Rising powers, UN Security Council reform, and the failure of rhetorical coercion

Despite repeated calls for reform, the UN Security Council has as yet resisted to satisfy the demands of a group of rising powers – Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan (G4) – for a permanent seat. We focus on one strategy of institutional adaptation to power shifts mentioned in the introductory article to this special issue and examine why the G4’s rhetorical coercion strategy has failed to resonate with the Council’s permanent members and the wider UN membership. Looking at the key debate on Security Council reform in the General Assembly in 2005, we examine the justifications the G4 have offered to support their proposal and whether these have been accepted as legitimate by UN member states. We show that the G4’s rhetorical coercion strategy has failed to resonate with the targeted audience because the G4 have justified their demand strongly in terms of how their material contributions would enhance the UN’s performance. In contrast, the G4’s opponents provided justifications predominantly based on fair and democratic procedures, generating higher levels of expressed support. The importance of procedural fairness is consistent with findings in social psychology and challenges the prominent argument that performance is the main path to legitimacy for international institutions

Humanitarian need drives multilateral disaster aid

As the climate changes, human livelihoods will increasingly be threatened by extreme weather events. To provide adequate disaster relief, states extensively rely on multilateral institutions, in particular the United Nations (UN). However, the determinants of this multilateral disaster aid channeled through the UN are poorly understood. To fill this gap, we examine the determinants of UN disaster aid using a dataset on UN aid covering almost 2,000 climate-related disasters occurring between 2006 and 2017. We make two principal contributions. First, we add to research on disaster impacts by linking existing disaster data from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) to a meteorological reanalysis. We generate a uniquely global hazard severity measure that is comparable across different climate-related disaster types, and assess and bolster measurement validity of EM-DAT climate-related disasters. Second, by combining these data with social data on aid and its correlates, we contribute to the literature on aid disbursements. We show that UN disaster aid is primarily shaped by humanitarian considerations, rather than by strategic donor interests. These results are supported by a series of regression and out-of-sample prediction analyses and appear consistent with the view that multilateral institutions are able to shield aid allocation decisions from particular state interests to ensure that aid is motivated by need

Advocacy Strategies in Global Governance : Inside versus Outside Lobbying

As political authority shifts to the global level, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) increasingly attempt to influence policy-making within international organisations (IOs). This article examines the nature and sources of non-governmental organisations’ advocacy strategies in global governance. We advance a twofold theoretical argument. First, non-governmental organisation advocacy can be described in terms of inside and outside strategies, similar to interest group lobbying in American and European politics. Second, non-governmental organisations’ chosen combination of inside and outside strategies can be explained by their organisational goals and membership base. Empirically, this argument is corroborated through a large-n analysis of original data from structured interviews with 303 non-governmental organisation representatives active in relation to the United Nations (UN), complemented by 19 semi-structured interviews with UN and state officials. The article’s findings have implications for the theory and practice of non-governmental organisation involvement in global governance