Global Institutions in a Time of Power Transition: Governing Turbulence 1035312786, 9781035312788

Table of contents :
Contents
Contributors
1. Introduction to Global Transitions in a Time of Power Transition • Kendall Stiles and Joel E. Oestreich
2. Hegemonic Change in International Organizations: A Theory of Professional Responsibility in Multilateralism • Joel E. Oestreich
3. China and the United Nations Secretariat: A Mutual Influencing Game • Gregory T. Chin
4. The Crisis of the Multilateral Agenda in Brazilian Foreign Policy: Perceptions and Reactions from the United Nations • Hugo Bras Martins da Costa, Giovana Esther Zucatto, and Marianna Restum Albuquerque
5. Human Rights During Power Transitions • Rhona Smith and Conall Mallory
6. The United Nations Development System: Change and Agency in the Secretariat • Joel E. Oestreich
7. The Impact of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on the United Nations • Bimal Adhikari
8. Rethinking Institutional Independence: The WHO as a Challenged Institution • Stephanie Strobl
9. The Guardian of Global Trade Governance? Examining the Role of the WTO Secretariat • Wei Liang
10. Conclusion to Global Institutions in a Time of Power Transition • Kendall Stiles and Joel E. Oestreich
Index

Citation preview

Global Institutions in a Time of Power Transition

THE ACUNS SERIES ON THE UN SYSTEM Series Editors: Alistair Edgar, Associate Dean, School of International Policy & Governance, Balsillie School of International Affairs, Canada; Lorraine Elliott, Professor Emerita, Department of International Relations, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University and Past-Chair of the ACUNS Board of Directors; and Charlotte Ku, Associate Dean for Global Programs and Graduate Studies, Texas A&M University, School of Law, USA. The ACUNS Series on the UN System is an interdisciplinary book series, and welcomes submissions for research monographs and edited books from scholars working in the fields of international politics, international organization, international law, human rights, justice, international development, human geography, security studies and global governance, among others. All books in the series will be subject to a rigorous process of peer review prior to publication. The Series Editors welcome submissions from both established scholars and early career researchers. For a full list of Edward Elgar published titles, including the titles in this series, visit our website at www​.e​-elgar​.com​.

Global Institutions in a Time of Power Transition Governing Turbulence

Edited by

Kendall Stiles Professor of Political Science, Brigham Young University, USA

Joel E. Oestreich Professor of Politics and Global Studies, Drexel University, USA

THE ACUNS SERIES ON THE UN SYSTEM

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Kendall Stiles and Joel E. Oestreich 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2023939717 This book is available electronically in the Political Science and Public Policy subject collection http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781035312795

ISBN 978 1 0353 1278 8 (cased) ISBN 978 1 0353 1279 5 (eBook)

EEP BoX

Contents List of contributorsvii 1

Introduction to Global Institutions in a Time of Power Transition1 Kendall Stiles and Joel E. Oestreich

2

Hegemonic Change in International Organizations: A Theory of Professional Responsibility in Multilateralism Joel E. Oestreich

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China and the United Nations Secretariat: A Mutual Influencing Game Gregory T. Chin

41

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The Crisis of the Multilateral Agenda in Brazilian Foreign Policy: Perceptions and Reactions from the United Nations Hugo Bras Martins da Costa, Giovana Esther Zucatto, and Marianna Restum Albuquerque

5

Human Rights During Power Transitions Rhona Smith and Conall Mallory

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The United Nations Development System: Change and Agency in the Secretariat Joel E. Oestreich

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7

The Impact of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on the United Nations Bimal Adhikari

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8

Rethinking Institutional Independence: The WHO as a Challenged Institution Stephanie Strobl

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The Guardian of Global Trade Governance? Examining the Role of the WTO Secretariat Wei Liang

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Global institutions in a time of power transition

Conclusion to Global Institutions in a Time of Power Transition179 Kendall Stiles and Joel E. Oestreich

Index191

Contributors Bimal Adhikari is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Nazarbayev University. His research interests include international institutions, foreign policy, and human rights. His research has appeared or is forthcoming in International Interactions, Human Rights Review, International Politics, Journal of Human Rights, and Social Science Quarterly. Hugo Bras Martins da Costa – Ph.D. in Political Science and International Relations in joint doctoral thesis between the Institute of Social and Political Studies of the Rio de Janeiro State University (IESP – UERJ) and the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po Paris). Since 2022, he has been a postdoctoral researcher and professor at the School of Command and General Staff of the Brazilian Army. Since 2016, he has been a researcher at the Laboratory of World Political Analysis. From 2020 to 2022, he was Enseignant Vacataire at Sciences Po Paris and Project Coordinator of the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI). In 2018, he participated in the Academic Capacitation Program at the Permanent Delegation of Brazil at the United Nation, in New York. Gregory T. Chin is Associate Professor of Political Science at York University (Canada), a Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute at The Johns Hopkins University (SAIS), and co-directs the Emerging Global Governance project partnered with Global Policy journal. His research interests are in international and comparative political economy with a focus on China, Asia, the BRICS, international money and finance, and global governance. He will be the Mayling Birney Global Scholar-in-Residence at the London School of Economics and Political Science in Autumn 2022. Before joining the faculty at York University, Chin worked in the Government of Canada from 2000 to 2003, at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and the Canadian International Development Agency, and from 2003–06 as First Secretary in the Canadian Embassy in Beijing. Wei Liang holds the Gordon Paul Smith Chair in International Studies at the Middlebury Institute. She specializes in international trade and development policy, global economic and environmental governance and international negotiation, international political economy of East Asia and Chinese foreign vii

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economic policy. Her research and teaching have concentrated on the governance of the national and world economy – how foreign economic policy is made domestically and why governments and international organizations do what they do in international economic relations. Conall Mallory obtained his PhD in Law from Northumbria University in 2015. Conall graduated from Northumbria University in 2009 with an LLB (Hons) Law LPC Exempting degree. In 2010 he attained an LLM in Human Rights Law from Queen’s University Belfast. While studying towards his LLM Conall also worked as a campaigns intern for Amnesty International. His research focused on the extraterritorial application of human rights treaties. Joel E. Oestreich is Professor of Politics and Global Studies at Drexel University, in Philadelphia, USA. He holds a BA in Government from Cornell University, an M.Phil. in International Relations from Oxford University, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Brown University. He is the author of Power and Principle: Human Rights Programming in International Organizations and Development and Human Rights: Rhetoric and Reality in India, as well as various articles and book chapters on human rights, development, and international organizations. Marianna Restum Albuquerque is Professor at the Institute of International Relations and Defense, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (IRID-UFRJ). She holds a post-doctorate in Military Sciences at the Army Command and General Staff College (ECEME), a PhD in Political Science from the Institute of Social and Political Studies at UERJ (IESP/UERJ) and a master’s degree in political science from the same institution. She holds a BA in International Relations from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and a BA in Political Science from the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO). She was the Deputy Director of Projects at the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI) from 2019 to 2022. In 2016, she participated in the Academic Capacitation Program at the Permanent Delegation of Brazil at the United Nation, in New York. Rhona Smith is a Professor of International Human Rights at Newcastle University. She was Head of School from 2016 through to 2020. She has previously worked in various universities in the UK and held visiting positions at a number of institutions overseas. Her principal areas of interest are international human rights, human rights/civil liberties and public law. Much of her previous work has focused on human rights capacity building in education and justice sectors. Her recent publications include Textbook on International Human Rights, Oxford, 2016. Kendall Stiles is a professor of political science at Brigham Young University,

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where he teaches and researches international law, organization, and ethics. He is the author of State Responses to International Law (Routledge – winner, Best Book Award from International Law Section International Studies Association, 2016), Trust and Hedging in International Relations (Michigan 2014) and Domestic Sources of International Institutions (under contract at Routledge). Stephanie Strobl is a medical doctor based at the Institute of Pathology, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. Her current medical research focuses on digital medicine and big data analysis, especially in an epidemiological context. Having worked for Médecins Sans Frontières and holding a Master of Advanced International Studies, she also researches and publishes on political aspects of global health with a focus on the interface of science and politics. She took part in the Technical Consultation on the Implementation of the International Health Regulations in 2019. Giovana Esther Zucatto – Ph.D. in Sociology at the Institute of Social and Political Studies of the Rio de Janeiro State University (IESP – UERJ). Special Advisor at the Center for Evidence-Based Education of the Secretary of Education of Rio Grande do Sul.

1. Introduction to Global Institutions in a Time of Power Transition Kendall Stiles and Joel E. Oestreich 1. INTRODUCTION This volume seeks to add to our understanding of the role of the United Nations (UN) and its specialized agencies (e.g., the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)) at a time of ongoing power transition. This is not an entirely new topic. The role of international financial institutions (IFIs) in stabilizing the world system during a time of change has been central to international relations discussions for a while. However, this project began with a particular question that has not yet been addressed, to our knowledge: what is the role of staff within these agencies, as they try to respond to the changing demands of member states while also pursuing the putatively “neutral” goals of their agencies? How can staff help manage the transition of power that is already occurring? The editors of this volume began with a series of interviews with UN staff asking how they dealt not only with the demands of revisionist powers— notably China and Russia, but others also—but with the behavior of supposedly “status quo” powers like the United States and the United Kingdom, whose approaches to multilateralism had become suddenly unpredictable. We specify that staff are not mere marionets, with their strings pulled by member states; they also have agency, and they try to deal with their own priorities as well as those of member states. What do they do with this agency, and what difference can it make in world politics? Do they push back, acquiesce, balance, or something else? And in doing these things, how much of a difference do they make in final outcomes? This is, we hope, our addition to the debate on institutions and global change. We recognize that the world has moved on to some extent since that question was first posed: Donald Trump’s hostile policies toward intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) have been replaced by the Biden administration’s far more multilateral approach; and Russia has only increased—tragically—its role as a revisionist power with its invasion of Ukraine. But the questions remain the same; and some events, like 1

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the Ukrainian invasion, only highlight the need for an effective and resilient UN. Great powers, we know, have always come and gone. Typically, power transitions mean that some rules and norms, created by the hegemonic power, have been replaced by an upstart power, while other rules and norms have been absorbed into the new system. Until the twentieth century, this process took place improvisationally: politics and chance changed some of them; tradition or inertia or practicality preserved others. The process could be violent or peaceful; formal or informal; or sometimes all of these together. We live in such a time now, as recent events make clearer than ever before. This book examines one arena where the rule-change process is being played out in the major IGOs. We see their staff and secretariats as important, underexamined agents in managing and reacting to the current shift in the global balance of power. While the role of institutions is not ignored in studies of shifting power, as already noted, the role of the people who work within those institutions has not been sufficiently analyzed. But the international relations literature does have room to see them as important intervening variables. In other words, we are interested in how the UN and IFIs, as bureaucracies rather than reflections of multilateral design, are responding to the tectonic forces of global power transition.

2.

BASIC PROPOSITIONS

In the twentieth century, formal institutions were created both to preserve norms and procedures and to allow for the orderly transition of power from one state to another. Some of these mechanisms were intended to constrain state action. In other cases, arrangements were made to explicitly adjust voting power and influence (formal and informal) within these institutions, in response to the rising and falling power of states. Thus, we find the enduring five “permanent” UN Security Council members, but the ever-changing Executive Board of the World Bank. Rational design theory tells us that these institutions were designed to incorporate the interests of member states; but we also know that institutions do not always sit still or remain in stasis after their creation (Koremenos 2017). We posit that US leadership has begun to fade and will not likely recover its former preeminence; that the unity and power of the European Union (EU) are also experiencing permanent shifts; and that China, Russia, India, and Brazil (collectively known as the ‘BRICs’) are on an upward trajectory with respect to economic, diplomatic, and military power. We anticipate that some of this shift will be easily accommodated through the reallocation of votes and quotas as provided for in the Charter of the United Nations and other constitutional documents. On the other hand, we also would expect to see both formal and

Introduction

3

informal resistance to any significant changes in the balance of power within institutions, which will likely lead to creative improvisation on the part of both declining and rising states. We explore these trends as they play out within the UN and its affiliated agencies. We posit further that the international civil service is an institution with considerable potential to stabilize norms and procedures. It forms a touchstone for functionalists, who believed that a cadre of professionals could serve humanity as a whole and spread an ethic of civic virtue and pragmatic problem solving. Alongside these technocrats would be a collection of international tribunals that would mete out justice blindly according to the facts and the law rather than the military capability of the disputants. During the Cold War, most states endorsed the overall arrangement of international institutions and, more relevant to this book, accepted that the United States remained primus inter pares. More importantly, they accepted the hegemonic status of the United States and its ability to strengthen the existing international institutional system. But in the twenty-first century, the relative power of states and shifting attitudes about the virtues of multilateralism and the rule of law have begun to exert a severe strain on the system. If we are to understand the test of whether the international institutions designed during the twentieth century will be able to endure a post-hegemonic world, we should not ignore this in understanding their adaptability. It is to this task that we address ourselves in this volume.

3.

THEORIES OF POWER TRANSITION

We wish to note here that defining such terms as “hegemony,” “hierarchy,” and “power transition” is never easy. The concepts often are infused with causal stories, in that their meanings only make sense if one accepts the assumptions and premises of the relevant theory. For example, realists tend to define hegemony in terms of relative capabilities such as population, military capabilities, and so forth; but this definition is only useful if we assume that the central dynamic of international relations is the struggle for power, where these resources will be useful. Constructivists and Gramscian Marxists, on the other hand, focus on whose ideas and values are dominant. The hegemon is the actor that can disseminate its way of life and its system of government. The effort to create universal definitions of hegemony and hierarchy that can be used by scholars of all persuasions (McConaughy, Musgrave & Nexon 2018) is likely quixotic, since definitions are so theory dependent. Realists, of course, emphasize anarchy as the key element shaping great power relations. This is true even though great powers usually have spheres of influence where they can create some hierarchical order. Indeed, the definition of a great power should include the ability to project power outside its own

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sphere. So, to realists, the world is best understood in terms of regional hierarchies that balance against each other (Gilpin 1981). In terms of institutional rules and norms, pessimists (and realists) assume that the main actors are unconstrained by such norms and institutional arrangements in their competition with each other. Symbolic fights over rules might serve to mobilize fighters or justify aggression, but these are peripheral to the main contestation over power. And if rules are articulated, they will tend to differentiate clearly between rights-endowed great powers and duty-burdened subordinate actors. Hegemony is not seen as a benign force in world affairs, although it can lead to periods of peace and order. Institutions, to the extent that they exist at all, are reflections of the hegemon’s power and short-term interests. No hegemonic state creates institutions it can’t control and that don’t serve its interests. It might be that in the short term, order and formal organizations serve all states or some large number of them; but that is more about happenstance than a hegemon’s desire to serve the larger global good. In this view, periods of contestation among great powers are periods of great tension and often widespread violence (Kugler & Organski 1989). Even when a rising power fails to bring down a hegemon, it can do great damage. And the new power will try to establish an order that is more in its own image. Since the existing order represents order, however skewed it might be toward the interests of the previous great power or powers, a period of uncertainty and even chaos can ensue before a new equilibrium is established. Naturally, waning powers would be expected to defend fiercely the institutions and rules they helped establish—many of which were designed to defend their privileged status—in the face of the rising power(s) which reject many of the old rules and agencies. Rules and institutions are objects of contestation even as they are evidence of one state’s dominance. Not every new hegemon will have the same interest in creating a rule-based order: that will depend on their goals and available means. In some cases, exercises of raw power will seem more useful than creating new institutions—for example, the economic system of exploitation created by Germany before and during the Second World War (Hirschman 1980). Those who put more faith in the possibilities of global cooperation also define hegemony in terms of overwhelming power, but put more emphasis on normative dominance along with material capabilities—what many foreign policy analysts have called “leadership” (a term that has fallen into disuse— Modelski & Modelski 1988). In liberal theory, for example, hegemons will certainly use their power; but they “are as they do”—rather than simply impose their interests on the global system, they might also impose a set of values and norms. Along with raw power resources, one also sees hegemons as having financial, industrial, technical, and other capabilities that lead to dominance in production, trade, finance, and so forth. Liberals, for example, know that

Introduction

5

many such actors will also have a desire to lead—particularly when it comes to providing public goods for the broader community. Hegemons often see that providing public goods is essential to their own interests as well as others: organizing diplomacy, establishing the rules of warfare and peace, setting up and sustaining mutually beneficial trade and investment policies, and so forth. The costs, to be sure, are high, and others will inevitably free ride; but the hegemon will also benefit from them disproportionately. After all, as actors in a system come to agree that there should be rules to govern these problems and only the hegemon has the capacity to enforce them, the hegemon will generally be permitted to tilt those rules in its favor. It will be considered by others as one of the costs of having public goods. So hegemonic leadership can flow from highly unequal distributions of power in the system (Ikenberry & Nexon 2019, 403). Hence the “hegemonic stability” theory—a hybrid of liberal and realist thinking. These arrangements are expected to be entered into peacefully and voluntarily with a network of bargains. In particular, they argue that subordinate actors are willing (albeit grudgingly at times) to accept the dominant influence of some great power in exchange for protection and other privileges in a sort of feudal arrangement of duty and rank (Lake 2011). Over time, these arrangements may even be internalized and taken as given, culminating in a legitimate world order under great power leadership. It has been famously posited that once these institutions and rules are established, they may outlive the hegemon, since their benefits will be widely felt and the costs may be spread out across the membership (Keohane 2005). Functionalists, in particular, have proposed that when formal institutions empower third parties to develop, interpret, and enforce the rules, these actors will become strong defenders of the system and even press for its expansion (Haas 1964). While others disagree with this prediction (Kindleberger 1973), it is worth pointing out that even though waning hegemons may be unable to defend their established order, more often than not the new hegemon, going back to antiquity, has embraced and reinvigorated its predecessor’s system. And during a period of hegemonic decline, a small group of system defenders may also step in to preserve and perpetuate the arrangement (Brem & Stiles 2009). Largely, however, liberal theorists focus more on orders than transitions, so there is no clear liberal consensus on how orders change. Like realists, however, the logic of liberalism assumes that new powers will challenge existing institutions: we might say that the liberal theory posits that these institutions are more robust than what realists expect, given the way they both provide needed public goods, and rely on not only raw power but also ideational power. Constructivist international relations scholars see hegemony in terms of ideas and relationships: the hegemon is what people say and believe it is.

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Leadership, after all, requires “followership”—to use a term from the world of business (McCallum 2013)—which involves a certain set of identities and attitudes about roles and status. Social hierarchy is a key concept for this approach. The question becomes who has “status”—particularly who is seen to have social primacy. This dynamic plays out in diplomatic relations, where individual officers sense what is expected of them on the basis of where they and their respective states stand in the global hierarchy. This also applies to non-state actors that often defer to those at the top of the pecking order (Stroup and Wong 2017). Where the arrangements are considered legitimate, there may be little contestation—other than the quest for higher status within the existing framework. If not, debates may center on the principles underlying the ranking of actors, which can lead to heated and even violent conflicts (Ward 2017). Constructivist work has tended to neglect the question of how social hierarchies at the global or regional level come to be viewed as inherently illegitimate, provoking a challenge to the order (for an exception, see Hobson & Sharman 2005). Further, the concept of social status is difficult to operationalize since it is largely self-defined—that is, one has the status that one thinks one has. This is particularly problematic where fine-grained differences are involved or where social status conflicts with economic or military capability. One particularly important variant on constructivist thinking is the Gramscian Marxist notion of the hegemonic bloc, which sees an alliance between the dominant actors across political, racial, social, intellectual, and economic spheres culminating in a unified account of society (Gramsci 1992). The interests of business leaders become the theories of academic economists and are integrated into the platforms of major parties, and in the process opposing views are denigrated and marginalized as “radical” or “anti-social.” At the global level, this anticipates an alliance between these groups across national borders—particularly involving dominant groups in dominant nations—to the point that problems and solutions are defined in terms of their concepts and principles. Postcolonial and other critical theories have addressed the reality of the situation described abstractly by Gramsci to point out that hegemony can involve creating a periphery that has no capacity to reshape the world order without resorting to revolutionary violence. Note that this is very different from the contestation that occurs between first- and second-tier great powers as foreseen in power transition theory or even post-hegemonic institutional reconstitution as discussed earlier. Rather, this is a perspective that asks how hierarchy itself—and with it both aggressive and benign hegemony—can be overturned when opponents lack material and ideational resources. Perhaps the only option is for a revolutionary state actor to gain major power status and

Introduction

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become a vehicle for upending the system—a prospect that seems unlikely, given the prerequisites to major power status.

4.

