The selection of António Guterres as Secretary-General shows Security Council horse-trading still trumps transparency at the UN

Former Portuguese Prime Minister, António Guterres, is expected to be appointed as the next UN Secretary-General later today, replacing Ban Ki-Moon, who will step down at the end of the year. As Katie Verlin Laatikainen outlines, the selection process adopted to select Ban Ki-Moon’s successor was intended to be more transparent than in previous years, but the appointment of Guterres will nevertheless leave some observers disappointed as there had been hopes that either a female or Eastern European candidate would take on the position for the first time

Without EU clout, how would the UK fare at the United Nations?

Outside the EU, the UK would have to forge new alliances in international diplomacy. Karen E Smith and Katie Laatikainen consider how it would affect the UK’s role in multilateral processes – debates in international organisations, multilateral treaty negotiations, and so on – particularly in the context of the United Nations

"Norden's Eclipse: The Impact of Europe's Common Foreign and Security Policy on Nordic Cooperation in the United Nations"

[From the Introduction]. The first section of this paper reviews the tradition of Nordic collaboration in the United Nations. The substance of the Nordic profile is identified and the norms and principles of Nordic collaboration are assessed. The Nordics have created a unique position within the bloc system of politics within the UN, and it is this independent Nordic position in world politics that is threatened by Europeanization. The second part of the paper details the intensifisation of European foreign policy coordination, from the practices of the EPC to the innovations of the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997 which introduced greater flexibility in European foreign policy making. The increased role of a single EU voice in international organisations is presented. In the final section of the paper the impact of intensified European foreign policy coordination on Nordic foreign policy cooperation is assessed. Empirical data demonstrating the dramatic cessation of common Nordic initiatives within the UN is compared to the steady growth of European initiatives. Interviews with Nordic delegates at the United Nations reveal the impact of variant EU memberhip on the traditional practices of Nordic collaboration

"Assessing EU foreign policy in the UN: capacity, identity, and context."

[From the Introduction]. This paper explores the growing role of the European Union within the United Nations by establishing its capacity, identity, and context. The first and largest part of the paper uses the concept of "actorness" developed by Caporaso and Jupille to provide empirical evidence of the growing capacity of the EU to speak with one voice at the UN (Caporaso and Jupille, 1998). The authority, cohesion, recognition and autonomy of the EU as an actor in its own right are detailed and it is shown that while the EU foreign policy within the EU is authoritative, cohesive and broadly recognized, the' autonomy of the EU as an actor remains problematic. The paper then explores the identity of the EU with in the UN, its corporate identity. EU foreign policy represents particular values quite often associated with the notion of "civilian power." Finally, the last section of the paper explores the context of United Nations for EU foreign policy. The multilateral environment, as opposed to EU "bilateral" or regional relations, is particularly congenial for the articulation of a common foreign policy. In addition, there are institutional factors that account for the expanding scope of EU influence in the world body. The paper makes extensive use of UN documents to present the growing capacity of the EU as well as dozens of interviews conducted in New York over the past three and a half years to gauge the impact of the EU's foreign policy in the UN context

"Gendered Integration? A Feminist Analysis of Nordic Membership in the European Union"

As concerns are raised among members of the European Union about the consequences of enlargement during a period of renewed "Euro-sclerosis', there are parallel concerns in the new Nordic member states about the possible transferrestive aspects that membership will introduce into domestic society. Some of the most vocal skeptics of Nordic membership have been women who express concern about the effect membership will have on their status and position in these "woman-friendly" societies. The perceived threat that these women articulate suggests a new line of inquiry not only for the growing feminist IR literature, but also for integration analysis in general: is European integration gendered? This paper is a condensation of a larger study which examines the socio-political position of women in the new EU member-states Finland and Sweden as well as the policies and structures of the European Union to reveal the impact of the integration process on the lives of women in these Nordic societies. Using a feminist framework for analysis illuminates yet another dimension of the structural "democratic deficit" detailed elsewhere in the European integration literature. In addition this study broadens the Feminist and IR theory interface by extending the subject of feminist inquiry into new areas of IR theory