THE INSTITUTIONAL CONDITIONS FOR A UN FOREIGN POLICY
Frederico Bartels Ferreira
IPPR Volume 5 Number 1 (October 2009)
pp. 28-41
© 2009
International Public Policy Review • The Department of Political Science
The Rubin Building 29/30 • Tavistock Square • London • WC1 9QU
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THE INSTITUTIONAL CONDITIONS FOR A UN FOREIGN POLICY
Frederico Bartels Ferreira
ABSTRACT
This article addresses the institutional capabilities of the United Nations to develop its
own foreign policy. Basing the analysis on the works in the field of Foreign Policy
Analysis, the article deals with the apparatus necessary for the organisation to craft its
own policy. Furthermore the article draws parallels between the national institutions and
the institutions of the organisation in order to enlighten the function of the different
branches inside the United Nations. The UN Secretariat is dealt as one important
instrument for the exercise of an independent foreign policy for the institution.
Foreign Policy requires two main elements in its most simplistic definition: i) a foreign
element; and ii) a coherent aggregate of actions. In the absence of these two points there
can be neither a foreign environment nor a policy, therefore derailing what we understand
as foreign policy. During the course of this paper, bear in mind these two initial elements
seen that they ought to be clarified in the stance of the United Nations (UN), with the
goal of demonstrating the organisation’s capacity for developing its own foreign policy.
In order to achieve this goal this paper will access the implications of adapting the current
literature of Foreign Policy Analysis to an International Organisation, followed by an
exploration of the institutions that permit the UN to develop his own foreign policy. First,
there will be an exploration of the initial concepts in Foreign Policy Analysis, followed
by an assessment of the place in which foreign policy develops comparing a country and
the UN. Further on, the paper will discuss the institutions of the UN and their
implications
)
)
for
the
construction
of
an
independent
foreign
policy.
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DEFINING DEFINITIONS
Foreign Policy is usually thought to be related to one country’s identity and actions in the
international scenario, an assumption that is correct even tough it does not suffice the
phenomenon of foreign policy. The study of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), as
represented by Hudson,1 is entrenched between the domestic and the international levels,
as one could put forward, between International Relations and Political Science. In that
fashion, FPA is designed to access concerns of internal and external nature within a
political society. A useful definition is given by Hill as follows, “[a] brief definition of
foreign policy can be given as follows: the sum of official external relations conducted by
an independent actor (usually a state) in international relations.”2 The importance of this
definition for the current work is two-folded, firstly, it already opens up the possibility of
a non-state actor to be the owner of an independent foreign policy, and it also narrows
foreign policy to the official external relations, which can be easily identified. These two
elements will be explored further on for the case of the UN. At this point, it is also
important to bear in mind the definition of foreign policy of Smith, Hadfield and Dunne
as follows, “For us, foreign policy, although usually linked to the behaviour of a state,
can apply to other actors. Thus it is perfectly possible to speak of companies, regional
governments, and non-state actors having foreign policy.”3 This definition encompasses
the possibility of expanding the foreign policy concept and, hence, the FPA tools to nonstate actors, which is paramount to this work.
FPA started with the work of Snyder, Bruck and Sapin4 which was dedicated to
exposing how the decision-making approach, as described, could contribute to the
understanding of the International Relations as a whole. It is also important to take notice
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1
Hudson, V. M. “Foreign Policy Analysis: Actor-Specific Theory and the Ground of International
Relations”.Foreign Policy Analysis Vol. 1, no.1 (2005): 1-30.
2
Hill, C. The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy. (New York: Palgrave Macmilliam, 2003) pp.3
3
Smith, S.; Hadfield, A.; Dunne, T. Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Cases. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2008) pp.2.
4
Snyder, R.C.; Bruck, H.W.; Sapin, B. Foreign Policy Decision-Making. 1962. Revisited by: Hudson,
V.M.; Chollet, D.H.; Goldgeier, J.M. (New York: Palgrave Macmilan, 2002).