THEORIES OF IGO AUTONOMY

This book is about how formal international institutions—those formal expressions of an international order (as opposed to informal institutions, as represented by generalized norms of behavior)—will behave and be acted upon during these power transitions. This is important in and of itself, as these institutions are important expressions of the current global order, and their change has real consequences. And we begin with the theoretical presumption—spelled out above—that hegemonic states create these institutions; they don’t just happen. That said, we argue that these institutions and their bureaucracies are themselves “actors” in this drama: they are not merely reflections of existing power balances, but organizations with their own lives, desires, agendas, and flaws. We further argue that the staff of these organizations have themselves agency and importance. Some theories of IGOs might stop at the institutional level, neglecting the influence of particular individuals; yet research on IGO independence at least since Robert Cox’s “The Executive Head” (Cox 1969) consistently suggests that people matter. IGOs will be affected by power shifts, but in ways that can’t be explained only by looking at the desires of states. This perspective, we believe, is well supported by the current literature and needs no defense here; although some explanation will help make our approach more comprehensible. How do people affect the transition of power at the UN and in its agencies? Two steps are important to understand here. First, it is well established that states seek to staff the UN Secretariat with their own nationals, and that the staffing of the UN reflects varying levels of national power (Novosad & Werker 2019). States have an interest in seeing their people in positions of authority. To some extent this might be a matter of national prestige, or the desire to find jobs for the well-connected, or just habit; but states also presumably see this as a tool of influence. When the United States guarantees that the World Bank president and other key positions are always held by US nationals, for example, it clearly believes this to be in its interest. The following chapters look at efforts by states—particularly China—to place their nationals in a position of power within the Secretariat. Second, once staff are in position, we look to see what influence they have and how that influence is manifested. While few studies suggest that staff regularly take direct orders from their home states, they bring to their jobs an ideology, set of assumptions, and general outlook that reflect their background (Weiss 1982). Staff interpret their mandates; they carry out general directives

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with their own discretion; and in the specialized agencies in particular, they play an important role in setting policy at all but the highest level (Parizek 2016). Staff will have more discretion and influence in “service organizations,” such as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) or the IMF, than they will in the “forum organizations” such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization or at UN Headquarters in New York. It is in the service organizations that they have the widest latitude to interpret their mandate, and the most resources at their immediate control, within the delegated discretion and agency slack they are given. Staff in, say, the United Nations Development Programme might be told to promote governance reform, but how that looks in an individual country will depend a lot on what staff think is best and most appropriate in that situation. But throughout the UN, staff have the ability to help set the agenda, to control the flow of information, and to interpret directives (Gordenker 2005). The staff of the UN keep the organization running. As Chapter 2 discusses in greater detail, they are expected to embody the principles of the UN, as they also carry out the wishes of the membership. If the UN is seen as something of an independent “actor” in global politics, much of that comes from the work of the Secretariat, which has its own room to maneuver, and its own influence over the work of the body. As power shifts, so will the pressures that are put on them to see their job in certain ways, and staff can be replaced, too, which makes them particularly vulnerable to shifting political winds, and reactive to them. We might, to be sure, find ourselves critical of the idea that staff have much agency, or that international institutions at large have that kind of independence or relevance (Mearsheimer 1994/95). State sovereignty carries with it ultimate authority to administer policy at the global level (Amstutz 2018, 15; Collins & White 2011). For these writers, IGOs should be responsive to state preferences, even with respect to the founding purposes of the institutions, absent a formal renegotiation of the founding documents (Bryant 2015, 14; Fehl & Thimm 2019). States even have the right to manipulate funding and staffing at the micro level to produce a sort of transnational clientelism (Patz & Goetz 2017; Sridhar & Woods 2013). For the most part, however, recent analysts accept the idea of IGO autonomy, embrace it as a bulwark against raw power politics (Oestreich 2012), and see staff as the source of much of that autonomy. All schools of thought in this area recognize that states often delegate decision-making to institutions, and that the institutions then enjoy some freedom of action. This is the general thrust of “principal-agent theory”—the notion that “principals” (here, states) hire “agents” (IGO staff) to carry out certain functions for them. States tolerate some autonomy to their agents since it is simply too complicated and time-consuming to ratify every action of the IGO; but also, the IGO staff

Introduction

9

themselves will have their own interests and preferences, and will use their asymmetrical knowledge of the IGO’s affairs to carve out wider degrees of personal and organizational autonomy. States themselves see advantages to this. Creating agencies with some degree of autonomy and authority frees up states to address other issues (Koremenos 2017; Oestreich 2012, 7). Delegating the tough decisions to autonomous actors insulates governments from political blowback where there are domestic costs to a necessary action (Collins & White 2011, 15; Oestreich 2012, 7). While some international organizations, such as the UN Security Council or the Bretton Woods institutions, are designed to protect the power of states— particularly the great powers (Lowenthal-Isaacs 2019; Stiles 1991) —bodies like the EU give considerable agenda-setting power to the bureaucracies and governing bodies. They balance rather than enhance state power (Moravscik 1998). Some IGOs are delegated power to impose their will through “naming and shaming,” or even through economic and even military sanctions (Friman 2015). Others gather confidential information and keep it from the general membership, as in the case of the IMF’s reports on national finances (Bryant 2015, 15; Arrow, 1985). Funding arrangements also strengthen or weaken the informal power of the staff, depending on their need for government support (see below) (Ege & Bauer 2017; Stiles 1996). International organizations can develop their own identity and agenda through more informal mechanisms (Mitrany 1966; Hawkins et al. 2006). Again, sometimes complexity drives this. In general, the greater the expertise, the greater the autonomy (Barnett & Finnemore 1999). In some cases, IGO staff create alliances with epistemic communities that manifest themselves in academic and professional circles, in nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and even in state bureaucracies and other IGOs (Oestreich 2012, 18; Stiles 2012). In still other cases, IGO staff even become their own interest groups, pressuring state governments through these alliances, resulting in not just greater autonomy and control over policy, but also the creation of new, sister institutions (Haas 1964). Neoliberals understand that IGOs and their staffs may sometimes play various actors off against each other, exploiting conflicts between principals in the hope of organizing a coalition of states, NGOs, and individuals that permits them greater freedom of operation (Stiles 2012; McCubbins, Noll & Weingast 1989). All this means that staff often create their own narrative of international politics. Returning to the first part of this section, we see that scholars see staff as having considerable freedom, in many situations, to shape and interpret the work of their agencies (Jolly et al. 2009; Koh 2018; Alvarez 2016). This is most likely to occur where states are either ambivalent or of several minds about how to deal with novel situations—such as whether to engage in humanitarian military intervention after the end of the Cold War or how

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to cope with changes to the global climate. And if nothing else, international institutions and their founding documents can freeze a particular international order or a set of policy preferences, leaving the staff to act as a sort of moral and intellectual caretaker. In that case, states will have a particular incentive to change staff makeup and preferences as they seek to align an organization with new global power realities. We turn to these new realities next.

5.

CHANGES TO THE GLOBAL ORDER

Although the exact nature of the power transition currently going on can be debated—will we move toward a multipolar or bipolar order? Will the rise of China be sustainable? Does the US have “soft power” resources that will temper its decline?—the fact that things are changing is unavoidable, even more so given the rising assertiveness of Russia. But what are we to make of this in terms of power shifts and the global order? Figure 1.1 nicely captures the current power shift: it shows that in 2014 the gross domestic product (GDP) of China as measured in terms of purchasing power and in constant 2011 US dollars surpassed that of the United States. And it continues to grow: as of 2021, China’s GDP was nearly 20 percent higher than that of the United States. During the same period, India’s GDP went from 40 percent of that of the United States in 1990 to 45 percent in 2021. Meanwhile, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom are tracking together at a slow, but steady, growth, with Japan at $5.1 trillion, Russia at $4.1 trillion, and the United Kingdom at roughly $3.1 trillion in 2021. Russia grew at an anemic 0.5 percent per year during the period (and its prospects remain dim in light of sanctions); while the United Kingdom posted annual growth of around 2 percent. Naturally, COVID-19 produced a dip in GDP growth trends. In other measures of economic capacity, China’s foreign direct investment outflow is rapidly catching up to US levels; its trade surplus and hard-currency reserves have consistently mirrored those of the United States; and its lending ability has become world class. India’s global economic presence has also been rising; while that of Russia has been steady or falling (thanks in part to economic sanctions imposed following its attacks on Ukraine—see below). The other great powers have held steady—although, as we will see, the United Kingdom’s post-Brexit future is uncertain. With respect to other measures of power, while China’s military spending is still only about one-third that of the United States, it has a far smaller piece of the world to defend and it is doubling every five years, while US spending dipped during the Obama administration (Welch 2020, 57). India’s military spending is roughly keeping pace with its expanding GDP; while Russia’s spending has dipped after steadily expanding from 1998 to 2021 (see Figure

Introduction

Source:

11

World Bank

Figure 1.1

GDP (purchasing power parity) in constant (2017) US$, 1990–2021

1.2). The other major powers are currently spending almost exactly the same amount (around $50 billion per year).

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Looking more specifically at the United States and China, there is a lively academic debate about whether we are witnessing a sort of competitive cooperation, a new Cold War, or the beginning of a hegemonic transition (Nexon & Cooley 2020; Feng & He 2020; Allison 2017; Lynch 2016; Burki 2015). This discussion is also taking place among senior officials at the UN. Opinions are divided, ranging from the belief that the situation is better than during the Cold War to the assertion that the situation is worse, since far more issues are involved than just international security (Interview 2019a; Interview 2019b; Interview 2019c). For many years, the US-China relationship was mostly symbiotic, with China financing much of US debt and US customers buying much of China’s industrial output. The links were described by Beeson and Wesson (2019, 398) and are presented in Figure 1.3. To the extent that UN staff describe a lessening of US influence and an increase in Chinese influence as the most salient shift they feel, the US-China relationship has been central in much of our research. Russian assertiveness has only seemed to make the country less powerful among UN staff, who view it as having violated basic principles of the UN; and India remains a rising influence that is still largely a developing country. In the United States, the election of Donald Trump elevated a nationalist politician suspicious of other countries and of international cooperation in general, and a fear of US relative decline. Trump took the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks; warned the World Trade Organization (WTO) that it must “shape up” and “treat the US better”; renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement to improve US gains; and withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords and from the UN Economic, Social, and Cultural Organization (Feng & He 2020). The Trump administration refused to fill vacancies on the WTO Appellate Body, with the result that the dispute settlement system was seriously disrupted (Brown & Keynes 2020). The United States also cut funding to the UN (although it has not entirely abandoned it, thanks largely to advocacy by US Permanent Representative Nikki Haley—Interview 2019a); and it temporarily abandoned the World Health Organization (WHO) over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic (Chappell 2020; Nichols 2020; Perper 2020). The United States under the Trump administration listed China as a currency manipulator (a bold move Trump’s predecessors had shunned) during the second half of 2019, involving it in a war of words with a UN specialized agency; and engaged in an “on again, off again” trade war with China, resulting in the United States imposing tariffs on $360 billion in Chinese exports beginning in June 2018 and China retaliating with tariffs on $110 billion in US goods (BBC 2020)—policies which the Biden administration for the most part left in place. As is well known, the Trump administration had enlisted the support of allies (the United Kingdom, in particular) in blaming China for

Introduction

13

Source: SIPRI

Figure 1.2

Military spending in constant (2019) US$, 1990–2021

the release of the COVID-19 virus from a laboratory in Wuhan (Auslin 2020; Payne 2020). The advent of the Biden administration has taken some of the vitriol out of these relations; but Biden’s “pivot toward Asia” suggests that tensions have not gone away, and disagreements over China’s relationship with

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Russia, as well as tension around Taiwan, have not done anything to improve relations. There is little reason to suggest that a future US administration might not swing back toward a more Trump-like policy. China, for its part, has been focused on a new role for itself—particularly under Xi Jinping (Shepherd & Qiu 2017). Where once China seemed primarily interested in protecting its access to Western markets, an increasingly assertive approach to world affairs sees it demanding the respect it feels it is due as one of the world’s economic and military leaders. It has sought a larger voice in Bretton Woods institutions and at the UN. In the case of the former, it asked the IMF, beginning in 2015, to classify the renminbi as a hard currency (Burki 2015, 49—it succeeded in 2016) and for a larger voting share in the IMF and the World Bank. Achieving only partial success, and frustrated by what it considers to be less influence than it deserves, China has joined with Russia, India, Brazil, and South Africa in recent years to create parallel (but not necessarily antithetical—Welch 2020, 62) multilateral (or perhaps “minilateral”—Interview 2019d) economic institutions that enhance its influence, particularly in the developing world (Beeson & Watson 2019, 406). It has instituted a trillion-dollar infrastructure program stretching from the Pacific to Italy: the Belt and Road Initiative. China has also dramatically increased its aid to Africa, usually with no human rights strings attached, as another way to expand its influence abroad (Bruce-Lockhart 2017; Cooper 2017; The Economist 2016). While for the most part China remains committed to a multilateral, free-trade-based world order much like the current system (Elliott & Wearden 2017; Okano-Heijmans et al. 2018, 21), China’s weaker neighbors worry that: China is using its overseas spending spree to gain footholds in some of the world’s most strategic places, and perhaps even deliberately luring vulnerable nations into debt traps to increase China’s dominion as the United States’ influence fades in the developing world. (Beech 2018)

As François Godement, a senior advisor for Asia at the Paris-based Institut Montaigne, put it: You have a new brand of Chinese diplomats who seem to compete with each other to be more radical and eventually insulting to the country where they happen to be posted … They’ve gotten into fights with every northern European country with whom they should have an interest, and they’ve alienated every one of them. (Erlanger 2020)

At the same time, China has become preoccupied with creating and preserving the image of a friendly, generous, and competent world leader, and has been quick to attack those who would challenge it (Auslin 2020). As we will see,

Introduction

15

this is particularly true with respect to its own citizens; but it also includes foreign reporters operating in China, foreign diplomats and businesses, and even foreign governments and citizens of other countries. This likely reflects some disagreement on tactics and style within the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party themselves (Buckley 2020). As this book shows, that has translated into the Chinese approach to the UN’s Secretariat: seeking more influence while also trying to avoid the appearance of wanting radical change. Still, it reflects a rising sense of influence while also some stake in preserving the status quo. As with the other rising powers, a sense of having more influence and a desire to be heard does not equate to a desire for wholesale change.

6.

OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK

The point of this volume is to understand the effect of these changing dynamics on staff, and their effect in return on UN outcomes. But first, in Chapter 2, Joel E. Oestreich asks: what should staff do in this situation of shifting power? The long-term ideal of the UN Secretariat—pre-dating Dag Hammarskjold, but perhaps best articulated by him—is that staff should be “global public servants,” loyal to an idea of international cooperation that transcends the politics of the moment. This would seem to imply that staff ought to resist changes brought about by power shifts, and try to remain true to the UN’s ideals. But what does this mean in practice? We posit that global civil servants can adopt a “thick” or “thin” notion of such independence. In a thick theory, the UN represents abstract global ideals which should not depend on any constellation of power. But this theory is flawed, since the institution was created by mostly Western and Northern states, and has always reflected their particular vision of what multilateralism means. In a thinner theory, staff should serve the global community impartially; but should recognize that this global community has changing ideas of what it wants, and that they need to respond to those ideas. This still requires staff to have substantial discretion as they interpret the “true” voice of the global community as best they can; but it does not leave them free to ignore shifting global opinions or power relations. Interviews with staff suggest that they are following such a policy, from both expedience and principle. While remaining true to the notion of multilateralism, they also must “read the tea leaves” of global power and interests and act accordingly. Fortunately, so far, they feel that rising powers are not hostile to multilateralism per se; although of course the specific vision of multilateralism will shift. In Chapter 3, Gregory Chin asks: how does China fit into the UN’s agenda to build a more peaceful, equitable, democratic, and ecologically sustainable world? China’s role in the UN system has taken on new meaning for the UN itself as the UN looks to evolve and transform itself in order to improve its per-

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formance in meeting global needs. This chapter argues that China’s relationship to the UN and its role in the UN system have changed dramatically during the last two decades. Referring to the main themes in this edited collection— that is, that rising powers will look to use their power to change the hierarchy of power and influence inside IGOs to advantage their own position; and that IGOs “take on a life of their own”, with their own institutional agendas, priorities and ideas—the analysis shows how China has willingly transferred some of its rising power capabilities into a more pivotal role in the UN, and has assumed a central position in the UN’s agenda to build a more peaceful, equitable, democratic, and environmentally sustainable and climate-friendly world. We argue first that—contrary to the commentators who earlier questioned whether China was pulling its (increased) weight—in the UN system, in fact, China has intentionally transferred some of its growing material and scientific capabilities into increased contributions across a number of important functional areas. China’s new and growing contributions have increased its international prestige; but they have also strengthened the effectiveness and efficiency of the UN specialized agencies and UN programming, particularly in the areas of humanitarian relief, development cooperation and poverty reduction, health, science and technology cooperation, climate change mitigation and environmental protection, and peacekeeping. Second, the UN, among the major IGOs, has been exemplary in adapting to China’s global rise, in building new ties and institutionalized channels and platforms for China to contribute to the UN’s agenda. In so doing, the UN has influenced China’s international behavior in terms of channeling its contributions toward UN global agendas; and in select areas, the UN has even encouraged Beijing’s adherence or convergence toward global institutional norms and rules, the terms of UN Conventions. This two-way dynamic is best understood as mutual or two-way socialization. Chapter 4 analyzes the multilateral agenda of contemporary Brazilian foreign policy through a case study of its governmental strategies to the UN since its transition to democracy in 1985. More specifically, Hugo Bras Martins da Costa, Giovana Zacutto, and Marianna Albuquerque seek to understand the recent changes to this strategy since Jair Bolsonaro’s election in 2018 and how the UN is reacting to these changes. The first section presents a brief historical overview of the Brazilian governmental strategies to the UN since the country’s transition to democracy in 1985. The second section outlines the main aspects of Brazilian diplomacy at the UN under Bolsonaro’s government. The third section analyzes the key breaks and continuities in Brazilian governmental strategies regarding the UN since Bolsonaro’s election in 2018 and its consequences for the future of Brazilian multilateral diplomacy at the UN. Bolsonaro’s government represents a turning point in terms of not only the memberships, official positioning, and alliances of Brazilian diplomacy

Introduction

17

within the UN, but also its statements on the role of IGOs. Multilateralism was historically related to a broader process of renewing the democratic credentials of Brazilian domestic and foreign policies since the country’s transition from a dictatorship to a democracy. In other words, the multilateral strategy was seen in a consensual way by different governments as a key step toward consolidating the transition to democracy in 1985. However, the Bolsonaro government represents the resurgence of an anti-multilateral approach in Brazilian foreign policy. This approach is closely related to a governmental strategy that puts Brazilian democratic institutions under unprecedented attack and seeks to contain democratic public policies. In this regard, it is essential to highlight the sudden change in Brazilian official statements and positionings about environmental protection and climate change, reproductive health and women’s rights, and human rights within the UN forums. Although Brazil’s diplomatic corps is trying to reduce the damage being done here, the Bolsonaro government has made Brazil an international pariah at the UN. In this regard, it is important to point out that Brazil was left out of the list of speaker countries in the UN Climate Summit in 2019 and in the Climate Ambition Summit 2020 by the UN Secretariat. Rhona Smith and Conall Mallory address the UN’s human rights programs during this transition in Chapter 5. Human rights, as a global movement, is embroiled in twenty-first century power struggles, with power transitions manifesting themselves through democratic backsliding and divergent discourses on the future of universal rights and freedoms. Relationships between states and the UN human rights monitoring bodies are becoming increasingly fractious. China has posited its specific understanding of human rights and its relevance to sovereignty and development; the African states are increasingly evincing a bloc voice in voting within the UN; and hitherto self-proclaimed beacons of human rights, democracy, and liberalism are digressing from norms, and decrying and withdrawing from human rights monitoring mechanisms. Funding is in an increasingly precarious state, which is particularly challenging for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the branch of the UN Secretariat which supports most of the UN human rights monitoring mechanisms. In 2020, for example, OHCHR funding was restricted to the core staffing budget with the leanest skeleton support for other activities. To trace the fate of human rights during power transition, this chapter draws on existing literature, UN documentation and interviews with a limited number of UN Secretariat staff and members of those human rights monitoring mechanisms dependent on the OHCHR for UN Secretariat support. State-level power struggles, as played out within the UN, are altering not only the enforcement of states’ human rights obligations, but also their very understanding and normative importance. This is compounded by internal challenges within the UN, with Secretariat officials increasingly feeling

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vulnerable, perceiving central elements of their jobs to be under threat. The former high commissioner’s proposed reforms to the permanent Secretariat (including regional hubs and rotating positions) exacerbated this, at least in Geneva. Challenges including moving to remote working and embracing new technology are also identified—something which became especially evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, which limited in-person attendance at offices and meetings in Geneva. Global power struggles and transitions are having a negative effect on human rights globally and diverting attention from those without a voice—the very people whom the UN Secretariat and indeed states were meant to protect. In Chapter 6, Joel E. Oestreich addresses development policy during hegemonic transition. The UN and its specialized agencies—particularly the World Bank and the IMF—have for a long time been thought leaders in framing global development policy. Much of this leadership ability has come from the relative autonomy of the staff of the major development agencies, from the Bretton Woods institutions to UNICEF and the Sustainable Development Group. As many studies have shown, their size, their access to information not readily available to states, the complexity of global development, and their moral authority all contribute to this autonomy. American hegemony has, to some extent, been obvious in shaping development policy along neoliberal lines; but that has also been tempered by the process of global goal-setting (e.g., the Sustainable Development Goals) and the adoption of rights-based approaches to development. It is certainly true that the fading of US hegemony has created challenges to the current system. The World Bank has been under pressure to change for some time because of new Chinese power; the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative has created a new power center for development finance; and developing countries have expressed their displeasure with the current development regime and called for reform. UN agencies themselves have resisted these changes and remain committed to the current development system. For example, the rights-based approach to development remains central to the UN despite voices to the contrary; and the UN has even had some successes convincing China to pay more attention to the human rights implications of its work. Still, the new loci of power represent unprecedented challenges which are likely to increase in importance. It seems likely that the real issue will not be pressure on staff to change development policy, but rather the growing irrelevance of the traditional development machinery in the face of a rising Global South, Chinese finance, and US disinterest. Bimal Adhikari explores Chinese strategies to build alternative IFIs in Chapter 7. Scholars and policymakers assert that a rising China has been threatening the existing rule-based world order. By aggressively putting its largesse to work, China has been courting states to support its vision of the world order, which is based on a strong notion of state sovereignty and non-intervention in

Introduction

19

domestic affairs. Some suggest that China has been using parallel, but not antithetical, multilateral organizations such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to upend the status quo. How successful has it been in using this newly created multilateral institution to meet its objectives? And how have the existing institutions responded to China’s assertiveness? Adhikari argues that membership in the AIIB increases support for China-backed resolutions in the UN General Assembly. Arguably, upon joining the AIIB, developing countries increase their support for China-backed resolutions, which are often at odds with the core tenets of Western liberalism. Continued nonsupport by AIIB member states for the liberal world order makes the UN look ineffective and puts its future at risk. Hence, the UN is increasing its engagement in developing AIIB member states via its specialized agencies to persuade those countries to change their foreign policy positions and to maintain its relevance in the changing political landscape. In Chapter 8, Stephanie Strobl examines institutional independence using the examples of the WHO and of public health emergencies of international concern (PHEICs). Adopting both a theoretical and practical approach, Strobl highlights two different sources of authority of the WHO Secretariat— based on conditional negotiated legitimacy and epistemologically derived legitimacy—and explores how this authority is threatened by an increase in state party influence above and beyond what is envisaged in the WHO’s institutional set-up. As a practical example, Strobl uses the PHEIC determinations where the criteria as set out in the International Health Regulations are not sufficient to explain the director-general’s decision to determine a PHEIC. Instead, she offers evidence of state party influence. This challenge to the WHO’s legitimacy leads to a lack of institutional independence and consequently to a declining basis for cooperation. The response to the COVID-19 pandemic provides a timely case study to show how influence is used in the WHO, and how staff respond. In Chapter 9, Wei Liang turns her attention to the WTO. The Secretariat of the WTO is quite small compared to that of other comparable agencies. It does, however, have specific interests which it tries to pursue, including both the opening of international trade and the alleviation of poverty through improved governance of trade. The WTO Secretariat has evolved more than the other Bretton Woods institutions in including citizens from the emerging powers at a higher rate; and it also sees new demands not just from the biggest emerging powers, but from all developing states. Staff at the WTO have had to strike a balance between its organizational role, the interests and preferences of the large developed countries, and the new demands of the largest emerging powers. WTO staff worry about the legitimacy of their institution perhaps more than those at any of the other agencies studied here; but the small size

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and authority of the Secretariat make it difficult for them to drive bold reform in the face of specific state and bloc interests. Finally, Chapter 10 summarizes the findings of this volume. There is no single, easy answer to our question about staff efforts to pursue the goals of the UN in the face of the various global changes occurring. But we cannot ignore the fact that staff are sometimes effective at pursuing their own goals and modifying the goals of member states—and, more importantly, that staff are active as a mediating variable. We also find that some states, China in particular, are not as revisionist as they might first appear. In the case of China and Brazil, for example, we see a much more intersubjective process of learning that is at least partly accounted for by staff agency, often skilled. Staff respond to bureaucratic imperatives, such as their desire for continued funding, for independence, and simply for the continuation of standard operating procedures (ie, inertia). But they also have cultural norms that they strive to maintain in the face of efforts to modify those norms. Overall, we find that IGOs can adapt to new situations, while continuing to institutionalize existing norms. The process, of course, is ongoing.

