Change for More of the Same

Wow, so I just realized that this post never published.  Like the one before it, I was on a plane when I wrote this and it looks like the in-flight internet failed me and instead just saved it to my drafts when I logged out.  This was written before the debate which is why I don't mention our live session at all, so just know that when reading.

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I just finished the article from Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal for next week's readings and I was very interested at the idea that international institutions can actually further entrench the established international system rather than provide any path for alteration.

It got me thinking about WWII and the formation of the UN.  Last semester, I read David Bosco's book Five to Rule Them All about the UN Security Council's permanent members and how that structure came to be.  As I read the Koremenos article, I was struck by how much of that book related to what the article had to say.  The winners of WWII used the Security Council as a way to solidify their current, hard-won status on the international stage.

The three main Allied Powers were obviously all going to get a seat on the council.  There was a strong British push for another Western voice, and France was the obvious choice, particularly during that time period.  Lastly China was added, which is still considered unusual to some extent, but it was a second addition that the US and the USSR could agree on.  And that's how the five came to be.

Even in just that short, and very reductive paragraph, one can see the power politics.  Each of the states was considered about their power relative to the rest of the world, and even to each other.  The idea of a global forum where each voice and each state was equal was not appealing to the victors.  It was so unappealing that the US chose to not even participate a few years earlier when the world formed the League of Nations.  There had to be a select group for the winners, where they could hold just a bit more power than the rest.

And we can see how they chose to manage their power struggles against one another.  Obviously, British leadership knew that after reclaiming France, along with the American forces, a French ally on the Council would be a strong one for a long time.  These two states wanted France to make the Western voice for capitalism and democracy to be concrete within the Council and selected a member whom they could expect to vote from that viewpoint.  Of course the Soviet Union saw this as a threat to their own brand of government and economic structure and needed an alternative member, but more than that, they needed the veto.  This was a highly contested issue, but eventually the USSR got it, and they wasted little time using it.

As Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal stated, "States spend significant amounts of time and effort constructing institutions precisely because they can advance or impede state goals in the international economy, the environment, and national security. States fight over institutional design because it affects outcomes. Moreover, the institutions they create cannot be changed swiftly or easily to conform to changing configurations of international power. Japan and Germany play modest roles in the UN today because they have been unable to reverse the decision made in 1944-45 to exclude them from the Security Council." [1]  I think that is a perfect description of what I read in Bosco's book and I think it's a very interesting take on the whether or not institution offer change or impede it.

1. Koremenos, Barbara, Charles Lipson, and Duncan Snidal. "The Rational Design of International Institutions." International Organization: 762.