This thesis offers a concrete and practically applicable answer to the question of how
to increase the legitimacy of the UN’s decision-making procedures on issues of global peace and security. In order to provide this answer, it connects the minutia of
institutional design with the abstract principals of democratic theory in a systematic
and reproducible method, thereby enabling a clear normative evaluation of even the
smallest technical detail of reform. The thesis elaborates criteria for the evaluation of both the normative desirability as well as the political feasibility of individual reform
proposals and applies these to a compilation of all the relevant proposals in four issue- areas: Security Council (SC) membership and voting, SC working methods, relations between the SC and the General Assembly, and relations between the SC and civil society. This evaluation demonstrates that there is a range of feasible proposals for
reform that could improve the SC’s accountability both to the GA and to the general public, that could increase the opportunities for effective input from the UN membership and NGOs, and that would thereby promote the UN’s decision-making
procedures on issues of global peace and security as a more inclusive, coherent and
decisive deliberative system