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McCallum, John S. (2013) “Followership: The Other Side of Leadership,” Ivey Business Journal Sept/Oct. https://​iveybusinessjournal​.com/​publication/​followership​ -the​-other​-side​-of​-leadership/​. McConaughey, Meghan, Paul Musgrave and Daniel H. Nexon (2018) “Beyond Anarchy: Logics of Political Organization, Hierarchy, and International Structure,” International Theory 20(2), pp. 181–218. McCubbins, Mathew D., Roger G. Noll and Barry R. Weingast (1989) “Structure and Process, Politics and Policy: Administrative Arrangements and the Political Control of Agencies.” Virginia Law Review 75: 431–82. Mearsheimer, J. (1994/95). The False Promise of International Institutions. International Security 19(3) (Winter): 5–49. Mitrany, David (1966) A Working Peace System. Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books. Modelski, George and Sylvia Modelski, eds. (1988) Documenting Global Leadership. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Moravcsik, Andrew (1998) The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Nexon, Daniel and Alexander Cooley (2020) Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order. New York: Oxford University Press. Nichols, Michelle (2020) “China ‘Shocked’ by U.S. Reversal on U.N. Coronavirus Action: Diplomat.” Reuters May 9. https://​www​.reuters​.com/​article/​us​-health​ -coronavirus​-un/​china​-shocked​-by​-u​-s​-reversal​-on​-u​-n​-coronavirus​-action​-diplomat​ -idUSKBN22L0VG. Nielson, Daniel L. and Michael J. Tierney. 2003. “Delegation to International Organizations: Agency Theory and World Bank Environmental Reform.” International Organization 57(2): 241–76. Novosad, Paul and Eric Werker. (2019) “Who Runs the International System? Nationality and Leadership in the International System.” The Review of International Organizations 14(1) (March) pp. 1–33. Oestreich, Joel (2012) “Introduction” in Joel Oestreich, ed., International Organizations as Self-Directed Actors: A Framework for Analysis. London: Routledge, pp. 1–25. Okano-Heijmans, Maaike and Frans-Paul van der Putten (2018) “A United Nations with Chinese Characteristics?” Clingendael Report. The Hague: Netherlands Institute of International Relations. Patz, Ronnie and Goetz, Klaus H. (2017) “Changing Budgeting Administration in International Organizations: Budgetary Pressures, Complex Principals and Administrative Leadership,” in Michael W. Bauer, Christoph Knill, and Steffan Eckhard (eds.) International Bureaucracy: Challenges and Lessons for Public Administration Research. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 123–50. Payne, Adam (2020) “Boris Johnson’s Government Has Considered the Possibility that the Coronavirus May Have Accidentally Leaked from a Chinese Lab.” Business Insider April 6. https://​www​.businessinsider​.com/​boris​-johnson​-government​ -coronavirus​-may​-leaked​-chinese​-laboratory​-covid​-2020–4. Perper, Rosie (2020) “China is Injecting Millions into WHO as the US Cuts Funds. Experts Say Beijing is Trying to Boost Its Influence over the Agency and Its ‘Deeply Compromised’ Chief.” Business Insider April 24. https://​www​.businessinsider​.com/​ china​-who​-multimillion​-dollar​-contribution​-political​-power​-move​-2020–4. Rawls, John (1995) The Law of Peoples. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Shepherd, Christian and Stella Qiu (2017) “China’s Xi Lays Out Vision for ‘New Era’ Led by ‘Still Stronger’ Communist Party.” Reuters October 17. https://​www​.reuters​

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.com/​article/​us​-china​-congress/​chinas​-xi​-lays​-out​-vision​-for​-new​-era​-led​-by​-still​ -stronger​-communist​-party​-idUSKBN1CM35L. Sridhar, Devi and Ngaire Woods (2013) “Trojan Multilatealism: Global Cooperation in Health.” Global Policy 14(4), pp. 325–35. Doi​.org/​10​.111/​1758–5899​.12066. Stiles, Kendall (1991) Negotiating Debt: The IMF Lending Process. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Stiles, Kendall (1996) “International Organizations and Civil Society: UNICEF, UNDP and World Bank collaboration with local NGOs,” presented at the annual meetings of the International Studies Association, San Diego, March 15. Stiles, Kendall (2012) “Disaggregating Delegation: Multiplying Agents in the International Maritime Safety Regime.” in Joel Oestreich, ed., International Organizations as Self-Directed Actors: A Framework for Analysis. London: Routledge, pp. 168–94. Stroup, Sarah S. and Wendy H. Wong (2017) “Leading Authority as Hierarchy among INGOs,” in Ayşe Zarakol, ed., Hierarchies in World Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 175–97. The Economist (2016) “A Despot’s Guide to Foreign Aid: Want more cash? Vote with China at the United Nations,” April 16. https://​www​.economist​.com/​middle​-east​ -and​-africa/​2016/​04/​16/​a​-despots​-guide​-to​-foreign​-aid. Ward, Steven (2017) Status and the Challenge of Rising Powers. New York: Cambridge University Press. Welch, David (2020) “China, the United States, and ‘Thucydides’s Trap’,” in Hiuyun Feng and Kai He, eds., China’s Challenges and International Order Transition: Beyond “Thucydides’s Trap”. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, pp. 47–70.

2. Hegemonic Change in International Organizations: A Theory of Professional Responsibility in Multilateralism Joel E. Oestreich 1. INTRODUCTION Theories of hegemonic change in world politics are well known and well delineated (Keohane 1984; Gilpin 1988). Rising powers challenge the status quo; existing powers, which have used their hegemonic position to create a world order to their liking, resist this rise. Sometimes conflict results; sometimes change is managed reasonably peacefully. Either way, if the rising power succeeds as a challenger, a new status quo replaces the old. Declining powers accommodate themselves to the new situation. Perhaps they continue to resist the new hegemon by forming alliances with other powers, or relying on soft power resources they still can access. Either way, a new system is born, underwritten by a new hegemon. It might be a simple issue of creating a rough order with the crudest forms of power; or it might be a more complex affair of aligning interests, overcoming collective action problems, and creating norms and regimes to stabilize the system. But change results at multiple levels. Most studies of this phenomenon look at the level of interstate security relations, rising military power, and the like. Other analyses also look at the global economic order, raising that to the level of “high politics” alongside military security (Keohane 1984; Gilpin 1988; Foot, McFarlane et al. 2003). Within intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), we might expect to see something like the same dynamic play out, albeit on a smaller scale. Existing great powers shape the IGOs, staff them, fund them, and determine their priorities; while new powers will have new ideas about what IGOS should be doing (Barnett and Finnemore 2004; Haftel and Thompson 2006; Lyne et al. 2006; Oestreich 2012), and will also want to influence how staff are furthering those goals. We can thus hypothesize that something similar to hegemonic change is happening now, and will continue to progress. Within the United Nations (UN), and par25

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ticularly within its Secretariat, it is the professional staff who keep the organization running. We would expect that rising powers—notably China, but also others such as India, Brazil, and a newly assertive and revisionist Russia—will seek to change or even transform the Secretariat to better mirror their interests and their preferred form of multilateralism. They will do this recognizing the influence of Secretariat staff on the organization as a whole. Staff, meanwhile, will have to determine how they will react to these new priorities. There are, to be sure, questions about what this change will look like. For example, how will it shift attitudes toward the responsibility to protect, or the UN’s economic priorities, or human rights? Some of these practical questions are addressed in other chapters. But the focus here is an ethical one: how should Secretariat staff act in the face of these power shifts and the changes they cause? Should they resist these changes; embrace them; take a neutral stance (whatever that might look like); or something else? In practical terms, should staff dutifully carry out the wishes of newly influential member states? Or should they resist changes they think run counter to the “spirit” of the organization? And, we must ask, is it for staff to determine what that spirit is in the first place? Or would this violate their duty as agents of member states? After all, staff serve the UN, and the UN itself takes its orders from its members. In the language of principal-agent theory (Cortell and Peterson 2006; Gailmard 2014), the Secretariat is an agent of states, bound to follow their instructions as part of their official job description. We begin with the assumption that staff at the UN have two sets of responsibilities; these sometimes align conveniently, but sometimes do not. That is, they are expected to follow the instructions of member states, as the UN Secretariat is, again, an agent of its members. This is more easily said than done, since there are 193 member states of the UN, and their interests diverge widely. Still, in some difficult but comprehensible way, UN staff are expected to carry out their combined wishes as best as those wishes can be divined. On the other hand, UN staff are supposed to be loyal to the ideals of the institution and to be neutral instruments for pursuing those ideals. The creation of a true “international bureaucracy” was intended to provide experts with a certain esprit de corps (Lemoine 1995) which would serve the abstract notion of multilateralism, collective security, and global cooperation. Staff were supposed to be above the political fray, serving the UN and its highest aspirations. This has the potential to create a moral conundrum for the Secretariat. UN staff, we have posited in Chapter 1, have a level of independence from states. So, if a rising power or set of powers wants to change the nature of their jobs and priorities, should that power (or powers) be accommodated quietly? Or should staff use their independence to resist changes when they think those changes are counterproductive to the mission of the UN? In other words, should staff listen to that rising power and further its priorities; or should they

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leverage their independence and discretion to continue with what they believe is in the best interests of the UN as a whole? What should an international civil servant do if these proposed changes run counter to their moral beliefs, or, more importantly, to the central ideals of the UN Charter? Is their loyalty to member states, or to the institution itself? To answer these questions, we must be mindful that the status quo is not itself to be reified: it did not emerge de novo from the Charter of the United Nations. Rather, it is itself the result of an existing, unequal power structure— that of the powerful Western countries that until recently had undisputed sway over the staffing and ideology of the UN, and which dominated it even more so in its first years. Should that status quo continue to be taken as representing the ideals of the UN as a whole? Or does it represent only one of many equally legitimate visons of what the global body stands for? And is adherence to the current status quo itself morally defensible? To be sure, there are a lot of questions to be answered. This chapter argues that staff must both serve member states and remain true to the Charter principles; and it suggests a way to balance these two priorities when they appear to conflict. This chapter rests on some basic presumptions about the nature and role of UN staff. First, it considers the status of the international civil servant, both as an ideal type and as they actually carry out their job. It then considers how hegemonic change presents a challenge to the international civil service as it seeks to serve both state members and the ideals of the Charter itself. It posits that there is both a “thin” and a “thick” notion of how the civil servant is to be loyal to the UN’s principles: the former assuming only that staff should follow the will of members unless it is in direct contradiction with the Charter as written; the latter that staff ought to be true to some larger, presumably liberal set of ideals which have permeated the UN since its foundation. These might seem to lead to different conclusions about staff moral responsibilities; but in fact, they diverge much less than first appears once we understand that the Charter indeed does not reify any particular status quo. The chapter argues, ultimately, that there are lines that staff must not cross; but that those lines are less likely to be violated by newly powerful states than some fear.

2.

THE NATURE OF INTERNATIONAL CIVIL SERVANTS

What is the international civil service, and what is it supposed to accomplish? The answers to these questions will shape our idea of what the professional responsibilities of civil servants are. Even before the founding of the UN, there were questions about what sort of international staff would best serve multilateral institutions. Would the staff of

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the UN (and before it, the League of Nations) be simple paper-pushers, whose only job was to provide diplomats with meeting rooms and notepads? Or would they have their own ideas about how the organization should operate and what its agenda should be? Would they take direction from their home states, or operate as neutral civil servants loyal to a global ideal? And—particularly in an era when the Cold War was the dominant fact of international politics—would they be above the vicissitudes of geopolitics (Weiss 1975; Mouritzen 1990)? As Jacques Lemoine shows in his comprehensive study of the international civil service, as early as 1920 Lord Balfour—central to the foundation of the League of Nations—had advocated for a truly neutral civil service, stating that: the members of the Secretariat, once appointed are no longer the servants of the country of which they are citizens, but become for the time being servants only of the League of Nations. Their duties are not national, but international. (quoted in Lemoine 1995)

The notion of a truly independent international civil service then is at least that old. Jumping ahead, the independence of staff was codified in Article 100 of the UN Charter, which specifies that “in the performance of their duties the Secretary-General and staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any government or from any other authority external to the Organization.” However, this neutrality did not necessarily preclude staff from having views or opinions of their own; only from acting as representatives of any particular country or its viewpoint. They were to have an “international outlook” and to take an oath of neutrality (Weiss 1975). In the early years of the UN, the international bureaucracy was largely expected to “keep the trains running on time” rather than to serve some particular definition of what an international outlook should look like. The first secretary-general, Trygve Lie, was chosen exactly because he was unlikely to do much more than maintain the office functions: he was more “Manager” than “Visionary” (Kille 2006). In this case, “neutrality” meant that staff kept the paperwork moving and carried out the instructions of states in an evenhanded way, rather than projecting their own beliefs onto the organization. Studies of the early years of the international bureaucracy look extensively at the pressures put on staff by the sides of the Cold War to support one or the other side’s vision—so much so that the UN Secretariat was described as being in “crisis” over its neutrality and objectivity (Beigbeder 1988). Just as the Cold War was playing itself out as an ideological struggle in geopolitics, so too did it intrude on the hiring and activities of the international bureaucracy. In this situation the idea of neutrality for staff was simply to be free from the pressure of individual states’ agendas. However, when one looks carefully, it becomes clear that some idealistic, perfect neutrality for UN staff is not

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a reachable goal. The civil servant in this case is working to advance the specific goals of the international agency. But how are we to know these goals? The Charter lays out only basic principles; states provide the specifics. One solution to this problem might be to say that staff should carry out the directives given them through various resolutions and the like. These are the best expressions of the will of the body. But even this will inevitably call for some interpretation, some inference, and some discretion (as principal-agent theory would put it) to craft specific policies aimed at achieving directives. And in the real world, even more is called for: bureaucrats will have to “read the tea leaves” (a phrase commonly used by UN staff discussing the limits of their personal autonomy) to understand what their principals actually want or will tolerate; and some states will be able to exert more pressure than others, and thus count for more. Effective bureaucratic action requires listening to some states more than others, and deciding which states ought to be listened to, and when. This is the reality of bureaucratic life. (Here it is important to say that having staff listen to the desires of the “international community” (if it can be known) is different than having staff instructed by their home governments.) Staff inevitably will be pulled in various directions. They will be pressured to bend to the will of the states that appoint them or that have the most influence; and they will have to determine which voices and interests best represent the will of the international community. How, then, are staff to ethically balance the pressures and interests of states with their belief that they ought to serve the institution itself, rather than individual state interests? Shifts in the geopolitical balance of power will only enhance the importance of this question, as those shifts result in new requests for changed policies.

3.

THIN AND THICK THEORIES OF STAFF RESPONSIBILITIES

To help answer this, we can imagine both a thin and a thick theory of staff responsibility. A thin theory suggests only that staff should not take directives from any particular state, but instead should be loyal to the decisions of the UN membership as a whole. It is a theory that says staff must be loyal to the institution, and assumes that the institution itself is largely reducible to the collective of states that make it up. Staff will need some discretion to interpret the complex will of the membership; but ultimately, they should be channeling that will, rather than their own ideas of what should be done. This thin theory certainly assumes that as global power levels rise and fall among members, staff should not simply bend to the desires and whims of the rising power, but instead should exert some independence in interpreting these changes. Indeed, it might be their moral responsibility to resist those whims and desires if they are not reflective of the volonté générale of the international community. But it

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still suggests that staff are loyal primarily to a collective of individual member states, and must read the tea leaves as best they can. A thicker theory suggests that staff should be loyal to some particular notion of what the foundational principles of the institution are—in this case a vision of multilateralism as expressed by the UN Charter and institutionalized over time as the ideals of the UN. These ideals will change slowly, if at all, and do not depend on any temporary constellation of state interests. In this thicker theory, to say that staff should have an “international outlook” means they have loyalty to a vision of multilateralism and the welfare of international society that transcends a particular time and place. Some version of this has been the ideal of the international bureaucracy at least since the Secretary-Generalship of Dag Hammarskjold (Beigbeder 1988), who envisioned the UN as a separate entity and the vessel for a higher vision of internationalism. In this model, bureaucrats have an agenda that stems from the UN Charter: multilateral action, the maintenance of international peace, the promotion of human rights, respect for sovereign equality, observance of international agreements, and other goals. In the thick theory more so than the thin one, the international bureaucrat is not a faceless paper-pusher or even a dutiful interpreter of national desires, but a true servant of the institution and its ideals. It is an ideal type—not just of the international bureaucrat, but also of the international bureaucracy itself, distinctly above the fray of world power shifts and changing interests of leaders. And it is again in line with the ideals of many UN leaders, from Dag Hammarskjold forward, and perhaps fits with many people’s ideal of the global bureaucrat serving the UN Charter. A thicker theory also stems from the notion of UN staff as having specialized training and a self-created code of conduct, and assumed to be working for the wellbeing of their organization or clients, rather than themselves (Boland 1982; Greenwood 1983). Professionals should not be swayed by political expediency and should serve a higher purpose than momentary advantage. Professionals should certainly serve those who employ them—and in this case, that would be states as well as the organization itself; but they should do so within the bounds of their own calling and the standards created for those in their field. That is why they are, in the end, hired: for their knowledge of, and adherence to, those standards. This thicker theory may seem appealing at an emotional level—who does not support the professional with loyalty to their (supposedly timeless) ideals? But a vison of the civil servant loyal only to a perfect vision of multilateralism is as problematic as it is idealistic. First of all, we must keep in mind that the UN Charter was written by a very select group of states in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, and still reflects the interests of this largely wealthy, Western coalition of states (Cronin 2001). This does not automatically invalidate the Charter as a global

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ideal, to be sure; but it does suggest that the Charter deserves careful consideration before being given a status above the political fray. Second, staff themselves have always been drawn from people who share this outlook: either people from the rich countries of North American and Western Europe; or people who might originally hail from other parts of the world but who were educated in the West, largely live now in New York or Geneva or Washington, DC, and take this perspective due to their education and social status (Bailey 1962). This ideological uniformity is well documented and often remarked on (Novosad and Werker 2014, Parizek 2016). To be sure, there has been a more recent effort to diversify the UN bureaucracy. But the notion that there has ever been a “neutral” UN staff that adheres to some ideal of global cooperation that can be separated from particular political traditions simply does not hold up. Thus, the notion of an international bureaucrat who is divorced from global politics and serves an ideal of multilateralism is more fantasy than reality: neither the Charter itself nor those tasked with helping it function can be thought of separately from the global politics of a particular time. There is no single ideal of multilateralism, or human rights, or sovereign equality, or anything else that lies at the core of the UN Charter; these things always have been and remain open to interpretation. So, the status quo of global bureaucracy is itself contingent on existing power relationships; and we might assume both that it will change as power balances change, and perhaps even that it should change.

4.

STAFF PERCEPTIONS, ROLES, AND HEGEMONIC CHANGE

Where do staff see themselves? Which model of change do they see playing out, and how are they reacting to it? Discussing current trends at the UN, a few themes were clearly shared among active staff members regarding the trajectory of the UN in the new political climate. (It should be noted that most of these interviews took place before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and either during the Trump administration or in the early part of the Biden administration in the United States.) First, staff all agreed that there is a period of transition at the UN in terms of which states are most interested in exerting influence, and which see their influence waning, whether intentionally or not. As one would expect, China is perceived as increasingly influential in UN circles, and also as intentionally leveraging that influence for its own purposes. Nearly all staff noted the increased number of Chinese nationals being nominated for top jobs in the Secretariat, as do many of the chapters in this volume. Many also pointed to increased Chinese participation in peacekeeping affairs, in stark contrast to

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the other permanent Security Council powers. Also frequently discussed was Chinese involvement in African politics and economic development. There was a clear perception that Chinese influence at the UN is challenging US influence, and a sense that this will drive changes in how multilateralism is conceived of at the UN. At the same time, it is not clear how much staff think the United States is retreating from the UN, as opposed to simply accommodating the fact that there is another major player to be dealt with. Despite the rhetoric of the Trump administration, few staff felt that the United States was in retreat. Staff pointed out that the United States is still by far the largest donor, and that US funding remained fairly steady even under the Trump administration; this was assumed to be reinforced by an early Biden presidency. Staff noted that while the United States has not been much of a leader in areas like the environment, it remains engaged in other areas. Several interviewees opined that US permanent representatives to the UN had been much less hostile or disinterested than rhetoric from the White House would lead one to believe under Trump in particular. In some areas—the World Food Program was singled out—US leadership has, if anything, been stepped up. More to the point here, there was little if any fear that China was hostile to the UN, or that it intended to dismantle the structure of multilateralism that the UN represented. Indeed, the sense was that the Chinese government sees substantial benefit to working within the UN, and more broadly, believes that maintaining institutionalized multilateralism is strongly in its interest. Like the United States before it, China is beginning to see that it has global interests, and that working through a multilateral institution will lower transaction costs, increase legitimacy, and enhance national power. Instead, staff expressed concerns about the priorities of the Chinese government—particularly around human rights, economic development, and the environment; but these were concerns about priorities, not about existential threats. In other words, there was a fear that some issues might be deemphasized, and others shaped in a more Chinese mode; but not that there would be wholesale changes in what the UN is tasked with doing. In the face of this expected, and incremental, change, staff generally expressed the same muted concerns. Few expected dramatic changes to the UN; all assumed that there would be a shifting emphasis on key issues as Chinese influence began to be felt. Several suggested that other shifts were going on as well—particularly a rise in influence of G-77/non-aligned movement states as power shifted not only to China, but also to the Global South. Nearly every interview respondent suggested that staff would exhibit at least some resistance to these changes in the UN’s priorities. They suggested that staff worried that Chinese (and also other) influence would de-emphasize some fundamental moral interests—notably human rights, democracy, envi-

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ronmental protection, and nongovernmental organization participation—and replace them with a more authoritarian, less morally centered set of policies. They suggested that the Trump administration had engendered similar resistance, at least to the threat that it signals a more disengaged United States; and that the Biden administration, while better, might not mark a permanent change in US policy. Similarly, nearly every interview respondent said something about loyalty among most staff to the ideals or principles of the UN, with the implication that this loyalty would be challenged as UN priorities shifted. Human rights was most often mentioned, but other areas were too, including development policy, the environment, and peacekeeping. Even staff with extensive experience, whom we might expect to be cynical—or at least realistic—about bureaucratic politics, seemed certain that most staff were both independent from nation-state preferences (or at least struggled for such independence as best they could), and idealistic about their role at a multilateral institution. To be sure, both of these were tempered by an understanding of the realities of power. Staff could not be independent all the time, but tried as best they could to carve out a realm of discretion. And they tempered their idealism with an understanding of the political realities of any particular moment. But there was no presumption that staff simply mimicked the preferences of states, or that they were mere careerists interested only in self-advancement. Instead, the working assumption was that most staff, most of the time, were idealistic civil servants in the mode that Hammerskjold had envisioned. The tempering of independence with knowledge of the political realities of the moment led to one of the most frequently heard refrains: that staff must “keep an ear to the ground,” or “know which way the political winds are blowing” (or, again, “read the tea leaves”), while also doing their jobs in a professional manner. They implied that staff would try to further their own agendas—or rather, would work to advance what they believed was the “proper” agenda of the UN—while also knowing where they were likely to encounter resistance from states. There was a plain implication that staff do have a broad range of discretion: knowing what was possible at any given time without state pushback would not be necessary if there was not a range of discretion like that. Staff did not single out any one country or even voting bloc; they seemed as likely to worry about resistance to policies from China, the United States, the G-77 states, or others with power. (Before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia was not mentioned very much in this context.) The various changes in US administrations and their approaches to sensitive topics like reproductive rights were also on the minds of staff; as were the Black Lives Matter movement and the political participation of UN staff. Still, it bears repeating that staff consistently felt that political awareness was an important job qualification, and thus that pushing the boundaries of state interests was an essential part of their job.