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that Hudson5 emphasises the role of personality and of bureaucratic organisation for
foreign policy. In that fashion,
“[t]he single most important contribution of FPA to IR theory is to identify the point of
theoretical intersection between the primary determinants of state behavior: material and
ideational factors. The point of intersection is not the state, it is human decision makers”.6
The centrality of human decision makers, as stated, creates the importance of the
institutional arrangements, mainly because humans are constrained by these arrangements
in different social scenarios. Regarding bureaucratic organisations, Checkel7 supports the
idea that the organisation of the institution is important when considering analysis within
the foreign policy approach. Checkel8 puts forward explicitly that thinking in terms of
bureaucratic organisation and its development is correctly positioned in the center of
FPA, concurring with Halperin’s9 claim of the proximity between bureaucratic
organisation and the development of foreign policy. Hilsman10 also supports the
importance of bureaucracy for the understanding of foreign policy, dedicating the bulk of
his work to the different interactions within departments of the US government and
among those very departments. Hill11 further shows a concern with the role that each
bureaucracy assumes in the decision-making process, taking into account elements as the
intelligence agencies in the process and imperfect information. This bureaucratic concern
is adamant to understand the situation of a UN foreign policy, seen that the UN was a
complex organisational charter that ought to be explored. All in all, bureaucratic concerns
as deemed strong enough to shape not only the process of decision-making in foreign
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5
Hudson, V. M. “Foreign Policy Analysis: Actor-Specific Theory and the Ground of International
Relations”.Foreign Policy Analysis Vol. 1, no.1 (2005): 1-30.
6
Ibid, p.3.
7
Checkel, J. T. “Constructivism and foreign policy”. In Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Cases, edited by
Smith, S.; Hadfield, A.; Dunne, T., 71-80. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
8
Ibid.
9
Halperin, M. H. Bureaucratic Politics & Foreign Policy. (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution,
1974).
Hilsman, R. The Politics of Policy Making in Defense and Foreign Affairs: Conceptual Models and
Bureaucratic Politics. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1987.
10
Hilsman, R. The Politics of Policy Making in Defense and Foreign Affairs: Conceptual Models and
Bureaucratic Politics (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1987).
11
Hill, C. The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy. (New York: Palgrave Macmilliam, 2003)
)
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policy, but also the outcome itself. Hilsman12 is a supporter of this point, considering as
well that, the post that one occupies could shape their considerations on a given issue.
Hudson13 explores five elements of FPA in her work which encompass the kind of
research in the field. These elements are: i) individual decision-makers; ii) group
decision-making; iii) culture and identity; iv) domestic politics; and v) the international
system. Each of these elements account for a different perspective on the phenomenon
and can be regarded to be complementary, mainly when one takes into account the
complexities of the reality of a decision-maker. Hudson14 points out that there have been
works that focused one any of the five aspects, nevertheless, the author points out the
importance of addressing all the elements in order to form a more complete picture.
THE LOCUS
Foreign Policy is, by no means, an isolated event that can be analysed outside of its social
context. That is even more important in the case of the UN, seen that the organisation
deals, in principle, with the whole world and ought to consider the planet as a unity. In
the case of countries and nation-states, there is little problem separating the foreigner
from the domestic, even with the current advances of globalisation, one can easily
determine which are the official relations of a given state. Considering that Hill’s15
definition of foreign policy only considers the sum of official external relations of an
independent actor, the globalisation does not change that countries usually have few
sources which conduct their official external relations. In this sense, national frontiers and
national bureaucracy still counts a lot towards defining the external and the domestic.
Departments of State, Ministries of Foreign Affairs and their similar represent the
obvious places to search for the official external relations of a country. FPA also
considers different sources for the formation of the official external relations of a given
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12
Hilsman, R. The Politics of Policy Making in Defense and Foreign Affairs: Conceptual Models and
Bureaucratic Politics (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1987).
13
Hudson, V. M. Foreign Policy Analysis: Classic and Contemporary Theory. (Lanham: Rowan &
Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2007).
14
Ibid.
15
Hill, C. The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy. (New York: Palgrave Macmilliam, 2003)
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country. For instance, Hilsman16 believes that one important role of a president is to be
their nation main diplomat, echoing the concept of presidential diplomacy and the
growing importance of foreign relations to the domestic scenario and the president. In
that sense, even if the characters and the post they occupy have different names, the
functions and limitations are the same across state borders. The dispersion of authority on
foreign relations, as takes place in the Unites States, in the relationship between the State
and Defense Departments and the National Security Council, does not melt away the
concentration and location of the official external relations.
The complication arises when we take into consideration an international
organisation which is open to all ‘peace-loving countries, a requirement that barely serves
as a real pre-condition for membership. In the United Nations, each country has the
responsibility to have a representative in the organisation; this representative is a part of
the official external relations of each individual country. In that regard, as Berger and
Luckmann17 would put, there is the formation of specific interaction environment in
which diplomats from different countries are in the same social context. Therefore, those
diplomats develop a common socialisation pattern which encompasses the behaviour and
choices of words that have became characteristic of the United Nations. A great example
is the language of the resolutions that emerged in the United Nations Security Council
that has specific sentences that are part of the social consensus of the organisation.
