the General Assembly (GA) being the most represented body in the UN,
many critics believe the Security Council (SC) is the most powerful. According to the
United Nations, the latter has 15 members. Ten of the fifteen members are elected to
two-year terms by the GA. The other five – sometimes referred to as the Permanent 5
(P5) – are China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These
countries have been permanent members of the UN since its inception and cannot be
removed or charged by elections. The SC is in charge of evaluating whether a threat to
the peace or an act of aggression exists. It encourages the concerned parties to resolve
their differences through peaceful ways and suggests measures for adjustment or terms
of settlement. In some cases, it can report to imposing sanction or even authorizing the
use of force to maintain or restore international peace and security. Because of these
powers, states that seek to intervene military in another state need to obtain the
approval of the SC. With the SC’s P5 due to their permanent seats and because each
country holds veto power over the council’s decision. It only takes one veto vote from a
P5 member to stop an SC action dead in its tracks. In this sense, the SC adhere to the
tradition of “great power” diplomacy that began with the Metternich/Concert of Europe
system. It is especially telling that the P5 consists of the major Allied Powers that won
World War II. The Security Council will be further discussed in the next section.
The third UN organ is the economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which is
“the principal body for coordination, policy review, policy dialogue, and
recommendations on social and environmental issue, as well as the implementation of
internationally agreed development goals.” It has 54 members elected for three-year
terms. Currently, it is the UN’s central platform for discussions on sustainable
development.
The fourth is the International Court of Justice, whose task “is to settle, in
accordance with international law, legal disputes submitted to it by states and to give
advisory opinions referred to it by authorized United Nations organs and specialized
agencies.” The major cases of the court consist of disputes between states that
voluntarily submit themselves to the court for arbitration. The court, as such, cannot
try individuals (international criminal cases are heard by the International
Criminal Court, which is independent of the UN), and its decision are only binding
when states have explicitly agreed to place themselves before the court’s
authority. The SC may enforce the rulings of the ICJ, but this remains subject to the
P5’s veto power.
Finally, the secretariat consists of the “Secretary-General and tens of thousands
of international UN staff members who carry out the day-to-day work of the UN as
mandated by the General Assembly and the organization’s other principal organs.” As
such, it is the bureaucracy of the UN, serving as a kind of international civil service.
Members of the secretariat serve in their capacity as UN employees, not as state
representatives.
Challenges of the United Nations

Given the scope of the UN's activities, it naturally faces numerous challenges.
Chief among these are the limits placed upon its various organs and programs by the
need to respect state sovereignty. The UN is not a world government, and it functions
primarily because of voluntary cooperation from states. If states refuse to
cooperate, the influence of the UN can be severely circumscribed. For example, the UN
Council on Human Rights can send special rapporteurs to countries where alleged
human rights violations are occurring. However, if a government does not welcome the
rapporteur or imposes limits on his or her actions, this information-gathering process is
unlikely to succeed.
However, the United Nations' greatest difficulty may be attributed to issues of
security. As previously stated, the UN Security Council is responsible for sanctioning
international military intervention. Because of the P5's veto authority, the council finds it
difficult to issue a formal resolution, let alone implement it. This became an issue, for
example, in the late 1990s when the United States sought to intervene in the Kosovo
war. Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevié was committing acts of ethnic cleansing against
ethnic Muslim Albanians in the province of Kosovo. Hundreds and thousands of
Albanians were victims of massacres, mass deportations, and internal displacement.
Amid this systematic terror, members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
led by the United States, sought SC authorization to intervene in the Kosovo war on
humanitarian grounds. China and Russia, however, threatened to veto any action,
rendering the UN incapable of addressing the crisis. In response, NATO decided to
intervene on its own. Though the NATO intervention was largely a success, it,
nevertheless, left the UN ineffectual.
Today, a similar dynamic is evident in Syria, which is undergoing a civil war.
Russia has threatened to veto any SC resolution against Syria; thus, the UN has done
very little to stop state-sanctioned violence against opponents of the government. Since
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is an ally of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, the latter
has shied away from any policy that could weaken the legitimacy of the former. As a
result, the UN is again ineffectual amid a conflict that has led to over 220,000 people
dead and 11 million displaced.
Despite these problems, it remains important for the SC to place a high bar on
military intervention. The UN Security Council has been wrong on issues of intervention,
but it has also made right decisions. When the United States sought to invade Iraq in
2001, it claimed that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
which threatened the world. However, UN members Russia, China, and France were
unconvinced and vetoed the UN resolution for intervention, forcing the United States to
lead a small "coalition of the willing" with its allies. It has since been discovered that
there were no weapons of mass destruction, and the invasion of Iraq has caused
problems for the country and the region that last until today.
 Since then, there were 37 instances when the permanent members of the
Security Council exercised their right to veto resolutions, 25 by Russia and China and
12 by the United States. The majority of these vetoes pertained to the volatile situation
in the Middle East.

Conclusion

Global governance is such a complex issue that one can actually teach an entire
course in itself. This lesson has focused on the IOs and the United Nations in particular.
International organizations are highlighted because they are the most visible symbols of
global governance. The UN, in particular, is the closest to a world government.
What is important to remember is that international institutions such as the UN are
always in a precarious position. On the one hand, they are groups of sovereign states.
On the other, they are organizations with their own rationalities and agenda. It is this
tension that will continue to inform the evolution of these organizations.

Activity for March 1, 2023

Today, many institutions, groups, and ideas hold international and global politics
together. For today’s activity, you will do your research and answer briefly and
concisely the following questions below. Again, I am looking for a researched-based
answer.

Questions
1. Why is global governance multi-faceted?
2. How do international organization take on “lives of their own”?
3. What are the challenges faced by the United Nations in maintaining global security?

Deadline:
March 2, 2023 on or before 12 noon at the VPAA Office. Look for Sir Meg Victor Camora or Sir
Kim Francis Agus.

Reference:
Abinales, P., & Claudio L. (2022). The Contemporary World. Second Edition.