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This then leads to a new question: just how much does the new balance of power at the UN want to reinterpret the Charter, and how much does it challenge existing ideals? The answer appears to be that there is not a wholesale change happening right now, and there is scant evidence that this will happen in the future. There is, to be sure, considerable talk of “Chinese values” coming to the UN. There is an assumption that China’s emergence as a superpower will lead to a de-emphasizing of human rights; will push for stronger respect for sovereignty norms over humanitarian ones such as the responsibility to protect; will promote more statist economic policies and an emphasis on growth rather than social policies; and will lead to other shifts in priorities both in New York and Geneva and in UN field offices around the world (Halper 2012; Chen 2017; Foot 2020). A decline in US power might also reasonably be expected to see other power centers asserting their own agendas: more power in the G-77 and non-aligned movements perhaps giving new impetus to a new international economic order, more influence for Russia as a global power center, and so forth (Kingah and Quiliconi 2016; Larionova and Kirton 2018). Few staff, again, expressed much concern about Russian influence in the UN, other than the obvious lever of power in the Security Council—the veto. China, with substantially greater resources, has in fact stepped up its efforts to be an active supporter of multilateralism: it has increased its funding, assisted with peacekeeping operations, provided aid to states (albeit with different priorities than traditional aid donors), and shown an interest in having more of its nationals in positions of authority in UN agencies. There is no indication that those officials are trying to undermine their agencies, although it is likely that they will have different policy priorities (Gu 2017; Kastner et al. 2020). David Whineray, in a recent study, suggested that if anything, China actually has reinforced its support for multilateralism through the UN system, even as the United States has retreated further into unilateralism (Whineray 2020). Even more significantly, Whineray notes that China’s particular approach to multilateralism has been gaining substantial support from UN members, which appreciate its emphasis on national sovereignty, and also recognize (even among some Western diplomats) that China has a legitimate claim to a leadership position at the UN. This fits with the perceptions of UN staff who suggest that China, while having its own particular vision of the UN and of multilateralism, is not at all hostile to the institution. One area where China has played the spoiler is in human rights. (Chapter 5 looks more closely at the reaction of staff here in particular.) China initially opposed the creation of the Human Rights Council, and later worked actively to weaken its jurisdiction, operating procedures, and scope (Piccone 2018). China has pushed its own brand of rights, with an emphasis on economic and social rights, but in a way that has begun to undermine (in the eyes of many

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observers) the core human rights commitments of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Renouard 2020). China has also expressed opposition to the integration of rights in other areas of the UN—for example, the implementation by development agencies of the “rights based approach to development” (Eyben and Savage 2013). The Chinese approach to human rights at the UN is well remarked on, and gives pause to many who support the rights agenda as it is written into the Charter and other key documents. This suggests that perhaps a more issues-based moral rule is required, where hegemonic change at the UN must be disaggregated by field. This makes sense not only because newly emerging powers have different ideas in different issue areas, but also because different areas of the UN’s operations are more or less influenced by the constellation of power. Once must again recall that China is not the only emerging power, with the other BRICS, the EU, and Japan all representing new or existing poles. Russia has made some efforts to assert influence, although by all accounts these have been haphazard and have had limited success (Remler 2020; Tsygankov 2020). Its efforts have largely been on the outside of the multilateral system; and this has only been heightened by the conflict in Ukraine, which is seen as a clear violation of the UN Charter, no matter what one’s specific interpretation of that document. The relative decline of US influence at the UN means that, in a sense, all other states are becoming relatively more important. The European Union has lost the United Kingdom, but still represents an important influence pole. India has the potential to exert more influence. And the increasing assertiveness of the G77 states has been noted already. All of these will seek to fill some of the vacuum being left behind by fading US engagement with the UN.

5.

HEGEMONIC CHANGE AND STAFF RESPONSIBILITIES

How should staff respond to these real and perceived changes—and should they? To answer this, we return to our thin and thick theories of staff responsibilities. Given a thin theory of staff responsibility, we could argue that staff should accept that the goal of serving the institution is the same as serving the will of member states. As newly emerging states express new priorities and ways of doing things, staff should accept and incorporate these new priorities. The thin theory still posits a higher loyalty to the institution, but the institution as an evolving embodiment of a current global consensus of state interests. The responsibility of staff changes as this consensus changes; but it is not simply a matter of which state is most powerful. Rather, it should be some reading of the international community writ large. Staff, again, have some guidance in the form of resolutions, decisions by committees, and so on. They follow the

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instructions as given through ordinary channels. This is, we might say, how decisions have always been made and how staff always understand their job, whether a thick or thin theory is accepted. But these official pronouncements take us only so far, as they cannot possibly determine every act the Secretariat takes. There must by necessity be some discretion granted to staff in terms of how to listen to state interests (Williamson 1967; Cortell and Peterson 2006). The thin theory of staff responsibility suggests that staff must change as the will of the membership changes. In controversial areas this could express itself as shifting technical assistance in development matters to de-emphasize human rights in their connection with economic development; providing more support to trade and investment activities that challenge the neoliberal Washington Consensus; varying emphases on intellectual property protection versus technology transfer; and many other areas where the Secretariat staff have some influence over the specifics of policy (Emmerij et al. 2001; Murphy 2006; Oestreich 2007). The list of issues where emerging powers differ from established ones has already been discussed. Staff also mentioned that some powerful states seem less interested in leading around these issues and others. Our thicker theory of staff responsibility argues that staff have loyalties to the institution; and further, that the institution has interests and norms that have independent moral authority, above the constellation of individual state desires. In an era of hegemonic change, staff ought to use their independence and discretion to maintain the ideals of the institution. They cannot ethically just accommodate themselves to the shifting priorities of the main bodies. They should, instead, remain true to the vision of multilateralism they morally find most compelling, and resist efforts to undermine the ideals of the institution as they understand them. Recall, too, that our thicker theory suggests that staff, as professionals, are responsible to a code of conduct as well as their specific institutions. Compared to a thin theory, this approach might seem compelling for a few reasons. For one, it sidesteps to some extent the obvious problem of not knowing what the final outcome of 193 (more or less) different voices might be. It provides both a more comprehensible and a less ever-shifting vision of where the responsibility of staff lies. Second, it might seem to be more in tune with the UN Charter, which does after all provide a list of principles to which states adhere, which predates the various states parties and is supposed to have a hold on them. Third, a vision of a UN based on a Charter that sets out principles and a vision of its direction, rather than a UN which is only the sum of the rising and falling influence of its members, is a much more attractive image for those who truly believe in global cooperation. Now, to be sure, this puts staff in the position of interpreting some “spirit” of the Charter, which has its dangers. Are members of the Secretariat really good choices to interpret the true meaning of Charter, rather than member states? But we might equally

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argue that they will do a better job of it than states themselves, given those states’ particular and often cynical national interests. This at least seemed to be the vison of Hammarskjold and others with idealistic notions of what an international civil service should look like. Finally, this thicker theory might at first seem more in line with the ideal type of IGO staff mentioned above, with an esprit de corps and a strong sense of institutional loyalty. It also fits with the notion of staff as professionals, loyal to the institutional ideals and their own code of ethics. At any rate, though, with a thicker theory of staff responsibility, it would be ethical for staff to resist those changes that come through hegemonic change that they believe run counter to the foundational principles of the organization. Yet, vitally, that “they believe” presents a serious problem: staff have never themselves been entirely neutral; nor have they had a clear vision of the essential principles of the UN. Rather, we recall that the UN was itself a product of US and Western hegemony; its beliefs were forged during a time of bitter and intense ideological rivalry on a global scale; and its staff have traditionally hewed to a Western vision and have received Western training for the most part. They receive their degrees at Harvard or Oxford or Sciences Po; live largely in New York or Geneva; and dream of retiring to Paris or Sydney. So a thick theory of staff responsibility overlooks, or at least elides, the fact that it is not always easy to discern what the “core principles” of the UN are—or at least, not in a correspondingly thick matter, beyond those basic ideas set forth in the first parts of the UN Charter. Add to this is the pressure that staff have received, without a doubt, from powerful states in the past—and the fact that this exists cannot be questioned, even if the degree to which it exists might be—and staff opinions are certainly open to question about their own neutrality. How, finally, should staff respond to hegemonic change? This chapter argues ultimately that the thinner theory of staff responsibility is the more defensible one: while it is nice to imagine staff as loyal to some ideal of multilateralism that transcends the current power arrangements, this is far more problematic in practice than in theory. The idealistic vision of the global civil service works only when there is a consensus among powerful states to maintain the status quo. Now, a thin theory of staff responsibility does not prevent staff from exercising their discretion and exhibiting some professional independence, occasionally working against the whims of powerful member states when those whims seem destructive of concepts clearly enumerated in the Charter, or from reading the tea leaves while also exercising discretion in programming and policy. We assume that Secretariat employees are responsible to the institution, and that bureaucrats are ultimately expected to show some independence in order to get things accomplished effectively. The institution itself is the sum of its member countries’ desires and priorities, not the desires

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of any one state. And no large bureaucracy can function unless staff to have some discretion and even ideas of their own. But that discretion should still, ultimately, be informed by a larger notion of serving states; they are the principals, and if they delegate discretion to agents, it is a limited form of discretion. Given all the factors that mitigate against any ideal-type staff reaction, we should not be surprised by staff resisting some changes in the priorities and operations of the UN at its various levels, even if this is not fully justified by a moral theory of professional responsibility. Staff respond to many inputs, not only their ideal-type set of responsibilities. We expect to see this in some issue areas more than others—for example, in the human rights field, or with regard to the responsibility to protect, where emerging powers are most in opposition to current trends and at the same time staff see a clash of moral interests. This will also likely be more pronounced the further one gets from New York and Geneva. Many staff remarked on the level of independence and innovation in field offices of the UN; and ironically, this independence is likely to exert itself in a tendency toward the status quo. Ironic because in other contexts the independence of staff is seen as a source of innovation, but this is innovation that works to pursue current priorities, not to challenge them. Finally, does hegemonic change portend a clash at the UN—a reckoning between rising and falling powers? This, in fact, does seem likely; although the nature of that clash will be very much more bureaucratic than violent. China in particular has been increasingly interested in placing its nationals in positions of power at the UN. This is unsurprising, since the United States and the other P5 countries have at times tried to do the same thing. But given the willingness of all countries to place people in these positions who share a set of core beliefs with national leadership, a change of organizational culture is only to be expected. And older staff, with their particular interests, are likely to try to maintain a status quo that will seem increasingly out of date, whether this is justified by our moral theory or not. Hopefully the result will not be too much dysfunction.

REFERENCES Bailey, S. D. (1962). The Secretariat of the United Nations. New York, Carnedgie Endowment for International Peace. Barnett, M. N. and M. Finnemore (2004). Rules for the World: International Organizations and Global Politics. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press. Beigbeder, Y. (1988). Threats to the International Civil Service. London, Pinter Publishers. Boland, R. J. J. (1982). “Organizational Control, Organizational Power and Professional Responsibility.” Business and Professional Ethics Journal 2(Fall): 15–25. Chen, W., Ed. (2017). The Beijing Consensus? How China Has Changed Western Ideas of Law and Economic Development. New York, Cambridge University Press.

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Cortell, A. P. and S. Peterson (2006). “Dutiful Agents, Rogue Actors, or Both? Staffing, Voting Rules, and Slack in the WHO and WTO.” In D. G. Hawkins, D. A. Lake, D. L. Nielson and M. Tierney, eds. Delegation and Agency in International Organizations. New York, Cambridge University Press: 255–80. Cronin, B. (2001). “The Paradox of Legitimacy: America’s Ambiguous Relationship With the United Nations.” European Journal of International Relations 7(1): 103–30. Emmerij, L., R. Jolly and T. Weiss (2001). Ahead of the Curve? UN Ideas and Global Challenges. Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press. Eyben, R. and L. Savage (2013). “Emerging and Submerging Powers: Imagined Geographies in the New Development Partnership at the Busan Fourth High Level Forum.” Journal of Development Studies 49(4): 457–69. Foot, R. (2020). China, the UN, and Human Protection. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Foot, R., S. N. McFarlane and M. Mastanduno (2003). US Hegemony and International Organizations. New York, Oxford University Press. Gailmard, S. (2014). “Accountability and Principal-Agent Theory.” In M. Bovens, R. E. Goodin and T. Schillemans, eds. Oxford Handbook of Public Accountability. New York, Oxford University Press: 90–105. Gilpin, R. (1988). “The Theory of Hegemonic War.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18(4): 591–613. Greenwood, E. (1983). Attributes of a Profession. Moral Responsibility and the Professions. B. Baumrin and B. Freedman. New York, NY, Haven: 20–32. Gu, B. (2017). “Chinese Multilateralism in the AIIB.” Journal of International Economic Law 20(1): 137–58. Haftel, Y. Z. and A. Thompson (2006). “The Independence of International Organizations: concept and applications.” Journal of Conflict Resolutoin 50(2): 253–75. Halper, S. (2012). The Beijing Consensus: Legitimizing Authoritarianism in Our Time. New York, Basic Books. Kastner, S. L., M. M. Pearson and C. Rector (2020). “China and Global Governance: Opportunistic Multilateralism.” Global Policy 11(1): 164–69. Keohane, R. O. (1984). After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. Kille, K. J. (2006). From Manager to Visionary: The Secretary-General of the United Nations. New York, Palgrave Macmillan. Kingah, S. and C. Quiliconi, eds. (2016). Global and Regional Leadership of BRICS Countries. Cham, Springer/United Nations University. Larionova, M. and J. J. Kirton, eds. (2018). BRICS and Global Governance. New York, Routledge. Lemoine, J. (1995). The International Civil Servant: An Endangered Species. Boston, MA, Kluwer Law International. Lyne, M., D. L. Nielson and M. J. Tierney (2006). “A Problem of Principals: Common Agency and Social Lending at the Multilateral Development Banks.” In D. A. Lake, D. L. Nielson and M. Tierney, eds. Delegation and Agency in International Organizations. New York, Cambridge University Press: 41–76. Mouritzen, H. (1990). The International Civil Service. Brookfield, VT, Dartmouth Publishing. Murphy, C. (2006). The United Nations Development Programme: A Better Way? New York, Cambridge University Press.

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Novosad, P. and E. Werker (2014). Who Runs the International System? Power and the Staffing of the United Nations Secretariat. Boston, Harvard Business School. Oestreich, J. (2007). Power and Principle: Human Rights Programming in International Organizations. Washington, DC, Georgetown University Press. Oestreich, J. (2012). International Organizations as Self-Directed Actors: A framework for analysis. New York, Routledge. Parizek, M. (2016). “Control, Soft Information, and the Politics of International Organization Staffing.” Review of International Organizations 12(3): 559–83. Piccone (2018). China’s Long Game on Human Rights at the United Nations. Washington, DC, Brookings Institution. Remler, P. (2020). Russia at the United Nations: Law, Sovereignty, and Legitimacy. Washington, DC, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Renouard, J. (2020). “Sino-Western Relations, Political Values, and the Human Rights Council.” Journal of Transatlantic Studies 18(1): 80–102. Tsygankov, A. P. (2020). Russia’s Foreign Policy. New York, Rowman and Littlefield. Weiss, T. (1975). International Bureaucracy. Lexington, MA, D.C. Heath. Weiss, Thomas (1975). International Bureaucracy. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Whineray, D. (2020). The United States and the People’s Republic of China at the United Nations Before Covid-19. New York, United Nations University. Williamson, O. E. (1967). The Economics of Discretionary Behavior: Managerial Objectives in a Theory of the Firm. Chicago, IL, Markham Publishing Co.

3. China and the United Nations Secretariat: A Mutual Influencing Game Gregory T. Chin1 1. INTRODUCTION A growing chorus in Washington and Western European capitals is proclaiming that China is “taking over” the United Nations (UN). State officials, current diplomatic representatives to the UN, former ambassadors to the UN, and thinktank commentators are ringing alarm bells. They portray China as exercising undue influence over intergovernmental organizations (IGOs); “corrupting the UN from within”; promoting Beijing’s foreign policy agenda and its values; and seeking to undermine US global leadership and the “rules based international order” (Glaser 2016; Huang and Kurlantzick 2020; Haley 2021; Lederer 2021; Vina and Schaefer 2021; Economy 2022). What is the character of China’s relations with the UN? How have China’s relations evolved with the UN, particularly the UN Secretariat, over the last three decades? This chapter offers a preliminary answer to these questions, by examining China’s growing prominence in the UN system, and China’s relationship with the UN Secretariat from a longer historical and comparative perspective. The focus here is on the details of China’s increased contributions to UN-led goals and global causes, starting two decades ago, in response to requests from UN secretaries general, the Secretariat, and UN programs, funds, and specialized agencies. This chapter highlights how China’s contributions to the UN have developed over many years, and how they have evolved. The main guiding questions are: in which areas or ways did China’s contributions to the UN increase? When did this happen? Why did this happen? What were the main factors behind these changes? Moreover, how do China’s growing contributions to the UN compare with comparable great powers, or compare to middle and smaller states with strong influence aspirations at the UN? The chapter offers three main empirical findings. First, China has increased its contributions to the UN across a range of indicators, including its financial 41

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contributions to the “regular budget” of the UN; to UN peacekeeping operations; the UN’s humanitarian operations; UN staff; and senior management positions in the UN Secretariat, programs, funds, and specialized agencies. Second, the key shifts that led to China’s more prominent role in the UN started in the mid-2000s, two decades ago, largely in response to requests from the UN. This periodization matters, as it shows that the more recent increases in China’s material, professional, and know-how contributions to the UN from 2012 onwards, under Xi Jinping’s leadership of China, build on China’s already growing role in the UN since the mid-2000s. Third, and relating to the main theme of this volume, it took convincing on the part of senior UN officials—specifically the secretaries general, the under-secretaries, and the heads of UN bodies and agencies—to get China to embrace a larger global role in UN-led initiatives, ranging from humanitarian efforts, peacekeeping, and societal stabilization to international development operations. In the late 2000s, Chinese nationals started to assume lead management positions inside the UN Secretariat and in the UN specialized agencies, with the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) in the Secretariat being one of the most sustained examples. Due to this continuity, DESA offers a useful case study for comparative analysis of the role of Chinese nationals in UN institutions. The World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Development Programme are also critical case studies for analyzing the institutional outreach from the UN funds and agencies to China to play a great role, how and when China stepped up, and the ways in which China sought to greater shape its contributions. The main argument is that China’s relations with the UN Secretariat, the senior leadership of the UN, and the UN system more broadly have been a mutual, two-way influencing game. China’s outlook was changed by the UN, and its Secretariat; while in return, the Secretariat (and the UN writ large) have also been affected by China. Rather than only seeing the UN—specifically its Secretariat—as a passive institution that is somehow manipulated by a rising or a diminishing power, it is important to understand how the Secretariat has exercised agency in shaping the way that China behaves within the UN system. UN officials in the Secretariat have their own visions of what the UN is, and what it ought to be doing; and they have worked to integrate rising powers into these multilateral visions and into the Secretariat’s agendas. This chapter highlights that China under the leadership of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao was reluctant to step up and play a larger global leadership role in the early to mid-2000s, despite the country’s growing material capabilities. In fact, the intervention of the UN senior management in the early to mid-2000s was important for inducing greater contributions from China. The story of China’s growing role in the UN in the mid-2000s was not that of a so-called “power grab” at the UN by a rising power. Rather,

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the UN leadership of that period was keenly aware of China’s rising material capabilities and growing global economic footprint, especially in Africa and Asia, and sought to leverage and direct China’s rising capabilities toward UN-led multilateral goals and global causes (see Chin and Thakur 2010 for this UN outreach and two-way influence in relation to the UN’s “Responsibility to Protect” agenda and China in the early to mid-2000s). It should also not be overlooked that the US presidential administration of George W. Bush played a major role in spurring then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to look to Beijing for support. The US challenge to the credibility of the UN, and the UN chief himself was intense; and the Bush administration’s unilateral approach to the Iraq War (and then the Oil for Food investigations) rocked the UN. These US interventions drove home the lesson to Annan that he was a “hostage to intergovernmental warfare”, to quote his chief aide, Mark Malloch Brown (2008, 10). The US pressure also pushed the UN secretary-general to turn to Beijing for more support and a different source of international leadership. In other words, the related story during the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s was not that of China grasping for more influence at the UN in a zero-sum power contest; rather, it was the United States, the UN Secretariat and China becoming engrossed in institutionalized international struggles over material power and ideational influence at the UN. The rest of the analysis is organized into four sections. It starts with stocktaking on China’s contributions to the UN, which details the multiple ways in which China has increased its contributions to the UN over the last two decades: how, when, where, and why China’s contributions grew and expanded; the key developments along the way; and a comparative perspective on China’s contributions relative to those of the United States and other members of the Security Council. Section 3 details how Chinese nationals have been appointed to a growing number of senior management posts in institutional bodies of the UN system, and assesses whether the accusations of so-called “Beijing capture” are accurate or justified. Section 4 examines the key outreach of UN actors at various levels of the organization to encourage China to play a larger role in the efforts and operations of the UN, starting in the mid-2000s. The chapter concludes with preliminary theoretical-conceptual considerations that can be drawn from the main findings, and how we ought to recast our thinking about China’s relations with the UN. We aim to make sense of China’s global rise and its growing influence in the UN and international govermental organizations (IGOs) more broadly, examining the intersubjective and material dimensions of China’s evolving relations with the UN system and UN bodies, especially the Secretariat.