Another example is the set of rules of procedure of the UN that have spilled out to other
organisations, there is also the ocean of acronyms and abbreviations that requires even
growing lists. Further on, a former Permanent Representative of the United States, stated
that the UN is a place ‘with its own language and time zone, where ‘demand’ means
‘ask’, ‘strong’ means ‘not so strong’ and ‘severe’ means ‘not so severe’ and ‘urges’
means ‘begs’’18. The UN developed, through time and social interaction, a large set of
idiosyncrasies which includes the different rituals of the organisation, as the procedure
for the opening of the annual session of the General Assembly, or the format of every
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16
Hilsman, R. The Politics of Policy Making in Defense and Foreign Affairs: Conceptual Models and
Bureaucratic Politics (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1987).
17
Berger, P. L. and Luckmann, T. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of
Knowledge. (New York: Anchor Books, 1966).
18
Holbrooke apud Fasulo, L. An Insider’s Guide to the UN. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).
pp.91.
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resolution of the organisation with the same typology font and spatial organisation. In
that fashion, the bearers of official external discourse of each country mould themselves
and their discourse to the international patterns represented by the UN, forming a culture
on its own. In that sense, Shawn19 explores how the unique culture and sense of
belonging of press corps of the United Nations plays a role in not properly investigating
the oil for food scandal, pointing out that press corps did not played its role in the
democratic societies of seeking accountability from politicians. Further on, Shawn20
explores how economic interests toppled the values in the case of Iraq, demonstrating
how the interaction in the organisation created a culture on its own. Gold21 on the other
hand explores how the United Nations was capable to undermine the situation of the
Israeli representation in the organisation. This example demonstrates how the interaction
among the diplomats inside the UN could form a culture that is even capable of
undermining one country. Tabor22 in his turn explores how the UN culture is out of touch
with national sovereignty and aims at the expansion of its role in the world. Those three
examples serve to cement the idea of a unique culture within the United Nations’ walls.
This unique culture allows us to determine what would be foreign to the United
Nations community and what would be domestic. In that regard, as put forward by
Walker23, there is the discursive formation of a unique inside and a unique outside,
defined by the practises of the organisation. In that fashion, this work argues that there is
the construction of a domestic scenario for the United Nations in the figure of the
diplomats that work there and share the same discursive instruments. Whereas the foreign
of the United Nations can be thought to be the world outside the walls of the UN
buildings, the world that receives the resolutions of the organisation and where the blue
helmets deploy. In that sense, one could put forward that the United Nations has the
world adapted to its culture when in the confines of its buildings and in the same sense
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19
Walker, R.B.J. Inside/outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993).
20
Ibid.
21
Gold, D. Tower of Babble: How the United Nations has Fueled Global Chaos. (New York: Crown
Forum, 2004).
22
Tabor, N. The Beast on the East River: The UN Threat to America’s Sovereignty and Security (Nashville:
Nelson Current, 2006).
23
Walker, R.B.J. Inside/outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993).
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the whole world is foreign to the organisation. This understanding is reinforced by the
common sense that portraits the organisation as an independent actor in many of the news
around the globe. Further on, one has to consider the role of a diplomat that works in the
UN inside their own government. This diplomat does represent a specific political view
inside a Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the views of the United Nations and her
bureaucracy, just as the Ambassador to Sri Lanka represents the demands that this
country has towards his or her own country. In this sense, the domestic of the United
Nations can be said to reach the domestic level of every member-state. Nevertheless, the
contact between the UN domestic and a given country’s domestic scenario is limited to
the participants of that countries mission to the UN and even the other diplomats of the
country are already in the foreign sphere of the organisation. Therefore, there is a limit of
reach in the organisation in the composition of its domestic and foreign spheres and both
spheres are in direct contact with its member-states.