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2. STOCKTAKING The data shows that China’s contributions to the UN, and its role in UN operations, have grown significantly over the last two decades. There are at least five quantifiable indicators to track. First, in terms of financial contributions to the UN budget, in 2019 China became the second-largest financial contributor to the UN’s regular budget. China’s contribution rose to 12 percent of the UN budget, up from 7.9 percent in 2018, following only the United States at 22 percent and surpassing Japan at 9.7 percent. China’s payment of more than $347 million for 2021 is even more noteworthy when compared to its $12 million contribution in 2000 (General Assembly of the United Nations 2021). One estimate (December 2018) from the Centre for Economics and Business Research (referenced by International Peace Institute 2019, 10), predicts that the “dramatic rise” in China’s share of UN budgets “will continue over the next decade,” and could “match [that] of the United States in 6 to 8 years” (by 2028) if US contributions remain constant at 22 percent. Second, China is the second-largest contributor to the budget for UN peacekeeping, and Beijing deploys more peacekeepers than the other four permanent members of the Security Council combined (United Nations 2021). For 2020–21, China provided 15.21 percent of the UN’s peacekeeping budget of $6.38 billion, which is still behind the US contribution of 27.89 percent. China’s contribution to UN peacekeeping compared favorably among Asian nations, ahead of Japan’s 8.56 percent contribution (United Nations Peacekeeping 2022). What is most noteworthy is the rate of increase in Beijing’s contributions to UN peacekeeping over the last two decades. These started to increase in the mid-2000s during the period of Kofi Annan as secretary-general. Annan asked China to increase its contributions to peacekeeping and Beijing responded; and during the first term of Ban Ki-Moon as UN secretary-general, China further upped its contributions to UN police operations, peacekeeping, and peace-building operations. Roque and Alden (2008) examined China’s “recent activism” within the UN Security Council, and wrote that Beijing was increasingly “conscious of the need to conduct foreign policy in a manner that is commensurate with its new economic standing” in the world, “becoming an active participant in UN peacekeeping”; sending over 7500 military observers, engineers, medical teams, and other specialists in support of UN operations in Africa; and using its influence with “unsavory states” (e.g., Sudan) to pressure them to encourage compliance with the UN. During Ban’s second term as UN secretary-general (2011–16), China made further and unprecedented contributions to UN peacekeeping. In September 2015, China’s president drew applause at the UN in New York when he announced that China would make even greater contributions to UN peace-

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keeping. While declaring that China would shoulder more responsibility for maintaining world peace, the president pledged that China would provide 8000 highly trained soldiers—a standing force ready for immediate deployment— and contribute $1 billion to peacekeeping over the next decade. By 2020, China had met Xi’s 2015 peacekeeping promises (Xinhua 2015). Moreover, Ambassador Huang Xia, China’s former ambassador to the Republic of Congo, was appointed the UN secretary-general’s “special envoy” for hotspots in the African Great Lakes Region. This was the most senior UN post for the UN peacekeeping operation mission in that region (Xinhua 2019), and it was granted despite the failed efforts of then US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, to block the appointment (Gramer and Lynch 2019). As Gramer and Lynch noted, Haley’s actions highlighted the hypocrisy in the Trump administration’s approach to the UN: disengaging and withdrawing funding from UN agencies, while trying to stymie China’s contributions (which is to say, China’s influence). In 2016, China also promised an additional $200 million to the UN secretary-general, over a ten-year period, to help establish a new “United Nations Peace and Development Trust Fund” (United Nations 2022). Third, China’s contributions to the UN humanitarian operations have increased significantly over the last two decades. This trend started when China formed an international rescue and medical team—the Chinese International Search and Rescue Team—in 2001. It subsequently sent the team to Algeria (May 2003); Iran (December 2003); Indonesia (December 2004, May 2006); Pakistan (October–November 2005); Haiti (January 2010); New Zealand (February 2011); and Japan (March 2011) (Xinhua 2011). Within UN circles, as China’s capacity to provide international relief and humanitarian assistance became more apparent, UN offices asked Beijing increasingly often to provide international support to the UN’s relief and humanitarian efforts. The devasting earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean in late 2004 was a transformational event for China’s government and societal organizations when they responded with the largest-ever relief operations for China, at the bilateral and multilateral levels. Grants and assistance from individual Chinese donors and citizens were also used to rehabilitate and reconstruct affected peoples’ lives and countries. Chinese assistance in goods and money totaled close to $700 million. In response to the Pakistan earthquake in 2005, the Chinese government provided Pakistan with assistance of $26.73 million, in three tranches. Beijing also provided relief to the United States in response to Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. In 2005, China made the transition from food aid recipient to multilateral donor, after being encouraged by the WFP to play a larger role in the world hunger crisis (United Nations 2005a). China received its last shipment of food aid in April 2005, and delivered its first shipment in June 2005: 270 tons of canned fish for Sri Lankan victims of the tsunami.

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Beyond disaster relief and food aid, in 2005, also at the request of the UN, China’s leaders made a conscious decision to support developing countries and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in science and technology, particularly in the areas of medical science and public health. In relation to the MDG goals of eradicating malaria and AIDS in Africa, China donated large amounts of anti-malaria drugs and other medicines to African countries; and—equally importantly—China offered to establish medical research and training facilities in Africa to help train local medical personnel and scientists over a sustained period. China made these pledges at the UN High Level Meeting on Financing for Development, Marking the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Founding of the UN in September 2005, in New York. Then Chinese President Hu Jintao declared that developing countries “should make fuller use of their own advantages to develop themselves, [and] expand South-South cooperation”; and that “China will do its best to contribute actively to the common development” (United Nations 2005b). Fourth, China’s increasing contributions to the UN budget and its operations—plus its relative share of world population, its membership status, its increased interest in staffing UN posts at all ranks, and its willingness to pursue the job openings available for its citizens—have all translated into increased staff from China in the UN system. According to UN records, as of December 31, 2009, 794 Chinese nationals were employed in the UN system (United Nations System Chief Executive Board for Coordination 2010, 47). By December 31, 2019, a decade later, the UN employed 1336 Chinese nationals (United Nations System Chief Executive Board for Coordination 2020, 86), amounting to a 68 percent increase over the decade. It is important to recognize, however, that China started from a very low base on the percentage of its nationals in UN staff, having maintained a relatively low profile for the first two decades after assuming the “Chinese seat” at the UN from 1971 onward. China is preparing Chinese nationals to play a bigger role in global bodies in terms of both numbers and prominence, including sending them for training at the United Nations Association of China in Beijing. Fung and Lam (2021, 1154) note that China has established a number of training and educational initiatives to prepare talented individuals for placements in all levels of multilateral organizations, in order to respond to China’s under-representation in international civil service; and that a number of leading Chinese universities have created degree programs specializing in IGOs and international public policy to equip students with foreign language capacities and some professional and technical knowhow. Statements by a former Chinese diplomat posted to the UN, former Minister Counselor Ma Yansheng, show that China’s officials and strategists are aware that Chinese nationals working in UN offices can be conduits of influence, in terms of transmitting China’s preferred agenda and approaches—whether

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values, norms, models, or other modalities (Ma 2018, cited in Fung and Lam 2021, 1150). But there are other motivations at play beyond China gaining “direct” platforms and channels for influencing outcomes at the UN. These include something akin to so-called “soft power” gains, suggesting that the selection and appointment of Chinese nationals reflect growing global public recognition of the country’s skills and expertise, and—according to some Chinese sources—a sense of the “superiority” of China’s system (Qian and Xiong 2015, cited in Fung and Lam 2021, 1151). From a global perspective, other UN member states and senior UN officials have increasingly come to acknowledge the efficiency gains for the UN in appointing skilled and expert Chinese nationals (Pan and Zhang 2013, cited in Fung and Lam 2021, 1151). What will be the final outcome of having more Chinese nationals dispatched to the UN as international civil servants, and of China’s current efforts to cultivate and train more people for UN positions in the future? The key finding is that China is still under-represented, compared to comparable states and even the Western middle powers. Fung and Lam show that “UN staffing data suggests that the PRC international civil service footprint is still small and well below UN-recommended thresholds for national representation” (Fung and Lam 2021, 1155). China’s staff presence in the UN did increase from 1975 to 2000, but only by a number that was slightly higher than Japan and Russia during the same period. The key comparison is that the total number of Chinese staff in 2019 was a little more than 20 percent of US staff totals, and still far behind France and the United Kingdom (i.e., other permanent Security Council (P5) members); and also behind Germany and India (i.e., aspiring members of the Security Council). China’s professional staff footprint is arguably only slightly larger than those of Brazil and Russia, and still far behind those of the major Western nations. The data and trends likely account for why, in 2011, Catherine Pollard of Guyana, then the assistant secretary-general at the UN Office of Human Resources Management, answered in a rather “matter-of-fact” way when asked about the increase in the number of Chinese nationals in the UN staff: The concentration of Chinese employees has been increasing. As well as at the headquarters, they [Chinese nationals] are found working in [UN] peacekeeping corps around the world. They embody desired service traits – expertise, competence, and integrity – highly sought by the United Nations. (Wang 2011)

From inside the UN, demand has grown for more Chinese nationals with relevant skills and expertise; but there is also a sense from a broad segment of the UN membership that the Chinese nationals are working for, not against, the goals of the institution as a whole. There is also a feeling that to some degree, the Chinese are increasingly becoming a part of the bureaucratic culture of the

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UN as a result of their work within the organization. In other words, rather than seeing the Chinese as undermining or a threat to the bureaucratic culture of the UN, the perspective here is to see the organizational culture of the UN itself as also evolving as more individuals from the developing world take up staff posts at the UN; and that the growing role of Chinese nationals is part of this evolution. Fifth, Chinese nationals have been increasingly appointed to senior executive leadership posts in the UN organization, especially from the mid-2000s onward. Chen Jian was under-secretary-general in charge of General Assembly Affairs and Conference Services from April 2001 to March 2007, and served somewhat like a chief of staff to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the management of the General Assembly—the largest UN body in terms of participants and personnel—and its related conferences (United Nations 2001). Chen had reached ambassadorial rank in China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs when appointed by the UN; and had worked for 16 years—almost half his diplomatic career—on UN-related affairs. Before Chen joined Annan’s team, he had held senior management posts in China’s Foreign Ministry (China Daily 2007). Chen parlayed his experience into distinguished service and contributions to the UN: first, he helped stabilize the UN General Assembly on the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City; and second, he oversaw bold reforms of the General Assembly to address the longstanding challenge of overspending on the budget for conference management (Le 2007). Chen’s resolve and calm made an impression on UN staff and member countries, and Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the reforms under Chen the “most profound reforms in the history of the UN” (quoted in Le 2007).

3.

UN SECRETARIAT, FUNDS, AGENCIES: TEST CASES

Lynch, a contributor to The Washington Post and Foreign Policy magazine, has noted that “China has headed DESA since 2007”, and that some diplomats from other countries call DESA a “Chinese enterprise,” and “everybody accepts it” (Lynch 2018). Beijing’s critics refer to DESA as an agency essentially controlled by Chinese appointees. For example, Tung and Yang (2020) from the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation stated that “since 2007, the position of UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs has been held by Chinese career diplomats”, arguing that this gives “the Chinese government opportunities to reshape the UN’s development programs in accordance to its [China] interests.” But is it accurate to portray the appointments of Chinese nationals at the head of DESA as “Beijing capture”? US-based commentators saw Ban Ki-moon’s appointment of Sha Zukang under-secretary-general for economic and social

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affairs and the head of DESA in 2007 as controversial. After Sha (2007–12), two more diplomats from China’s Foreign Ministry—Wu Hongbo (August 2012–July 2017), and Liu Zhenmin (2017–present)—have held the same post of under-secretary-general for economic and social affairs, and head of DESA. But the critics did not comment on Sha’s more than 37 years of diplomatic experience before being appointed to the senior UN role, including 23 years on UN-related work (Zhou 2007); or on the fact that Sha’s portfolios covered the wide range of UN-related causes, such as international security, economy, human rights, and humanitarian affairs. Instead, what the skeptics focused on was Sha’s sometimes confrontational style, especially when responding to US criticism of China and defending China’s national interests. For example, they focused on how Sha responded when he was questioned by the BBC (August 17, 2006) about US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s statements regarding China’s growing military spending.2 Sha responded by saying that the United States accounted for half of the world’s military spending, and commented that: It is better for [the] US to shut up. Keep quiet. China’s military buildup is not threatening anyone … we are not fighting anywhere, we are not killing the innocent people anywhere in the world. But look what they are doing today. (BBC Interview Archive 2006; AFP 2006)

Sha was once described as the “John Bolton” of China’s Foreign Ministry: plainspoken, direct, and confrontational (Lynch 2010). In joining DESA, even as the head, and as the secretary-general for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, Sha joined a capable team of international civil servants at DESA and the UN Economic and Social Council. The intra-UN Secretariat work teams working on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were similarly competent and capable. Sha collaborated closely and easily with other UN officials in the DESA—including Tariq Banuri and then Nikhil Seth (directors of DESA); Brice Lalonde (executive coordinator of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, or the Rio+20); and David O’Connor (chief of the Policy and Analysis Branch of DESA’s Division for Sustainable Development)—as well as with strategic advisors in the Rio+20 conference and other areas under his purview. The author has found no evidence that Sha’s interventions in the SDG 2030 Agenda proceedings reflected “Beijing capture.” Sha did support the recasting and expansion of the global development agenda beyond the reductionist “targeted pro-poor growth focus” and the “targeting of poverty reduction” instruments approach of the G7 and of Northern donors, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Assistance Committee members. In this respect, he was aligned with developing countries such as China, India

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and Brazil. His stance reflected their call for a broader global development agenda that paid more attention to “sustainability,” making the link between sustainable development and environment and climate change mitigation, as well as new industrialization and green growth, sustainable agriculture and rural growth—while still paying attention to eradicating poverty and the other preceding goals under the MDGs. Sha supported the adoption of the SDGs, with their 17 inter-linked global goals for a “more sustainable future for all.” He preferred the more comprehensive SDG paradigm over the more reductionist proposal from a number of Northern thinktanks (Brookings Institution, and ODI in the United Kingdom) and Northern donors to merely extend the preceding eight MDGs, and keep the global agenda anchored on alleviating extreme poverty (for these differences in the approach to global development goals, see Fukuda-Parr and McNeill 2019). Paula Caballero—then director of economic, social, and environmental affairs in Colombia’s Foreign Ministry, and one of the political leads for the Rio+20 negotiations (some have called her the “mother” of the SDGs)—described Sha as “incredibly supportive” of the SDG concept and proposal, from the start of the work to successful completion of the negotiations (Caballero 2016). Vijay Nambiar, commenting on the decision-making process that included Sha’s appointment to under-secretary-general, said that Secretary-General Ban was “conscious that he needs to take advantage of, and in a sense leverage, the experience that is [already] there; he is also conscious of the need to build new talent and experience.” He added pointedly that senior UN officials such as Sha are appointed through a “consultative process,” and not unilaterally. Beyond the Secretariat, Chinese officials have also started to take on more senior posts in the UN specialized agencies since the mid-2000s. In November 2006, Margaret Chan became the first Chinese director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) since its foundation 61 years previously. Chan was previously the director of health of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and had served a total of 28 years in the Health Office. There she gained international recognition for her work in containing the avian influenza outbreak in 1997, and the SARS outbreak in 2003. Chan’s candidacy again reflected China’s growing influence in the UN. By 2020, Chinese nationals were heading four of the 15 specialized agencies of the UN: the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)—equaling the United States, whose nationals held the top jobs in four UN specialized agencies. In the broader category of “senior UN officials,” the story is similar to what has been said above about funding levels. The United States has had twice as many nationals in senior UN posts as any other nations; and France and the

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United Kingdom are also far ahead of China in this category (Fung and Lam 2021, 1150). China’s numbers here are slightly higher than those of Brazil and India. Since assuming the “China Seat” at the UN in 1971, China has only held a total of 13 seats among the executive leadership positions in the UN senior management group, major funds and programs, specialized agencies, and related organizations, out of more than 400 such positions available (Fung and Lam 2021, 1150). The United States, in comparison, has held 64 such executive leaderships positions; France 28; and the United Kingdom 25. Fung and Lam highlight that China has held the second-lowest number of leadership positions among the comparable states, trailing only Russia; and has held fewer even than Argentina, Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. What sense can we make of China’s nationals being posted in UN positions of all ranks, particularly at the higher levels as discussed above? Some commentators have charged that Beijing has offered incentives (some suggest that China’s diplomats may have made trade threats) in order to secure votes in its campaign for the FAO leadership—and highlighted that Beijing succeeded in countering the efforts of the Trump administration’s assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs to thwart Beijing’s bid to place its agriculture vice minister, Qu Dongyu, at the head of the Rome-based FAO (Lynch and Gramer 2019). Primary research is needed to examine these cases, to gain precision on what exactly happened and what type of horse-trading Beijing engaged in, and to assess whether China’s advocacy was similar to or different from what has been observed in the behavior of other national governments in such cases. It is evident that China is supporting Chinese nationals to be appointed to targeted senior executive leadership posts at the UN, and may even be lobbying for some of the appointments. But in so doing, is China acting so differently from other national governments—especially comparable major powers, which also seek positions for their nationals, let alone aspiring middle powers (e.g. South Korea) or influential smaller states which “punch above their weight” at the UN (e.g. Singapore)? Moreover, regarding the accusations that the leadership selection process is somehow rigged in China’s favor at the UN, and against, say, the United States, it is worth noting that when the US and the European Union cooperated strategically, they were able to block China’s candidate in the election for the lead of the World Intellectual Property Organization in 2020 (Glosserman 2020). Are there grounds for the rather alarmist narratives of China taking over the UN? Comparative research and a rigorous assessment of the data are needed to make better sense of the actual increase in the level of Chinese nationals in UN staff compared to other comparable UN member states—for example, to the other P5 member nations on the Security Council—or even aspiring middle powers and small states, and the factors that lie behind the trends. The leading primary research and data analyses (Fung and Lam 2021) show that

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US and European nationals still hold a “significantly higher” relative share of staff positions at all levels of the UN staff. China has made modest gains, and targeted gains in the more technically oriented specialized agencies in the UN system (FAO, International Telecommunication Union, ICAO, UNIDO, WHO) (Fung and Lam 2021, 1150). Fung and Lam find that China holds the fewest executive leadership positions among the permanent and aspiring members of the UN Security Council, except for Russia. Furthermore, they note that China has yet to lead an agency addressing international security matters—that is, more politically sensitive areas. As such, it is tenable to suggest that China is still largely in catch-up mode on executive leadership staffing at the UN. Careful assessment of the data, through a comparative lens, suggests that the charges of China “taking over” UN senior posts are overhyped threats heretofore.

4.

UN OUTREACH TO CHINA

What, then, about the other direction of influence and mutual constitution: UN Secretariat outreach to China, and its efforts to further the socialization and integration of a rising power into existing norms and networks? Mark Malloch Brown has argued—persuasively, in the opinion of this author—that the UN leadership needs the support of member states, particularly the main stakeholders, in order to achieve UN-led global causes or the reform of the UN itself (Malloch Brown 2008). In this, the work of Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon to reach out to China for support—and to encourage change in China’s global positioning to support the wider interests of the UN—is highly instructive. It is useful to remember that 2003 could have turned into a “year of retreat” for the UN, to quote Kofi Annan. In the former secretary-general’s autobiography, Interventions, Annan writes (Annan and Mousavizadeh 2013) that the “inexorable march” to war in Iraq that commenced in 2002 divided member states and called into question the relevance of the UN. “The architecture of global governance was tested almost to the breaking point,” in his opinion. The UN organization was being “challenged in ways that went to the core of its mission – and credibility”—especially by the most powerful nation, on the use of force. Rather than retreat, Annan decided that the UN needed to “confront these challenges – of the structure of the organization, of the willingness of member states to support it … head-on.” Annan’s strategy was to direct the UN staff and representatives of member states (and other actors) to focus on “issues that would unite” and “direct the anger” toward something positive, rather than toward raw division (Annan and Mousavizadeh 2013, 141). The secretary-general looked to the General Assembly for support for the strategy, and to fend off the US attempts to undermine his leadership and the role of the UN. Annan turned to China (as

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well as France and Russia) for help and support in shoring up the role and status of the institution, and in fending off the US in the latter part of his second term (2002–06). In turning to China at this time, Annan and UN management and staff showed themselves to be actors—or “agents” in social scientific language— who were attuned to the ways the world had changed, and who chose to proactively engage rather than “manage” the rising powers to maintain the status quo. Explaining why he tried to push for Security Council reform, Annan wrote, “it is evident that economic and political power has shifted in the world. Why emerging and regional powers will accept structures in which they have a second-class status is a question no one has answered credibly” (Annan and Mousavizadeh 2013, 141). Beyond the secretary-general, the under-secretary-general for economic and social affairs (and DESA head) at that time, Jose Antonio Ocampo, was also acutely aware of China’s growing material capabilities and its increasingly important role in driving global growth, especially in terms of demand for commodities from the developing world (News Agencies 2005). The UN became the most proactive institution in dealing with China as a provider of support. Each level of the UN organization has encouraged China to play a greater role in UN operations, and to increase its contributions to the UN’s operations and mission. These include Secretaries-General Kofi Annan, Ban Ki-moon, and António Guterres; various under-secretaries general; managers of the programs, funds, and specialized agencies; and other parts of the overall Secretariat. In reaching out to Beijing, for example, Annan urged China to play a bigger role in UN peacekeeping, global conflict prevention, and protecting international peace, stability and security. He also encouraged it to be more active on global poverty reduction—especially in support of the UN-led MDGs—and in the climate and environmental field. Annan was very interested in China’s expanding economic and developmental ties with Africa and across Asia, and how these growing ties could also be leveraged for achievement of the MDGs. Annan and various under-Secretaries-general made outreach to China a priority for the UN. In January 2004, the secretary-general sent greetings to China for the Chinese New Year and used this as an opportunity to emphasize that China was playing a “vital role” in the global “causes of peace, development and human rights,” and could “take pride in its successes, in reducing poverty and opening up new opportunities for its people” (United Nations 2004). Annan also discussed UN reform with President Hu across a range of areas, including how to increase the role of the UN in international affairs. Annan sought China’s support on the proposed UN reform ideas and the timing of the reforms, and for UN proposals including the secretary-general’s advocacy for multilateralism (Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Estonia 2005).

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Beneath the secretary-general and the Secretariat, UN programs and funds also made a push to ask China for more help as a multilateral donor, starting in the mid-2000s; and China stepped up to meet these requests. The efforts of the WFP are illustrative here. As mentioned above, in 2005, China transitioned from a recipient to a multilateral food aid donor. At the frontline of the WFP’s advocacy were Executive Director James Morris, a US national; and, in Beijing, Douglas Broderick, WFP China country representative. Broderick referred to the last shipment of food to China as a “turning point” in the UN’s relationship with China; he stated clearly that for the WFP, “having fed 30 million people” in China over a “quarter of a century,” the UN food aid program “now looks to Beijing to share its expertise and commitment” (United Nations 2005a). In December 2005, the WFP went further, referring to China as a “key tool” in fighting the war on global hunger (United Nations 2005c). Morris underscored that the WFP was shifting its relations with China to receiving food aid from China and using China’s technical expertise in emergency interventions around the world. It was also transforming its China country operations into a procurement center for goods and services from Chinese providers and other suppliers in the Asian region. By 2007, the WFP was reporting that it had “boosted” its partnership with China (United Nations 2007) in important ways. In December that year, a mission from WFP headquarters visited Beijing to discuss how to further build on its new projects with China. These included efforts to increase the participation of Chinese suppliers in the WFP’s international tenders for food, goods, and services—tenders where the WFP aims to save costs by procuring directly in China and cutting out the costs of traders and import fees—and to maintain the high-quality standards of the WFP’s operations. WFP Deputy Executive Director John Powell pointed out that, “just as WFP can offer China some of its best technology and expertise [that are] tested in other countries, so can China’s assistance be spread even further by entrusting it to a multilateral institution.” The remarks of Chinese Vice Minister of Agriculture Niu Dun reflected China’s growing willingness to step up further to meet the requests of the UN: “putting China’s knowledge, personnel, experience and resources at the service of the UN’s largest humanitarian organization offers an opportunity for China to improve the lives of even more people and countries” (United Nations 2007). The increasing engagement with the WFP was indicative of a wider engagement with the UN development system. The UN’s specialized agencies were a key part of the organization’s pioneering role among the IGOs in moving beyond the traditional “North-South” relationship with Beijing, and transitioning to having China make more contributions to UN-led South-South cooperation programs, projects, and partnerships. The UN offices in China were very aware of China’s growing footprint, influence, and status across

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the Global South; and they looked to leverage China’s material capacities and technical knowhow for the UN’s global causes. For example, the Offices of the UN in China were on the frontline in encouraging Beijing to increase China’s contributions to UN-led humanitarian relief operations. Beijing made substantial contributions the UN’s Indian Ocean tsunami relief operations (on top of its bilateral assistance such as the $10 billion loan to Indonesia), sending relief supplies and expert teams including medical and public health professionals. In 2005, China responded to the UN’s request to help in responding to the Pakistan earthquake by opening new land transport routes inside China to help move relief supplies; and in 2008, China delivered its first planeload of the Tamiflu vaccine to Mexico in response to the swine flu outbreak. In a research interview with the author in April 2009, the UN resident representative stated that Chinese officials “[have] come to see the UN-influenced reforms in how China manages its economy, its social development, its governance system, as well as its growing role in the UN’s operations, globally, as in the country’s national interest”; and that “they have chosen to work in accordance with the international principles in the UN Conventions even if not wholly so in all cases.” According to the same UN official, the UN is using “its core strength – multilateralism – to encourage China to engage more globally” and in a globally coordinated way under the UN’s lead. The UN focused this engagement of China on “global best practices” and “global norms and standards,” as defined or transmitted by the UN agencies.

5. CONCLUSION The analysis in this chapter has highlighted three main points. First, China’s profile and presence inside the UN have increased over the last two decades, along with its dramatically growing contributions to the organization across the full range of indicators, from the UN budget, UN peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief to UN staffing and leadership posts. What is “new” about China’s global positioning specifically in the last two decades is that China seems more willing to take up international leadership roles. But China has not effected a “takeover” of the UN, or its Secretariat in particular. The most definitive academic research to date (Fung and Lam 2021) has found that China is still in “catch-up mode” on securing more staff positions at the UN at the working and senior leadership levels; and that China is arguably still under-represented compared to comparable member states, or in some cases, when compared to ambitious middle powers and activist small states. Second, UN officials have exercised significant agency in urging China to assume bigger roles in the UN and its operations. China’s political leadership was previously hesitant about assuming a bigger global role in UN operations into the mid-2000s. It took coaxing of China’s leaders by successive UN

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secretaries-general, under-secretaries and the heads of UN programs and agencies for China to step up and contribute more to UN-led efforts of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, food aid, medical assistance, and peacekeeping operations, as well as the UN’s global policy initiatives such as the MDGs, the successor SDGs, and the UN’s own organizational reform initiatives. The UN has also played a significant role in “socializing” Chinese officials to global “best practices,” global “lessons learned,” and global multilateral norms. Various parts of the UN Secretariat have played important roles in refashioning China’s outbound ties with Asian and African countries. Third, the analysis of China and the UN Secretariat in this chapter—which has focused in particular on the case of DESA—finds that China has largely nominated qualified professionals to the UN Secretariat. There is yet to be clear evidence that when Chinese nationals are put into positions of authority at the UN, they are significantly more likely than persons of other nationalities to put their national interests above those of the broader UN membership. This observation may or may not hold in all spheres of UN activity; further comparative research is needed on China’s behavior in other spheres or sectors of the UN’s operations. Moreover, what would constitute a threshold for “too much” influence also needs to be defined. Areas such as global health, including the WHO’s modeling of lessons learned in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, would be particularly interesting; as would the handling of the civil and political dimensions of human rights, or the approach to UN peacekeeping operations. Chinese nationals currently do not head any of the leadership posts in these issue areas within the UN Secretariat, so the testing of actual behavior of Chinese appointees in these issue areas would start with the mid-level leadership and rank and file of UN staff. Some scholars have started to do this research, particularly in the issue areas of peacekeeping, human rights protection, and conflict prevention norms (Foot 2020; Gill 2022). Here the debate tends to center on the question of whether China continues to support the UN’s traditional “consensual, impartial, and non-coercive models” of peacekeeping (despite advancing some alternative norms such as “developmental peace”) (Borah 2020) or has shifted toward supporting “unconventional” UN peacekeeping operations that are “offensive and intrusive” (Barelli 2022); and whether China is using its new lead role in UN peacekeeping to water down or displace liberal norms such as the “responsibility to protect” human rights (Coleman and Job 2021). The case of DESA—where Chinese professionals have established a considerable and sustained presence—shows that China’s nominees to this senior UN Secretariat post have not distinguished themselves by their allegiance to a “China vision” of the UN. In heading DESA, and in other lead posts in the UN specialized agencies, Chinese officials have been drawn into the large bureaucracy that is the UN. In taking on the lead of DESA, they have brought

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their experience which has been forged in China’s international affairs, and which often includes extensive UN-related experience. They are aware of China’s national interests, and—similar to other foreign nationals—they are likely not to pursue actions that are directly detrimental to the interests of their home country. But they have also been careful to adhere to the professional standards expected of international civil servants at the UN. Moreover, they have been shaped by the UN system, its multilateral agenda and priorities, and its multilateral bureaucratic character and organizational needs. In summary, it should not be surprising that China, in the process of making greater contributions to the UN, should want to have more influence in the organization. Nor should it be assumed automatically that China’s contributions and its bigger role in the UN are a “threat” to the global good. China’s growing role in the UN is far more complex than a simple one-way “capture” of the UN, its Secretariat, or its programs and specialized agencies by a so-called rising global power. The other side of this equation—UN organizational outreach to China, and UN efforts to secure and shape the nature of China’s contributions to ensure greater global benefit—are also key elements of the story. Finally, and perhaps ironically, the history of US decisions and US pressure on the UN have also played a catalytic role in pushing UN officials and China together, to seek support from each other.

NOTES 1.

2.

The author wishes to thank Alistair Edgar and Carla P. Freeman for their suggestions related to this chapter; Felix Dodds and Paul John Ladd for their guidance on the research on the Rio+20 to Sustainable Development Goals process; and Joel Oestreich and Kendall Stiles for their recommendations as the book editors In March 2006, China’s Parliament, the National People’s Congress, approved a 14.7 percent increase in China’s military spending, a boost to $ 5 billion. The US Defense Department said that this amount looks small compared to the $419 billion for the US defense budget for 2006, but the Pentagon estimated that China’s actual defense spending was two to three times the figure that was publicly announced. Even at $10 billion to $15 billion, China’s defense spending was still low compared to the United States, and the issue for the Pentagon was more likely the rate of growth in China’s defense spending and future projections.

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United Nations. 2005b. “Build Towards a Harmonious World of Lasting Peace and Common Prosperity.” Statement by H.E. Hu Jintao, President of the People’s Republic of China, at the United Nations Summit, New York, September 15, 2005. https://​www​.un​.org/​webcast/​summit2005/​statements15/​china050915eng​.pdf United Nations. 2005c. “UN Food Agency Sees Partnership with China as Key Tool in War on Global Hunger.” UN News, December 15, 2005. https://​news​.un​.org/​en/​ story/​2005/​12/​163752​-un​-food​-agency​-sees​-partnership​-china​-key​-tool​-war​-global​ -hunger United Nations. 2007. “UN Food Agency and China Boost Partnership Against Global Hunger.” UN News, July 19, 2007. https://​news​.un​.org/​en/​story/​2007/​07/​225952​-un​ -food​-agency​-and​-china​-boost​-partnership​-against​-global​-hunger United Nations. 2021. “Contributions of Uniformed Personnel to UN by Country and Personnel Type Experts on Mission, Formed Police Units, Individual Police, Staff Officer, and Troops As Of: 31/3/2021.” https://​peacekeeping​.un​.org/​sites/​default/​ files/​01​-summary​_of​_contributions​_36​_mar2021​.pdf United Nations. 2022. “United Nations Peace and Development Fund.” https://​www​ .un​.org/​en/​unpdf/​ United Nations Peacekeeping. 2022. “How We Are Funded.” https://​peacekeeping​.un​ .org/​en/​how​-we​-are​-funded United Nations System Chief Executive Board for Coordination. 2010. Secretariat, “Personnel Statistics: Data as at 31 December 2009: note/by the CEB Secretariat.” Geneva: UN, May 28, 2010. https://​digitallibrary​.un​.org/​record/​719388​?ln​=​en United Nations System Chief Executive Board for Coordination. 2020. Secretariat, “Personnel statistics: data as at 31 December 2019: note/by the CEB Secretariat.” Geneva: UN, September 4, 2020. https://​digitallibrary​.un​.org/​record/​3884998​?ln​=​en Vina, Morgan Lorraine and Brett Schaefer. 2021. “Get More Americans Working at the United Nations.” The Heritage Foundation, February 24, 2021. https://​www​ .heritage​.org/​global​-politics/​commentary/​get​-more​-americans​-working​-the​-united​ -nations. Xinhua. 2011. “Backgrounder: Major International Rescue Operations Carried Out by CISAR.” People’s Daily, March 14, 2011. http://​en​.people​.cn/​90001/​90777/​90851/​ 7318245​.html Xinhua. 2019. “Chinese Diplomat Welcomes UN Appointment to Great Lakes Region in Africa.” Xinhuanet, January 23, 2019. http://​www​.xinhuanet​.com/​english/​ 2019–01/​23/​c​_137768672​.htm Zhou, Jing. 2007. “Sha Zukang on His Appointment as UN Under Secretary-General.” China.org.cn, July 14, 2007. http://​www​.china​.org​.cn/​english/​international/​217067​ .htm

4. The Crisis of the Multilateral Agenda in Brazilian Foreign Policy: Perceptions and Reactions from the United Nations Hugo Bras Martins da Costa, Giovana Esther Zucatto, and Marianna Restum Albuquerque 1. INTRODUCTION When the Second World War ended, there was a widespread belief in the need for a renewed multilateral organization focused on collective security. The failure of the League of Nations could have fatally damaged the communitarian hope in liberal institutionalism. Instead, it was interpreted as an opportunity to learn from past mistakes. When countries involved in the Second World War were summoned to the San Francisco Conference, Brazil was no exception. The country participated actively in virtually all universal and regional multilateral organizations, conferences, and agreements; and praised multilateralism as one of its foreign policy principles. Since 2019, however, Brazil and the world have faced an unfortunate confluence of two critical processes: on one hand, the crisis of multilateralism, which has been developing since the 2008 financial crash and the rise of China; and on the other, the crisis in Brazilian foreign policy, against a context in which traditional practices and pragmatism have been sidelined and replaced by conservative values. The crisis in Brazilian foreign policy has dramatically affected the country’s approach to the United Nations (UN). Previously an important contributor to multilateral dialogues and prone to building bridges and consensus between North and South countries, Brazil has been publicly denounced, diplomatically isolated, and discredited since 2019. The main objective of this chapter is to analyze the downturn in Brazilian foreign policy after the election of Jair Bolsonaro, and the effect this has had on the UN and its Secretariat as they struggle with shifting power balances. In particular, we aim to interpret not 61

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only how the Bolsonaro government abandoned previous patterns of interaction with the UN system, but also how the UN Secretariat has perceived and responded to this new behavior, and how Brazilian foreign policy has reacted to the efforts of the UN to influence its policy. As the first chapter of this volume shows, the “BRICS” countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—are increasingly important in global politics at the UN. In this regard, we posit that Brazil is indeed a “rising power,” with the capacity to influence the organization’s decisions and, therefore, to challenge existing ideas of multilateralism—both through its relative power in some sectoral agendas as and through its leadership in broad political coalitions. Accommodating this will not be easy. In 2019, Brazil elected a nationalist government that was unenthusiastic about multilateralism. The UN has struggled to contain the fallout from this change in Brazilian foreign policy. To demonstrate this, we argue that Brazil’s multilateral approach was historically related to a broader process of strengthening the democratic credentials of Brazilian domestic and foreign policy following the country’s transition from dictatorship to democracy. In other words, before Bolsonaro took office, the multilateral strategy was approached in a consensual way by different governments, and was seen as a key step in consolidating the transition to democracy in 1985. The Bolsonaro government, on the other hand, heralded the resurgence of an anti-multilateral approach in Brazilian foreign policy. While the Brazilian diplomatic corps has attempted to minimize the damage, the negative impact that Bolsonaro has had on Brazil’s image in multilateral forums may take a long time to reverse. This is also putting pressure on the multilateral system, which is trying to push back against destabilization. However, this pushback has not yet been effective in the case of Brazil. The chapter is organized into the following sections. Section 2 explores how and why multilateralism has been a cornerstone of Brazilian foreign policy. We stress the pragmatic approach to politics which has led to this strategy. In Section 3, we analyze the main changes in Brazilian foreign policy with regard to the UN under the Bolsonaro administration. Section 4 focuses on the reactions to Brazil’s behavior from the perspectives of UN officials, UN-based journalists, and public statements about UN perceptions of Brazilian foreign policy under Bolsonaro; and on how the Bolsonaro government has responded to the efforts of the UN to influence its foreign policy. The final remarks briefly summarize some of the chapter’s main findings and indicate further research that could be developed in the future.

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BRAZILIAN DIPLOMACY AND THE HISTORICAL PRIMACY OF MULTILATERALISM

Traditionally, Brazilian diplomacy has considered multilateralism a pivotal mechanism for achieving foreign policy objectives. While Brazil alone was not powerful enough to shift or affect global power balances, it could gather support to pursue its goals through multilateral forums. This practice dates back to nineteenth-century diplomacy, when Brazil’s relations with neighboring countries and great powers were addressed through multilateral arbitration, dialogue, and the peaceful settlement of disputes. After the proclamation of the Republic in 1889, the aspirations for international recognition of the new regime were pursued through a deliberate policy of activism in multilateral forums, in which Brazil could publicly present the credentials of the Republic and strengthen its commercial ties. As the country renounced its focus on military power abroad, diplomacy became “Brazil’s most valuable reputational asset” (Casarões, 2019; 90). Based on this premise, we consider that multilateralism is a strategy to redress Brazil’s lack of military power. At the same time, it champions diplomatic negotiation, rather than war, as the primary instrument of international relations. Thus, multilateralism has progressively become more than just a strategic calculation for Brazil: it has become a foreign policy principle. As a result, despite differences during specific periods, universal multilateralism has been a constant cornerstone of Brazilian foreign policy. It is precisely this paradigm of the primacy of multilateralism that has underpinned how Brazil participation in the UN has been perceived since the founding of the organization. After leaving the League of Nations in 1926, when Brazil’s aspirations to join the League Executive Council were frustrated alongside Germany’s admission as a permanent member, Brazil went through a period of “hemispheric withdrawal,” which lasted until the country declared war on the Axis powers and engaged in the European theater of war. From the moment Brazil entered the Second World War, it endeavored to position itself as an essential ally of the United States, and more importantly, as the global representative of South America. In the UN, it similarly sought to position itself as a regional leader in the new organization that would guide the post-war international order. One Brazilian objective was to secure a place among the select group of permanent members of the Security Council, succeeding where it had failed at the League of Nations. Although this ambition was once again frustrated, Brazilian diplomacy was an essential part of the construction of the UN and the drafting of the Charter of the United Nations, the UN’s founding document. It is worth mentioning

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the specific contribution of a Brazilian representative during the San Francisco Conference, at which the Charter was negotiated and signed. Among the various commissions formed at San Francisco, the so-called First Commission was responsible for drafting the general provisions that would appear in the preamble to the founding UN Charter, setting out the essential values that would guide the performance and future institutional development of the organization. The Brazilian representative, Bertha Lutz—the only woman in the delegation and one of the very few present at the Conference—was an active figure in the First Commission. She played a fundamental role in ensuring that the preamble to the Charter enshrined in immutable clauses the guarantee of legal equity between the states and the recognition of equality between men and women.1 Thus, since 1945, Brazil has assigned the UN a central role in the formulation and execution of its foreign policy. Although there have been periods of greater withdrawal from or alignment with the great powers in controversial votes, active and full participation as a UN member state has become an inseparable characteristic of Brazil’s international personality (Corrêa, 1995, p.13). However, Brazil is not the only country to defend multilateralism as a primary goal. The defense of multilateral decision-making is a strategy which is commonly employed by states that occupy intermediate positions in the international system. In an anarchic and asymmetric order, middle powers like Brazil attempt to reform multilateral institutions to expand their influence in normative production (Uziel, 2015). This reformism is often not based on confrontation; nor is it accompanied by an interest in radically blocking the decision-making process. The multilateral framework tries to shift the international order to a more participatory model and creates a set of rules that regulates the behavior of the most powerful states (Fonseca, 1998). Multilateral activism is, therefore, an instrument through which to guarantee a foreign policy based on principles and norms (Casarões, 2019), rather than merely on the will of the great military powers. Thus, despite the undeniable importance of multilateralism to the international system over the decades, there is a growing perception that multilateral organizations are unable to resolve collective challenges. Among the elements that are contributing to the current state of paralysis in collective decision-making, we can highlight—following on from Chapter 1—the emergence of China as a global player; the overall shift in the global economic axis toward Asia; and the slow recovery from the 2008 financial crisis, which has generated a narrative of exhaustion of the current liberal model and stimulated demands for change in the international system. To overcome these challenges, some states have resorted to centralizing discourses in order to regain power and prestige. As a result, a protectionist and nihilist narrative has emerged from the frustration of the liberal promise

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of growth and access to benefits. One of the most relevant examples was the election of Donald Trump in 2016, with a nationalist and destructive agenda of multilateral ordering. The consequences of these processes have weakened global governance in different realms. In the trade sphere, for example, there has been a proliferation of bilateral and plurilateral trade agreements outside the scope of the World Trade Organization (WTO), resulting in increased fragmentation of economic governance. Further, the Doha Round remains paralyzed; and the WTO has been unable to conclude a substantial multilateral agreement. In climate change, non-proliferation, and disarmament, we have also witnessed limited progress in the work toward collective and far-reaching understandings. Critical and skeptical attitudes have also increased in regional contexts—as seen, for example, in the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU). In the Global South, we have seen a weakening of institutionalization initiatives within the BRICS. In South America, the dismantling of regional integration is marked by the wholesale abandonment of the Union of South American Nations. Brazil has contributed to this weakening of the multilateral order. It has reneged on its historical legacy of active multilateralism and has even abandoned its leadership in the coalition of developing countries. Therefore, the crisis of multilateralism is deeply related to the crisis in Brazilian foreign policy itself. If this crisis began under Dilma Rousseff and was deepened by Michel Temer, it was firmly radicalized by Jair Bolsonaro. In denial of the engagement that marked past policies, the government policies and guidelines under Bolsonaro mistrusted international institutions and expressed clear, pre-defined biases against certain countries. At this juncture, Brazil’s disengagement from the multilateral order is unprecedented. Brazilian foreign policy under Bolsonaro disrupted a longstanding tradition of participation and engagement, converting universal multilateral institutions into enemies of the government. The priority was redirected to immediate economic gains and investments, rather than long-lasting political ties. As a result, Brazil’s multilateral activity—already diminished—was mostly restricted to praise for free trade and economic status, as suggested by its application for membership of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD); and by a provocative approach to issues that are crucial to the strengthening of conservatism, such as gender and human rights. It is unclear how much any of this will change with the recent change of government.

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BOLSONARO’S FOREIGN POLICY TO THE UNITED NATIONS

Foreign policy is a sphere in which Bolsonaro fiercely implemented his conservative project. As diplomatic decisions are tightly centered on the Executive branch, the need to compromise and deradicalize to meet congressional leaders halfway is unclear and nuanced. Therefore, Bolsonaro used foreign policy to reinforce the loyalty of the most radical part of his constituency (Lima and Albuquerque, 2019). Marcos Nobre (2019) argues that the Bolsonaro government operated on the premise of destruction and chaos. This functioned as a strategy to reinforce the support of its electoral constituency, characterized by frustrated segments of the population who considered themselves outsiders from traditional politics. The armed forces and religious groups were examples of such segments. Ensuring the fidelity of this hardcore support group “[was] fundamental to remain[ing] in power” (p. 32). Therefore, the government depended on the reinforcement of postures and discourses that challenged institutionalism and traditional forms of political representation. Convergent with the narratives of these anti-establishment groups, the core of Bolsonaro’s foreign policy was the idea of anti-globalism. According to former Minister of Foreign Relations Ernesto Araújo, globalism and economic globalization are guided by cultural Marxism—itself an essentially anti-human, anti-Christian system. Following this narrative, the main pillars of globalism are IGOs, which themselves are manipulated by China. Thus, they should be resisted. With regard to specific trade regimes, there was also an evident inflection in Brazilian foreign policy. This is mainly illustrated by the abandonment of Brazil’s identification as a developing country, and by the abdication of leadership in the struggle for distributive justice. This shift can be seen in the campaign to join the OECD. In promoting the desire to join this organization of developed countries as a priority, Brazil took two simultaneous steps. First, it denied its historic role as a spokesperson for the developing countries and as a mediator between the Global North and the Global South. Second, it rescinded the preferential tariffs that WTO developing status grants. Incoherently, the bid for a special relationship with the Global North meant an abdication of the conditions that historically have allowed Brazilian to integrate into international trade. With regard to the UN in particular, Bolsonaro’s clash with the organization began while he was still running for the presidency. As a candidate, he stated that he would distance Brazil from the UN and withdraw from various UN agreements. Following US President Donald Trump’s script, Bolsonaro also threatened to remove Brazil from the Human Rights Council (HRC) and from

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some specialized agencies, such as the World Health Organization (WHO). At the UN, Brazil went on to abandon its role as a promoter of consensus and an intermediary between North and South. Often, Brazil found itself in the minority during the negotiation of resolutions, accompanied by a small group of countries—notably those with similar reactionary ideologies. Following US instructions, for example, a 2020 resolution at the UN General Assembly to promote cooperation in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic was not supported by Brazil, Pakistan, or Hungary. According to an investigation conducted by a major Brazilian newspaper, the United States negotiated with the other member states with the aim not to be the only one opposing the resolution. Brazil was invited to join this coalition. Venezuela, the United States, and Brazil are the only countries in the Americas that did not sponsor the project.2 When it comes to security, contrary to the historical position that force should be used only as a last resort, Brazilian diplomacy recently defended the intervention in Venezuela, even suggesting the possibility of authorizing the deployment of US troops in the Brazilian territory. The result has been the progressive loss of Brazil’s credibility and international legitimacy. Under Bolsonaro, Brazil was no longer invited to participate in debates in areas where it used to be a leader, such as access to medicines and international cooperation. This has weakened and discredited the real possibilities that previously existed for Brazil to achieve some of its longstanding goals at the UN, such as acquiring a permanent seat on the Security Council. The disruption can also be seen in relation to environmental, human rights, and gender agreements, among others. These profound changes have been noted by other UN member states, as well as by the UN Secretariat. Throughout the first three years of Jair Bolsonaro’s term in office (2019–21), as is detailed below, the UN community perceived Brazilian multilateral foreign policy as denialist, anti-democratic, illiberal, sexist, dishonest, and isolationist. The UN also considered Brazilian actions as too focused on pleasing supporters at home and undermining the credibility of multilateralism. Until the end of the Trump administration in the United States in January 2021, Bolsonaro’s pledges within the UN forums were also perceived as a mere transmission belt for Washington’s multilateral agenda. These perceptions among the UN community were reinforced by Brazil’s withdrawal from important forums and agreements of the UN, such as the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration. In addition, Brazil limited its participation in UN peacekeeping operations as a troop contributor, as illustrated by the case of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in December 2020. Bolsonaro’s administration also threatened to quit the Paris Agreement, the WHO, and the HRC. Regarding the latter, Bolsonaro publicly criticized the HRC for being a “leftist” organization