INSTITUTIONALISING THE FOREIGN
The United Nations organisational chart represents the easiest form to have glimpse at the
bureaucratic complexity that is the world body.24 The important element of the
organisational chart is that each and every body that composes the United Nations
System has individual capacity to construct foreign policy. Further more, each of them
represent a part in the sum of official external relations of which Hill25 considers. One
can consider that the capacity of a UN body to affect the sum of official external relations
of the organisation as whole is equivalent to the capacity of any given ministry, with the
exception of a Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In this fashion, every organisation within the
United Nations was the capacity of issuing documents that can be considered to be part of
the official external relations of the UN. Nevertheless, due to the very characteristics of
the United Nations, mainly regarding voting procedures within its bodies, there can be
divergent voices inside the official external relations of the organisation. For instance it is
possible that a specialised body such as the Human Rights Council, emits a resolution
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24
25
)
United Nations Organization. The United Nations System: Principal Organs. (New York: UN,2007),
Hill, C. The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy. (New York: Palgrave Macmilliam, 2003)
)
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that is contradictory or even disregard the considerations from the United Nations
Security Council or from the Secretary-General himself. Those contradictions, as one
might call it, are not problematic to the analysis and should be treated as part of a healthy
democratic debate. Furthermore, those contradictions do exist in every country in the
form of debates among the advisors that help shaped parts of the foreign policy. It is as
common as for undersecretaries in the Department of State of the United States of
America to have disagreements amongst themselves as it is among countries. There is no
dividing difference between the debate that takes place in the General Assembly and in
the confines of a national government. One might argue that the organisation is different,
as are the procedures, but this does not disqualify the debate in the international forum as
one that seeks to build a policy for the body. The organisation of a debate does not
disqualify the process, the very process could take place in a non-democratic country and
it would still be a policy-making process. Nonetheless, the duty of harmonising the
internal voices of the United Nations, as it takes place in the government, relies in the
executive, in the case, the Office of the Secretary General and the figure of the Secretary
General, which will be addressed in due moment.
The UN Charter divides the organisation into six main bodies, namely as defined
in article 7, the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social
Council, the Trusteeship Council, the International Court of Justice and the Secretariat.26
From those bodies, with the exceptions of the Trusteeship Council and the International
Court of Justice, emerge countless organisations which are related to one or more of the
four bodies. One good example of this in the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change which reports to the United Nations Environment Programme, a program
under the General Assembly, and the World Meteorological Organisation, a specialised
agency under the umbrella of the Economic and Social Council. In a way, all the
organisations under the United Nations reports to one or more of the four main bodies
that compose the constellation of the organisation. The organisational chart in itself does
not account to all the bodies that exist under the brand of the UN, nonetheless it gives a
good overview of the size and complexity of the organisation’s bureaucracy. Even with
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26
United Nations Organization. Charter of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of
Justice. New York: UNDPI, 2003.
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the size and complexity, all of these bodies ought to be responsive the UN purposes and
values as stated by the UN Charter and the different directives issued by the Secretary
General since “An Agenda for Peace”.27 All things considered, the task of maintaining a
coherent foreign policy line for the organisation falls to the Office of the Secretary
General and the Secretary General himself.
SECRETARY OF THE GENERAL
Whether he considers himself as such or not, the Secretary General, similar to the figure
of a President, is the face of the organisation for the world and the general public.
Therefore, the role of granting coherence and unity to the foreign policy falls, in a large
part, on him and the people that work directly for him. The Secretary General has at least
15 organisations, among departments and organs, which are directly connected to his
Office, a number that is comparable to the number of ministries of a country. In that
regard, the head of the UN has at his disposal a number of tools, including a Department
of Public Information that publishes a number of documents, to guarantee that his
message will be the one to be considered the official from the organisation. Furthermore,
one can draw analogies between the organisation of the Office of the Secretary General
and the bureaucratic organisation of a country that can be helpful to elucidating how the
foreign policy apparatus would work in the UN. Three institutions demand special
attention in the organisation of the Office of the Secretary General, which are the
Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), the Department of Political Affairs
(DPA) and the Chiefs Executives Board for Cooperation (CEB).
The Department of Peacekeeping Operations is analogous to a Ministry of
Defense in the sense that it is department with the duty of overseeing the military
engagements of the organisation and determining parameters for those, such as the rules
of engagement. Duties close to the one of a Ministry of Defense in the national
bureaucratic scheme. This is not a perfect analogy, but suffices in the arrangement of the
UN due to the construction of a chain of command and the preparation for military
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27
)
United Nations An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-keeping. (UN,
1992)
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action. The lack of proper military force is not enough to dismiss the bureaucratic
functions that the DPKO shares with a national Ministry of Defense, seen that the
bureaucratic part of the process that gives the civilian oversight required. Furthermore,
the DPKO represents in practical terms the main idea of keeping peace and international
security in the world, as stated in the UN Charter, therefore upholding the main goal of
the organisation. In this regard, the organisation puts forward that the ‘(…) UN
peacekeeping goals were primarily limited to maintaining ceasefires and stabilising
situations on the ground, so that efforts could be made at the political level to resolve the
conflict by peaceful means’28. The Department of Political Affairs, on the other hand, is
analogous to the Department of State of the United States of America. The DPA does not
have the same authoritative capabilities of a Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which normally
tends to concentrate most of the foreign policy related initiatives at large within a
government, but rather the analogous capacity of conducting and guiding diplomacy
across the United Nations system, as takes place in the United States with the Department
of State. The Department itself describes its function as:
The Department of Political Affairs plays a central role in these [preventing deadly
conflicts] efforts: monitoring and assessing global political developments; advising the
U.N. Secretary-General on actions that could advance the cause of peace; providing
support and guidance to U.N. peace envoys and political missions in the field; and
serving Member States directly through electoral assistance and through the support of
DPA staff to the work of the Security Council and other U.N. bodies.29
The most interesting portion is the advisory capability of the DPA, which means that they
have access to the Secretary General, which as Hilsman (1987) would argue, is necessary
for having influence over policy.