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seeing to spread a project of world control based on communist, globalist, anti-nationalist, anti-Christian family values. The radical change in Brazil’s position at the UN’s environmental and human rights forums, as well as at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), reinforced awareness of disruption. In this regard, one of the main agendas that the Bolsonaro government pushed is the anti-gender agenda. Brazil’s historical official position advocated for a holistic and integrated vision of economic, civil, social, and political rights. To be effective, human rights should include provisions related to socioeconomic development and the integration of minorities. However, Bolsonaro’s government defended an opposing set of values. Endowed with a strong streak of religious fundamentalism, Brazil rejected the use of the term “gender,” which it qualified as an ideology. For Minister Araújo, the “gender ideology” violated the Christian understanding of the traditional family and demonized male sexuality (Albuquerque and Ives, 2019). As a result, official instructions to the Brazilian delegation in Geneva called for the use of the term “biological sex” instead of “gender,” and required that any mention of women’s reproductive rights not include abortion. In voting procedures, Brazil was usually accompanied by a small group of countries—such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Bahrain—in its crusade to oppose the promotion of sexual and reproductive health and sexual education within the UN. As Cupác and Ebetürk (2020) put it, this conservative international alliance was not just about “backlash politics,” but rather came to see the UN as an arena of political dispute. In January 2020, Jair Bolsonaro vetoed several parts of a national document aimed at implementing the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, arguing that these included “the ominous gender ideology and abortion, under the guise of sexual and reproductive rights.” In March 2021, Brazil chose not to sign a joint declaration with more than 50 countries for the HRC’s International Women’s Day, arguing that the Brazilian government “does not support references to ambiguous terms and expressions, such as sexual and reproductive rights.”3 These are just some examples of the anti-gender foreign policy that Brazil conducted after Bolsonaro came to power. This represents a huge step backwards in the diplomatic efforts that Brazil has historically made in the human rights arena. For instance, there had been a consensus within Brazilian diplomacy on the term “gender” in international organizations and documents since 2001 (Queiroz, 2021). Furthermore, since the 1990s the Brazilian government had sought to develop its international human rights agenda in collaboration with feminist organizations, aligning its official stances with those of transnational feminism (Salomon, 2020). The government regularly invited civil society organizations to attend international fora as part of the Brazilian delegation. Under Bolsonaro, the main civil society partners concerning

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international guidelines on human rights—and more specifically, women’s rights—were conservative neo-Pentecostal evangelical churches. It is no coincidence that Damares Alves, an evangelical pastor, was appointed minister of the family, women, and human rights. She is the minister that most frequently accompanied the Brazilian delegation in multilateral meetings, aside from the minister of foreign policy himself. Damares Alves spoke at the UN several times, both in the HRC and the CSW. On all these occasions, she reinforced Brazil’s commitment to “the first and greatest of all human rights, the right to life.” In the same vein, not only Alves but also Ernesto Araújo and Bolsonaro himself, when addressing the General Assembly, emphasized the defense of the traditional Christian family and its values as one of the cornerstones of the Brazilian government. In addition, Brazilian diplomats were instructed to veto sections that associate religious barriers with negative impacts on women’s lives; and pushed for religious entities to be recognized as formulators of public policies in defense of human rights at the UN, especially on the issue of women’s rights (Queiroz, 2021). Finally, the perceptions of the UN community were strongly reinforced by the unprecedented shift in the Brazilian stance in the UN General Assembly resolutions on the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Brazil’s new stance challenged an international consensus on the status of Jerusalem and the withdrawal of Israel armed forces from Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. In 2019, 2020, and 2021, the Brazilian delegation abstained from UN General Assembly Draft Resolutions A/RES/74/88, A/RES/75/97, and A/RES/76/82 condemning Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the occupied Syrian Golan. In 2019, 2020, and 2021, Brazil also abstained from UN General Assembly Draft Resolutions A/RES/74/86, A/RES/75/95, and A/RES/76/79, which urged both sides to deal with Palestinian refugees’ properties and their revenues within the peace negotiations.4 An overview of Brazilian votes at the HRC provides a solid summary of the opposition to both gender-related resolutions and the rights of the Palestinian people. Records from universal rights groups5 and from the HRC6 show that Brazil has either abstained or voted against resolutions that either were sponsored by or mentioned the Palestinian people. For instance, Brazil voted against Draft Resolutions A/HRC/RES/43/3 and A/HRC/RES/43/30 on “Ensuring accountability and justice for all violations of international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”; and against Resolutions A/HRC/RES/40/21 and A/HRC/RES/43/30 on human rights in the occupied Syrian Golan. The same voting pattern applies to resolutions about the rights of women or gender equality. In December 2020, Brazil withdrew its peacekeepers from UNIFIL, in response to a request made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

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in a telephone conversation with Bolsonaro in August 2019.7 This newly pro-Israel position of Brazilian foreign policy was also reflected in Bolsonaro’s announcement regarding the decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Israel, and the unfulfilled promise to transfer the Brazilian embassy from Tel Aviv to the city under pressure from the Brazilian agribusiness sector. Brazil also reversed its vote on the annual resolution about the economic blockade against Cuba, altering a diplomatic position adopted since 1992, when it voted for the first time to condemn the embargo. In 2019 and 2021, Brazil voted against the resolution that condemns and calls for an end to the US embargo on Cuba (United Nations Digital Library, 2021). Another realm in which the backlash under Bolsonaro is evident is the environment and climate change. Bolsonaro adopted several policies that have transformed Brazil from a major player in the international climate change regime to a virtual pariah. After retreating from his electoral promise to disband the Ministry of the Environment, Bolsonaro appointed Ricardo Salles to head the ministry. Salles, alongside Chancellor Araújo, openly criticized the Paris Agreement, claiming that climate policies are Marxist dogma, an example of the denial and anti-science discourse propagated by Bolsonaro’s most radical support group. The replacement of both by peers with a more moderate discourse has not been enough to reverse the negative image that has befallen Brazil. At the center of international criticism is the Amazon. In 2019, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research released data pointing to an 88 percent increase in illegal deforestation in the forest area, compared to 2018. Bolsonaro’s reaction was to question the veracity of the data and to remove the director of the institute, Ricardo Galvão. The measure was accompanied by budget cuts which crippled central institutions for monitoring and implementing public policies in the region, such as the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources and the National Foundation for Indigenous People. These moves did not go unnoticed outside Brazil. European countries stopped financing the Amazon Fund; Brazilian environmental policy became an obstacle to the approval of the free trade agreement between Mercosur and the European Union; and several companies announced the interruption of imports from Brazil. At the UN, Bolsonaro threatened to denounce the Paris Agreement before bending to international and national pressure—mainly stemming from trade conditionalities imposed by EU countries. In 2019, Brazil refused to host the UN Climate Change Conference COP 25 due to alleged budget restrictions. The refusal was a deviation from Brazil’s historical approach, having successfully organized the Rio 92 and Rio+20 Conferences. In September 2019, in his first open statement at the United Nations General Assembly, Bolsonaro

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fiercely opposed international criticism of Brazilian environmental policies. He insisted: It is a misconception to state that the Amazon is the heritage of humankind; and it is a misconception, as scientists attest, to say that our forest is the lung of the world. Resorting to these fallacies, some countries instead of helping, have followed the lies of the media and behaved disrespectfully, with a colonialist spirit. They have questioned what is most sacred to us: our own sovereignty. (Statement by Mr. Jair Messias Bolsonaro, President of the Federal Republic of Brazil, 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly General Debate, September 24, 2019, p. 4)

On the same occasion, Bolsonaro criticized the UN human rights agencies for praising the “Mais Médicos” program, launched by the previous Workers Party government. According to Bolsonaro, the UN and several international leaders supported a policy that encouraged the “slavery” of Cuban doctors. Bolsonaro also accused indigenous people of causing deforestation and forest fires; and launched an indirect attack on French President Emmanuel Macron by saying that, on the occasion of the G7 meeting, “he dared to suggest imposing sanctions against Brazil, without even listening to us. I thank those who did not accept to carry out this absurd proposal” (p. 5).

4.

THE UN RESPONSE TO BOLSONARO’S FOREIGN POLICY AND THE BRAZILIAN GOVERNMENT’S REACTION TO UN EFFORTS TO INFLUENCE ITS POLICY

The response of the UN community to the changes in the multilateral agenda of Brazilian foreign policy promoted by the Bolsonaro government has been marked primarily by recurrent public denunciations, diplomatic isolation, and the discrediting of Brazil’s international image, as discussed further below. 4.1

Public Denunciations

In terms of public denunciations, the UN became the main stage for international complaints against the Bolsonaro government. According to Jamil Chade, a Brazilian journalist based at the UN in Geneva:8 In just two and a half years of government, Bolsonaro was the target of 32 letters and communications from independent UN rapporteurs denouncing human rights violations committed by the government. The contacts, kept confidential for months, refer to police violence, pandemics, dictatorship, press, housing, education, and racism. It does not include the dozens of letters and communiqués that the UN has received with complaints filed by NGOs, activists, and indigenous peoples against

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the Brazilian president, as well as at least five accusations filed with the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The examples of public shaming of Brazilian practices—by UN member states, civil society representatives and UN officials—are myriad. In 2019, Congressional leaders in Brazil sent a letter to UN Human Rights High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet denouncing Brazilian environmental policies, especially those related to the Amazon region and the rights of native populations. The letter accused Bolsonaro of breaching several international agreements, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; the Paris Agreement; the United Nations Framework Convention on Biodiversity; the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; the Declaration of Human Rights Defenders; and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. In a September 2019 press briefing, Bachelet urged the Brazilian authorities to implement her Office’s recommendations on the protection of minorities;9 while in August 2022, she condemned Bolsonaro’s attacks on democratic institutions and incitements to violence.10 In the 2021 version of the commissioner’s annual report to the HRC on police violence against black people, Bachelet highlighted systemic racism in the Brazil police force, which was cited another five times in the 22-page document. The UN Human Rights Regional Office for South America also issued a note condemning the killing of three human rights defenders in the Amazon region; calling for impartial, independent and thorough investigations; and demanding increased protection for human rights defenders in Brazil.11 Against this backdrop of international and domestic pressure, the Brazilian Supreme Court held a public hearing on the Amazon. On that occasion, David Boyd, the UN special rapporteur on environment and human rights, “recalled the international obligations assumed by Brazil and pointed to the current situation of deforestation being unconstitutional.”12 And these were not the only criticisms that Bolsonaro received from UN officials during his term. Hilal Elver, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, also publicly criticized Bolsonaro’s climate change denialism. According to Hilal and Brierley (2019): Although forest fires are common in the Amazon during the dry season (July – October), the rain forest is burning at a rate above normal. NASA satellites confirm that 2019 has been the most active year for fires in almost a decade. There are 80% more fires in Brazil this year than last year (87,000 forest fires in the first eight months of 2019, compared with 49,000 by the same time in 2018). There have been no changes to the underlying environmental conditions compared to previous years. What has changed however, are the political conditions. Brazil’s new President Bolsonaro has promised to develop the region for farming and mining. A recent BBC analysis has found that the record number of fires burning in the Amazon has

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coincided with a significant drop in the number of fines being issued for environmental violations. This is just one of several ways in which the Brazilian President is widely understood to condone if not outright encourage such practices.13

Also in relation to climate policy, the Emissions Gap Report 2021, produced by the United Nations Environmental Programme, highlighted Brazil as one of the countries that is expected to emit more emissions in 2030 than it did in 2010. The report also states that the analysis of Brazil’s emission trajectories varies “a great deal due to the revision of the 2005 base year. The country’s second and third inventory reports and the Fourth National Communication (its latest) give different values” (United Nations Environment Program, 2021, p. 10). As future targets are calculated based on past emissions, this revision of the baseline year in practice increases the scope for emissions in Brazil and reduces the ambition of its commitment. In practice, the move has been condemned as “backpedaling,” as it is contrary to the Paris Agreement, which states that targets must be progressive. Although he has not specifically singled out Brazil, Secretary-General António Guterres has systematically condemned the postures and arguments adopted by Bolsonaro. At the UN General Assembly in 2021, Guterres fiercely defended vaccination against COVID-19.14 Bolsonaro refused to get vaccinated before going to New York. During the opening session of the HRC in 2019, Guterres criticized the “flood of lies” being spread about the Global Compact for Migration, an international agreement rejected by Bolsonaro. According to Guterres, false narratives equating refugees and migrants to terrorists and blaming them for many societal problems have poisoned the debate. Without naming individual countries, the secretary-general pointed to “an insidious campaign sought to drown the Global Compact on Migration in a flood of lies about the nature and scope of the Agreement.”15 Meanwhile, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet stated that human rights were being dismissed as “supposedly ‘globalist’ – as opposed to the patriotic interest of a sovereign government.”16 Bolsonaro responded to what he considered to be efforts on the part of the UN to influence Brazilian policy by means of public denunciations by calling the organization itself into question: “We are not here to erase nationalities and sovereignties in the name of some abstract global interest.”17 Bolsonaro also tweeted that Bachelet was meddling unnecessarily in Brazil’s internal affairs and praised the repressive practices of the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, under which Bachelet’s father was murdered. In response to condemnations of Bolsonaro’s attacks on democratic institutions and the ballot box, the Brazilian government sent a formal protest through its Foreign Ministry against the way in which the UN questioned the president’s behavior in the October presidential election.

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Diplomatic Isolation

Under Bolsonaro, Brazil coordinated with non-traditional partners to promote a conservative agenda. With regard to gender, for instance, the Brazilian delegation joined Saudi Arabia in an attempt to eliminate any mention of gender identity or reproductive health in a resolution on female genital mutilation. Brazilian diplomats feared the resolution might present even a slim opportunity to allow the document to be interpreted as supporting abortion. After weeks of informal negotiations, in which Brazil—together with Qatar, Bahrain, Pakistan and Iraq— opposed the inclusion of the term “gender” in Resolution A/HRC/RES/44/16, the final draft retained the term, as advocated by Mexico and supported by the European countries.18 Other signs of isolation are evident in Brazil’s departure from the Global Compact for Migration, adopted by more than 160 UN member countries, following in the footsteps of the US Trump administration. In order to justify the withdrawal, the Bolsonaro government argued that the agreement undermines Brazilian sovereignty by authorizing indiscriminate immigration, and could have harmful effects for Brazilians abroad, in addition to negatively impacting the country’s international reputation. The Brazilian government also decided not to participate in several UN and multilateral initiatives. When Germany proposed the Alliance on Multilateralism at the UN in 2019, Brazil did not join.19 According to Casarões and Flemes (2019, p. 1), this was due to the radical rightwing turn of Brazilian foreign policy: “Traditional principles of Brazilian diplomacy such as democratic multilateralism have taken a back seat.” The authors also cited (p. 4) Bolsonaro’s statement during the electoral campaign: “If I am elected president, I’ll leave the UN, which is a useless institution. It is a gathering of communists.” In response to this behavior, the Bolsonaro government was not invited to the UN Climate Summit in December 2020. Likewise, the WHO did not invite Bolsonaro to the World Health Assembly in July 2020; and Brazil was not summoned to participate in the 2019 and 2021 G7 Summits. In response to what he regarded as efforts on the part of the UN to influence Brazilian policy by means of diplomatic isolation, Bolsonaro argued that gains made at the bilateral level through a policy of automatic alignment with the US agenda under the Trump administration would compensate for any eventual losses at the multilateral level. Likewise, Brazilian diplomacy favored the construction of ad hoc alliances, with concerted votes, with countries that were aligned with its conservative agenda on issues such as the environment and human rights.

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The Discrediting of Brazil’s International Image

In this regard, Jamil Chade reports that the Brazilian president was held in disdain by many at the UN: At the UN corridors, informal meetings or confidential conversations between actors on the international scene, complaints, denunciations, and ironies about Bolsonaro, not all of them polite, are guaranteed … Informally, ridiculing the Brazilian president became the “new normal” in conversations between Ambassadors … a senior official of an international organization and in charge of gender issues approached me in a UN corridor to complain about the Brazilian government’s stance against the advancement of women’s rights. Days later, at a press conference just before Jair Bolsonaro’s trip to New York without being vaccinated, I ironically questioned the main UN spokeswoman in Geneva if the diplomatic immunity of a head of state was enough to protect against a virus. With just a smile, her reaction was clear … in a hearing that the government was submitted to the UN to assess the issue of forced disappearances in the country, the intervention of the Ministry of Family, Women and Human Rights was received with a mixture of shock, revolt, and derision … Part of Brazil’s discourse was about the country’s stance against abortion. The problem: the topic was not even on the agenda of the meeting, dedicated to police violence, militias, and the victims of the dictatorship between 1964 and 1985. Top UN representatives and ambassadors are clear: the damage done by Bolsonaro to Brazil’s international image was enormous in different areas, and just changing the tone of the speech will not be enough. Today, his name is accompanied by jocular comments, inquiring about his mental faculties and indignation at the threats to democracy.20

Finally, it is worth noting that the UN General Assembly of 2021 revealed the degree to which Bolsonaro’s Brazil has been discredited in international forums. Unlike other global leaders who had not previously been vaccinated but ended up receiving their shots before the opening session of the General Assembly, Bolsonaro decided to exercise his immunity as head of state and traveled to New York without getting vaccinated. Consequently, the Brazilian president had practically no meetings with other heads of state, except for controversial Polish President Andrzej Duda and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Thus, ridiculed by the world press and by diplomats—including Brazilian diplomats—Bolsonaro was forced to eat pizza on a sidewalk in New York and dine in a temporary structure outside a Brazilian steakhouse to circumvent the sanitary rules in force in the city.21 Meanwhile, at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, Brazil received the Fossil of the Day Prize—an “award” given to those countries which are “doing the most to achieve the least” in terms of progress on climate change. In response to what the Bolsonaro government considered as efforts on the part of the UN to influence Brazilian policy by discrediting the country’s international image, former Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo defended

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the government’s actions during a graduation ceremony at the Rio Branco Institute, the training school for Brazilian diplomats, stating: “[I]f Brazil’s new foreign policy makes us an international pariah, then let us be that pariah.”22

5. CONCLUSION After a 30-year political career in which he held various legislative positions, Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil in 2018. During the electoral campaign, Bolsonaro aligned his foreign policy narrative with that of other conservative leaders, especially Donald Trump. Echoing Trump’s criticisms and withdrawal from UN-led initiatives, Bolsonaro claimed that the UN was a “useless institution,” and also threatened to leave the organization itself and other multilateral instruments, such as the Paris Agreement. After Bolsonaro took office in 2019, the Brazilian government used international forums as a mechanism to advance an extremely conservative policy. It used UN forums and other multilateral bodies to reinforce an international conservative network that sought not only to block advances in areas such as human rights and climate change, but also to set the agenda. Every action has a reaction, and this shift in approach in turn affected how the UN perceived and responded to Brazil as a player on the international stage. In this chapter, we examined how this affected Brazil’s participation in spheres such as human rights, peacekeeping operations, geopolitical affiliations, and climate change. Despite the challenges of studying an ongoing process, we can conclude that Bolsonaro’s new approach to multilateralism has significantly harmed Brazil’s diplomatic reputation, turning the country from a leader to a pariah in several spheres. The Bolsonaro government has reversed historical positions that were pragmatically maintained even during other conservative periods, such as the military dictatorship. By coordinating with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in human rights debates, and positioning itself among those “doing the most to achieve the least” in climate agreements, the Bolsonaro government has empirically harmed Brazil’s international relations. Lula’s victory in the 2022 Brazilian presidential elections has increased expectations among foreign policy researchers for a new direction (or a return to the traditional direction) in Brazil's multilateral agenda. How the UN and the international community will respond to Bolsonaro’s defeat remains to be seen. At the time of writing, it is still unknown whether this will change how Brazil is regarded in the short and medium term; and whether the new president can shift global perceptions through a new approach. While perceptions are generally slow to change, the Trump-Biden succession case demonstrates that positions can change rapidly with sufficient political will. Significant changes in Brazilian foreign policy might help to restore the relationship

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between Brazil and the UN, whose frustration with Brazilian policies and attempts to influence its approach to multilateralism have been manifest.

NOTES 1.

The recognition of the role that Bertha Lutz played at the San Francisco conference is something recent, even in Brazilian diplomacy. There are many reasons for this—one of which is the fact that it is only in the 1990s that Brazil began to focus on women’s rights issues within the organization. Since the founding of the UN, the main areas of Brazilian focus have been the functioning of the Security Council, the reform of the Charter, and economic and social development (Sardenberg, 2013). 2. See: https://​www1​.folha​.uol​.com​.br/​mundo/​2020/​04/​brasil​-segue​-eua​-e​-deixa​-de​ -apoiar​-medida​-da​-onu​-de​-cooperacao​-contra​-coronavirus​.shtml​?origin​=​folha. 3. See https://​g1​.globo​.com/​mundo/​noticia/​2021/​03/​08/​brasil​-fica​-de​-fora​-de​-declaracao​ -conjunta​-com​-mais​-de​-50​-paises​-pelo​-dia​-internacional​-da​-mulher​-na​-onu​.ghtml. 4. See https://​undocs​.org/​en/​A/​74/​PV​.47 ; https://​undocs​.org/​en/​A/​75/​PV​.41; https://​ undocs​.org/​en/​A/​76/​PV​.49. 5. See https://​www​.universal​-rights​.org/​country​-voting​-history​-portal/​country/​?country​=​ Brazil. 6. See https://​www​.ohchr​.org/​EN/​pages/​home​.aspx. 7. See https://​www​.defesanet​.com​.br/​pr/​noticia/​33965/​EXCLUSIVO​-​%E2​%80​%93​ -Brasil​-se​-retirara​-da​-UNIFIL/​. 8. Available at https://​noticias​.uol​.com​.br/​colunas/​jamil​-chade/​2021/​09/​20/​ridicularizado​ -bolsonaro​-e​-alvo​-de​-avalanche​-de​-denuncias​-na​-onu​.htm. 9. UN News, 2019. Available at: https://​news​.un​.org/​en/​story/​2019/​09/​1045602. 10. See https://​noticias​.uol​.com​.br/​colunas/​jamil​-chade/​2022/​09/​27/​onu​-alerta​-para​ -violencia​-politica​-no​-brasil​-e​-fala​-em​-ameaca​-a​-democracia​.htm. 11. See https://​www​.ohchr​.org/​EN/​NewsEvents/​Pages/​B​razilianEn​vironmenta​lDefenders​ .aspx. 12 See https://​www​.lse​.ac​.uk/​granthaminstitute/​news/​first​-climate​-case​-reaches​-brazils​ -supreme​-court/​. 13. Available at https://​hilalelver​.org/​the​-amazon​-is​-burning​-heres​-why​-we​-should​ -care/​. 14. Available at https://​www​.youtube​.com/​watch​?v​=​x9kce​_ciwNI. 15. Available at https://​www​.un​.org/​sg/​en/​content/​sg/​speeches/​2019​-02​-25/​remarks​ -the​-human​-rights​-council. 16. Available at https://​www​.ohchr​.org/​en/​NewsEvents/​Pages/​DisplayNews​.aspx​ ?NewsID​=​24203​&​LangID​=​E. 17. See https://​valor​.globo​.com/​brasil/​noticia/​2019/​09/​25/​bolsonaro​-ataca​-franca​-midia​ -ongs​-e​-a​-propria​-onu​.ghtml. 18. See also https://​brasil​.elpais​.com/​brasil/​2020​-07​-09/​cruzada​-ultraconservadora​ -do​-brasil​-na​-onu​-afeta​-ate​-resolucao​-contra​-mutilacao​-genital​-feminina​.html. 19 See membership at https://​multilateralism​.org/​ministerial​-meeting/​. 20. Available at https://​noticias​.uol​.com​.br/​colunas/​jamil​-chade/​2021/​09/​20/​ridicularizado​ -bolsonaro​-e​-alvo​-de​-avalanche​-de​-denuncias​-na​-onu​.htm. 21. See https://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2021/​09/​21/​world/​americas/​bolsonaro​-covid​-vaccine​ -un​.html.

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22.