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28
29
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United Nations United Nations Peacekeeping (UN, 2008)
United Nations The Department of Political Affairs. (UN, 2009a),
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The Chief Executives Board is the UN proxy of a presidential cabinet or a
national security council, despite being excluded from the organisational chart.30 As its
function,
The Chief Executives Board (CEB) furthers coordination and cooperation on a whole
range of substantive and management issues facing United Nations system organisations.
CEB brings together on a regular basis the executive heads of the organisations of the
United Nations system, under the chairmanship of the Secretary General of the United
Nations.31
Therefore, the goal of the CEB is to achieve system-wide coherence, which can be
understood as the unity in the official external relations, guaranteeing a form of control
for the Secretary General to issue the message he deems appropriate for the organisation.
CONCLUSION
Looking beneath the forum-like structure of the United Nations reveals a dense
bureaucratic web capable of, not only, organising meetings, but also of producing foreign
policy on its own capacity. Furthermore, one has to take into consideration that the
Secretary General’s power of agenda setting, as granted by the UN Charter, is important
for shaping the political process in the organisation. Regardless of the outcome of the
political debate, within any of the three debate-oriented bodies of the UN (General
Assembly, Security Council and Economical and Social Council), the Secretariat has the
capacity of determining goals for the organisation and by publicising them, as in the case
of “An Agenda for Peace”. To that extent one can say, with property, that the
organisation has the instruments to forge its own foreign policy. Whether those
capabilities are used, or if they are used properly in accordance with the UN Charter is
not in the goal of this work, the point is to highlight the institutional capabilities for
constructing an independent foreign policy. Capacities that are present strongly in the
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30
31
)
United Nations The United Nations System: Principal Organs. (UN, 2007),
United Nations The Chief Executives Board (CEB). (UN, 2009b),
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Office of the Secretary General and ought to be observed. Furthermore, one important
aspect of the UN that differentiates it from the regular foreign policy construction of the
State-nation is the characterisation of what would be foreign and what would be
domestic. Through this work, it was exposed that the composition of the domestic
scenario on the organisation is largely confined to the walls of the organisation’s
buildings, whereas the whole world is foreign to the organisation. The extent of the
foreign aspect for the organisation is crucial due to the fact that it allows them to navigate
in any issue they judge to be important. All in all the United Nations is not only capable
of producing its own foreign policy, considering the institutions in place, but is also able
to access a large scope of subjects, having an agenda that can encompass basically any
aspect of human life in society. Additionally, the foreign policy of the United Nations can
bring the international attention to situations that were not of concern before or catapult
those situations to the international media, as it has done with global warming, for
instance.32
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Cambridge University Press, 1993.
WHY STRAUSSIANISM?
John Hickman
ABSTRACT
This article explores the explanations for Straussianism, the ‘ideology for elites’
articulated by arch-conservative political philosopher Leo Strauss. Why would ambitious
American elites ever embrace an ideology whose founder is tainted by his affiliation with
figures foreign and authoritarian? Although American academia is relatively tolerant of
heterodox ideas, American politics is not. Yet many Straussians have been appointed to
political offices responsible for public policy making. In addition to the pleasures of
textual interpretation, satisfaction in belonging to an intellectual elite, and membership in
an academic-bureaucratic mutual aid network, being a Straussian offers the individual
intellectual license to exercise the loyalty option: fervent demonstrations of loyalty to
current organisational leadership. Unlike the voice or exit options, the loyalty option
offers Straussians the opportunity to rise in the leaderships of well established but
declining organisations.
The ability of avoid or deflect responsibility for poor
performance is at a premium in such organisations.
Straussianism as political philosophy has been explained. There may be little agreement
about the value of the intellectual contributions made by University of Chicago political
philosopher Leo Strauss, but their content presents no more mystery for scholars than
they do interest for the general public. The ‘solution’ to the problems of modernity)
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