See https://​www1​.folha​.uol​.com​.br/​mundo/​2020/​10/​se​-atuacao​-do​-brasil​-nos​-faz​ -um​-paria​-internacional​-que​-sejamos​-esse​-paria​-diz​-chanceler​.shtml.

REFERENCES Albuquerque, M. and Ives, D. (2019) ABC do Jair: O Novo Léxico da Política Externa Brasileira. Boletim OPSA, 3(Jul/Sept): 6–14. Associação Nacional dos Servidores de Meio Ambiente. Cronologia de um Desastre Anunciado: Ações do Governo Bolsonaro para desmontar as políticas de Meio Ambiente no Brasil. Brasília, 2020. https://​static​.poder360​.com​.br/​2020/​09/​ Dossie​_Meio​-Ambiente​_Governo​-Bolsonaro​_revisado​_02​-set​-2020–1​.pdf Casarões, G., Flemes, D. Brazil First, Climate Last: Bolsonaro’s Foreign Policy. GIGA Focus Latin America, n. 5, 2019, pp. 1–13. https://​ pesquisa​ -eaesp​ .fgv​ .br/​ sites/​ gvpesquisa​.fgv​.br/​files/​arquivos/​brazil​_first​.pdf Casarões, G. (2019) Leaving the Club Without Slamming the Door: Brazil’s Return to Middle-Power Status. In Esteves, P., Jumbert, M.G. and Carvalho, B. (eds). Status and the Rise of Brazil: Global Ambitions, Humanitarian Engagement and International Challenges, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Corrêa, L.F de S. (1995) Introdução. In: Fundação Alexandre Gusmão. A Palavra do Brasil nas Nações Unidas. Brasília: FUNAG. Cupać, J. and Ebetürk, I. (2020) The Personal is Global Political: The Antifeminist Backlash in the United Nations. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 22(4), pp. 702–14. DOI: 10.1177/1369148120948733 Fonseca Jr, G. (1998) A Legitimidade e Outras Questões Internacionais: Poder e Ética Entre as Nações, São Paulo: Paz e Terra. General Assembly Provisional Verbatim Record of the 74th Meeting, 2019 A/74/ PV.47: Https://​Undocs​.Org/​En/​A/​74/​PV​.47 General Assembly Provisional Verbatim Record of the 74th Meeting, 2020 A/75/ PV.41: Https://​Undocs​.Org/​En/​A/​75/​PV​.41 General Assembly Provisional Verbatim Record of the 74th Meeting, 2021 A/76/ PV.49: https://​undocs​.org/​en/​A/​76/​PV​.49 Lima, M.R.S and Albuquerque, M.O. (2019) Estilo Bolsonaro de Governar e a Política Externa. Boletim OPSA, no. 1, Rio de Janeiro: Observatório Político Sul-Americano. Nobre, M. (2019) O Caos Como Método. Revista Piauí. https://​piaui​.folha​.uol​.com​.br/​ materia/​o​-caos​-como​-metodo/​ Queiroz, P. (2021) Gênero e Política Externa no Governo Bolsonaro. Internacional Feminista, v. 1(1) pp. 27–34. Salomón, M. (2020) Exploring Brazilian Foreign Policy Towards Women: Dimensions, Outcomes, Actors and Influence. Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional, 63(1): e001, DOI: http://​dx​.doi​.org/​10​.1590/​0034–7329202000101 Sardenberg, R.M. (2013) O Brasil e as Nações Unidas. Brasília: FUNAG. Statement by Mr. Jair Messias Bolsonaro, President of the Federal Republic of Brazil, 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly General Debate, September 24, 2019. http://​statements​.unmeetings​.org/​GA74/​BR​_EN​.pdf United Nations Digital Library. Voting Records: Necessity of Ending the Economic, Commercial and Financial Embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba. https://​digitallibrary​.un​.org/​search​?ln​=​en​&​as​=​1​&​cc​=​Voting+​Data​&​ m1​=​p​&​p1​=​Necessity+​of+​ending+​the+​economic​%2C+​commercial+​and+​financial+​ embargo+​imposed+​by+​the+​United+​States+​of+​America+​against+​Cuba​&​f1​=​&​op1​=​

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a​&​m2​=​a​&​p2​=​&​f2​=​&​op2​=​a​&​m3​=​a​&​p3​=​&​f3​=​&​dt​=​&​d1d​=​&​d1m​=​&​d1y​=​&​d2d​=​&​ d2m​=​&​d2y​=​&​rm​=​&​ln​=​en​&​action​_search​=​Search​&​sf​=​&​so​=​d​&​rg​=​50​&​c​=​Voting+​ Data​&​c​=​&​of​=​hb​&​fti​=​0​&​fti​=​0 United Nations Environment Programme. The Heat Is On: A World of Climate Promises Not Yet Delivered: Emissions Gap Report 2021. https://​reliefweb​.int/​sites/​ reliefweb​.int/​files/​resources/​Emissions​%20Gap​%20Report​%202021​.pdf

5. Human Rights During Power Transitions Rhona Smith and Conall Mallory 1. INTRODUCTION In a widely reported letter sent to United Nations (UN) staff in December 2017, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein announced that he would not be seeking a second four-year term in office, explaining that: “To do so, in the current geopolitical context, might involve bending a knee in supplication; muting a statement of advocacy; lessening the independence and integrity of my voice – which is your voice” (as reported, Lynch 2017). Al Hussein has been lauded as a strong advocate and courageous leader in the intergovernmental human rights project (Alston 2017, 7). His decision and explanation are symptomatic of the profound challenges faced within the contemporary human rights discipline. His successor, Michelle Bachelet, stood down from the role after one term for “personal reasons”; it remains to be seen how long her successor, Volker Türk, will serve.1 Many commentators recognize that the global human rights project is in a more precarious position than at any stage in its recent history (Alston 2017, 3). To some, these challenges are already insurmountable. They have heralded the “endtimes of human rights” (Hopgood, 2013) and “the twilight of human rights law” (Posner, 2014), with the present being framed as a “post-human rights era” (Wuerth, 2016). Buffeted by the rise of populism in states both traditionally hostile and supportive of human rights affairs, and a reduction in human rights allies, the UN human rights operation has been left teetering on the brink of crisis (Seiderman 2019, 13). This draining of goodwill is both caused by, and a symptom of, decades of internal turmoil within the UN human rights machinery concerning both the effectiveness and equity of the monitoring of states’ human rights obligations. While these challenges are faced principally in what Paul Hunt (2017, 490) refers to as the “mainland” of human rights protection— at the Human Rights Council (HRC), treaty monitoring bodies and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) —their implications permeate downstream to subsidiary UN offices, experts, and field workers. 80

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This brings with it the potential to cause profound difficulties for the voiceless millions whom the UN Secretariat and states have committed to protect. In this chapter we analyze the implications of global power shifts within the UN human rights machinery with a specific focus on the OHCHR and connected offices which are dependent on the UN Secretariat for support. While the OHCHR has received a degree of scrutiny and examination since its creation in 1993, as an institution it still receives considerably less coverage than the geopolitical arena of the UN HRC (formerly the UN Commission on Human Rights), or the UN treaty-monitoring bodies and their panels of experts (Freedman, 2013; Freedman, 2014; Alston and Crawford, 2009; Egan, 2011). Yet the work conducted by the OHCHR, particularly in mainstreaming human rights across the intergovernmental network, is rightly celebrated (Hunt 2017, 538). Moreover, the limited attention given to the OHCHR could even have positive implications on its ability to meet its mandate, as it can “fly under the radar” while achieving important goals (Seiderman 2019, 9). And yet, as Al Hussein’s decision demonstrates, it is no less susceptible to geopolitical influences. These observations are borne out through a series of interviews which we have undertaken with an elite sample of individuals working within the OHCHR and those independent experts dependent upon it for support. Alongside existing academic literature and UN documentation, interview responses indicate that individuals working directly on the protection of human rights at the UN believe that power shifts are indeed taking place; and that these shifts affect human rights enforcement. While such tensions within the human rights system are not new to the discipline, and may not be entirely negative, our findings reveal that what is most concerning about the indicators of the current power shifts is their potential to undo much of the vital work that has gone into constructing the system. Thus, although they may not yet indicate an existential threat to the UN human rights project, combined with the post-pandemic climate, they could contribute to multiple problems in the future. The chapter is divided into three substantive sections. Section 2 briefly introduces the OHCHR and its secretariat, and positions them within the wider human rights framework. As power shifts do not take place in a vacuum, Section 3 outlines the context of the work of the OHCHR by highlighting a number of contemporary influences at play within the UN human rights regime. Section 4 then highlights two particular challenges contemporary power transitions present to the OHCHR and its work: the amplification of the global pushback against human rights; and the exposure of existing vulnerabilities in the funding and resourcing of the OHCHR’s mandate. The final section offers some concluding remarks.

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THE OFFICE OF THE HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

The international human rights movement fought hard for the creation of the OHCHR. Earlier attempts to establish such a post failed to secure support across UN member states (Clark, 1972; MacDonald, 1973; Humphrey, 1973; Rycroft, 1972–73).2 It would take a lengthy process from “Mandating the Working Group to Working out a Mandate in Groups” (Clapham 1994, 560; UN, 1982) until the post of high commissioner was established by UN General Assembly Resolution 48/141. This had followed a recommendation made by member states in the Declaration and Programme of Action from the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna 1993, para 18). The OHCHR replaced the former Centre for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. This geographically separated human rights from other core elements of the UN in New York (although there is an OHCHR presence in New York, headed by an assistant secretary-general). The establishment of the OHCHR was initially described as “a small step forward” (Cerna, 1995), albeit a role which lacked specificity (Alston, 1997). It had a potentially wide mandate, framed to promote and protect all human rights and support human rights-related activities both internally—improving and coordinating human rights across the UN system—and externally, through working with governments (see UN Doc A/RES/48/141, para 4). So the fortunes and success of the OHCHR were to be determined by the effectiveness and commitment of the high commissioners and their staff. But trying to render efficient and effective a branch of the Secretariat with scant resources and inconsistent support from member states is not for the fainthearted. The post of high commissioner may be one of the more invidious roles within the UN, being variously termed a “poisoned chalice” (Petrasek, 2018), a “nearly impossible task” (Hernandez, 2018), and also the “conscience of the world” (Gaer and Broecker, 2014). The opening quote from Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein shows the challenges faced by incumbents. Nonetheless, the track record of officeholders has been positive. The first high commissioner, José Ayala-Lasso, continuously exerted his presence and raised the visibility of the office, not least through the opening of field offices around the world— something continued by his successor, Louise Arbour. A program of human rights advisors was also initiated. Successive incumbents have each had to navigate unique challenges in their role in office. For instance, former Irish President Mary Robinson oversaw the office during an expansive period of Western military interventions, the 9/11 attacks, and the immediate shifts of the counter-terrorism age. South African Navi Pillay marshalled the role through the response to the global financial crash of 2008. Michelle Bachelet, the

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seventh office holder, will undoubtedly be associated with global and domestic responses to the COVID-19 pandemic—an event which has brought into focus the “levelling down” of human rights (Scheinin and Molbaek-Steensig, 2021). The current high commissioner, Volker Türk—who has a career rooted in the UN system—took up the role in October 2022. An inherent tension must be acknowledged insofar as the OHCHR is a branch of the UN Secretariat. Rather than providing neutral administrative and logistical support, as would be expected of a civil service, it also investigates human rights violations should the high commissioner (and/or their representatives) so decide. It supports independent experts, whose raison d’être is often investigating and monitoring states. Those experts include ones appointed through UN special procedures (Gutter, 2006; Piccone, 2012), and members of fact-finding missions and commissions of inquiry, as well as elected treaty body members. This chapter is focused on the work of the OHCHR itself and of UN special procedures, as they are appointed by the HRC to serve in their independent capacity but—in contrast to the treaty bodies and commissions of inquiry/fact-finding missions—may be tasked with investigating all UN member states; and indeed, may investigate international organizations and non-state actors (which are newly emerging players). They are also at the forefront of the pushback against human rights as tried and tested modalities, and protocols are proving difficult to sustain. As of 2022, OHCHR in the field comprised 12 regional offices, 19 field/ country (standalone) offices, and 54 human rights advisors (OHCHR, 2022a, 7; 2021a, 32; 2020). In addition, hundreds of staff are deployed around the world embedded as a human rights component of 11 different peace missions. The total number of secretariat staff is approximately 1600; though there are many consultants, interns, junior professional officers, and others in different working relationships with the OHCHR. More generally, staff are divided into broad areas of activity. In Geneva, where around half the staff are based, these are: the Field Operations and Technical Cooperation Division; the HRC and Treaty Mechanisms Division (previously two divisions); the Thematic Engagement, Special Procedures and Right to Development Division; and Executive Direction and Management. This supports central level areas (termed services) including policy, planning, monitoring, and evaluation, external outreach, program support and management, and, of course, a safety and security section (OHCHR, 2022a, 420; 2021b, 449). As with any large organization, employees bring a range of skills and qualities. Many are very dedicated human rights specialists with strong, relevant skillsets. Many frequently go above and beyond in their work—something often required when there are people on medical leave, extended home leave, vacation, and so on. Working within country teams, there is definitely an implied hierarchy; and there can be clear evidence of issues being “siloed,” with agencies keener to

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build success for themself than to collaborate with others (Interviews, 2021b to e). Within OHCHR, much depends on the personality of the representative in country. So too in Geneva, described sometimes as a “toxic” working environment for human rights in many ways—although arguably less toxic than New York (Interview, 2021c). Overall, in terms of priorities and direction, it is from the high commissioner and, above that, the secretary-general that the Secretariat takes the lead. States themselves can also exercise control and offer direction—primarily through requesting reports and mandating investigations, most commonly in the HRC. In conjunction with a number of voluntary state contributions, whether earmarked or not, there can be a disproportionate focus on some topics/countries (OHCHR, 2022a, 477–548). These international civil servants are frequently pivotal in the international monitoring of human rights and, accordingly, they are witness to the impact of power shifts. Before considering these, it is important to note the existing influences on the OHCHR.

3.

CONTEXTUALIZING HUMAN RIGHTS ENGAGEMENT

Power shifts tend to drive different behaviors, accentuate divisions, and accelerate change in existing orders. Indeed, it is often in the evidence of differences between past and current practice within a particular regime that the influence of a power shift can be clearly identified. Thus, context is an essential precursor to understanding the impact of a power shift. Philip Alston (2017,1) noted how “[t]he world as we in the human rights movement have known it in recent years is no longer.” That world was, of course, not one of utopian uplands where states rigorously complied with their human rights commitments and international monitoring bodies scrutinized them effectively. As we all know, and as staff repeated to us many times, some states simply did not want their commitment to human rights externally monitored. And yet current circumstances appear to present a uniquely concerning playing field for human rights, accentuated by the unpredictability of global power shifts. This is for three reasons: one longstanding and two more recent. First, and longstanding, the global human rights project is embroiled in an intergenerational struggle for institutional legitimacy. Questions of who should be able to scrutinize other states’ human rights records have plagued intergovernmental bodies for decades. The toxicity of these questions ultimately led to the collapse of the UN Commission on Human Rights in 2006 and its replacement with the UN HRC, after the former had been characterized as suffering from a “credibility deficit” (Annan 2005, para 182). The introduction of the HRC—and specifically the Universal Periodic Review system,

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through which all states’ human rights records are scrutinized—has somewhat quieted this complaint; yet HRC membership continues to serve as a sticking point for many (Mallory, 2013). This is compounded elsewhere by longstanding challenges of engagement, timeliness, and effectiveness of the treaty monitoring system. Moving elements of UN human rights monitoring and the general OHCHR’s work online during the COVID-19 restrictions brought challenges, although it also offered some insights into effective efficiencies in working practices—practices which would not undermine the self-evident utility of fieldwork and face-to-face meetings in ensuring all voices are heard and high-level diplomatic discussions remain possible. Thus, some of the challenges faced by the institutional human rights system are not caused by power shifts or a geopolitical reordering, but are longstanding defects in need of meaningful remedial action (Seiderman 2017, 8). Second, the rise of populism within domestic political orders is undoubtedly creating new obstacles for the global human rights movement to navigate (Helfer 2020, 243). These challenges are more complex than the simple, yet alluring, narrative that non-democratic states led by populist leaders will act with greater hostility toward existing norms at the global level. This has been a pervasive problem, and is increasingly seen in the politics even of longstanding supporters of the human rights movement, as well as traditional opponents (Helfer 2020, 243). The United States under Donald Trump, and rising populism within European Union (EU) members in particular (Neuman 2020, 11), have meant that the number of states that can be “considered human rights allies, or that maintain international human rights as a high international priority, has been ever shrinking” (Seiderman 2019, 13). Few populists reject the notion of human rights outright (Bilkova 2018, 144). Instead, their ambitions may be to use the human rights machinery to suit their own needs (Bilkova 2018, 144) and foreign policy objectives (Neuman 2020, 8). And yet some populist governments may go further, seeking to use their influence to hinder the institutions’ effectiveness. After all, as Roth (2017, 18) notes, “[w]hen populists treat rights as an obstacle to their vision of the majority will, it is only a matter of time before they turn on those who disagree with their agenda.” This could be either in isolation, through discrediting the work of the body, challenging its legitimacy, or questioning its impartiality; or as a collective with other populist-led governments, to obscure scrutiny from particular state action or reduce contributions to an organization in order to harm its working capacity. For the OHCHR Secretariat, these shifting sands of support present a challenging new landscape—a constant and never-ending struggle advocating for universal rights and freedoms. Third, the COVID-19 pandemic, and in particular state responses to it, have the capacity to alter the playing field from which human rights monitoring takes place. As with all large organizations, much of the work of the OHCHR

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and other UN human rights bodies went online in early 2020. While creating new opportunities, and in some respects provoking a much-needed move to the age of digitization within the UN (raised previously by Pillay 2012, 88–91 about treaty bodies), there are inherent problems with losing the personal interactions, chance meetings, and productive backroom engagement which take place when staff members and state representatives are assembled in Geneva. More problematic for the monitoring of states’ commitments to their human rights obligations is that the pandemic has provided a justifiable excuse for many states to refuse, or reschedule, visits from experts and monitoring agencies. Those in prisons and detention facilities in particular could suffer from these recent developments. One of our interviewees commented on how the current lack of country visits by human rights experts is definitely allowing states to mask things (Interview, 2021c). Moreover, once the pandemic finally subsists, there will be a need to reboot the system, with states once again consenting to monitoring visits. Those traditionally reluctant to do so may need to be compelled to engage once again. The upshot of these influences has commentators stating that, even if we are not in the end times of human rights, it is no longer wholly unthinkable for states to completely disengage from the international human rights system (Helfer 2020, 222). That presents a serious challenge to the OHCHR and its staff as the balance of monitoring, advocacy, and holding to account becomes ever more precarious. Disengagement not only can lead to realignments of political power among UN states, but risks millions of people being excluded from the purview of international human rights monitoring. This is the context within which power transitions impact on, and influence, the work of the OHCHR and its staff.

4.

POWER SHIFTS AND THE OHCHR

Power shifts are nothing new in international relations, as discussed above and in the introduction to this collection (Oestreich and Stiles, 2022). Nor are power shifts implicitly challenging to global human rights protection and monitoring. Indeed, the modern human rights system was born out of, and has since been shaped by, profound transitions in the global ordering. It was a reordering of global power in the early 1990s that gave renewed focus and attention to the human rights movement in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action 1993 (Vienna, 1993), and that contributed to the creation of the OHCHR. As such, contemporary power shifts should not, in themselves, be seen as giving rise to an outright hostility toward the OHCHR and its operations, or toward international cooperation more generally. Nonetheless, in this section we draw on interview responses to outline two considerable challenges faced by the OHCHR in light of the current global movements.

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Amplification of the Pushback against Human Rights

The content of our interviews evidences the impact of power shifts in amplifying the dangers posed by the most recent pushback against human rights at the global level. As we note above, while this pushback may be connected to the rise of populist regimes, the correlation is more complex than simply seeing populism as a driver of the pushback against human rights at the global level. Indeed, the pushback arguably began long before the most recent wave of populism emerged globally. Instead, the main connection between power shifts and pushback against human rights felt at the OHCHR lies in the rise of powerful states more hostile toward international supervision, coinciding with a period when traditional champions of the global human rights regime are receding both in their commitment to the project and in their power to project their influence. One of our interviewees flagged that the “old guard” is now looked at as no better at human rights protection than others, explaining: “No one is very respectful of human rights now apart from perhaps some Scandinavian countries” (Interview, 2021c). In this respect, our interviewees particularly noted the divergence and interplay between a receding United States and a rising China. The United States has long had an uneasy relationship with international human rights (eg, Soohoo et al, 2009). From a reluctance to ratify treaties—the United States is famously the only UN member state not to accept the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (Bartholet, 2010; Lee, 2010)—to a skepticism over the HRC, and a lack of willingness to accept human rights monitoring, the United States tended to appear keener on monitoring others than on being monitored itself. It was one of four states to vote against the UN General Assembly resolution establishing the HRC; though following a change in US government, it subsequently successfully presented its candidature in 2009, pledging a strong commitment to the UN human rights system (A/63/831). It then reapplied in 2012, referencing its commitment to universal periodic review (A/67/151). Thereafter, President Trump repeatedly criticized the UN system and the HRC, withdrawing from it (after a year’s warning) in 2018 (US Mission to UN, 2018). Trump’s presidency was distinctly hostile to the human rights agenda and indeed other multilateral initiatives at the UN, and thus to the work of the OHCHR. While Bush-era disengagement had still seen the United States keep an eye on the human rights project, even influencing behind the scenes (Interview, 2021f), the Trump executive detached entirely. In 2021, the incoming government announced its intention to rejoin the HRC as an observer before (successfully) seeking election from 2022 through 2024 (US State, 2021). The United States has also proven hostile to reports of UN special procedures, including on extreme poverty in the United States following a visit to the United States by the special rapporteur on extreme poverty (Alston, 2018;

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US, 2018). Here we note that the Trump presidency proved reluctant to extend invitations to UN special procedures (the visit on extreme poverty was agreed by President Obama while he held office), and failed to engage with statements issued and concerns raised by them. Some of those statements—for example, on racism—raised concern over the language used by the president following civil unrest (Achiume et al, 2020; Achiume and WG African Descent, 2020). Despite this, the government remained more supportive of country mandates investigating countries of concern to the United States, such as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Iran. China’s increasing influence has been well charted in international relations literature (Eisenman and Heginbotham, 2018; Golley and Song, 2011; Kent, 2013; Piccone, 2018). Some of our interviewees were keen to stress the complexities of China’s engagement. For instance, one commented on how Chinese actions were not necessarily hostile toward international cooperation, and perhaps could be better characterized as hostile toward how certain institutions worked (Interview, 2021a). On some levels, therefore, China cooperates exceptionally, particularly where it wants to project its influence (and, of course, China was re-elected in 2020 to membership of the HRC). On others, however, it is more hostile. For the OHCHR, the tendency has been toward the latter. A recent report by the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (2021, 18) accused China of using “bullying” tactics in multilateral institutions, including the OHCHR. Ben Ward, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Europe and Central Asia, specifically informed the Committee that China was interfering in the OHCHR (UK Parliamentary Committee OE 2020,7). He continued: What China is seeking to do is something much more profound and pernicious, which is not just to mute criticism of its own record, but effectively to render the Human Rights Council and the Office of the High Commissioner unable to function and perform their mandate at all. (UK Parliamentary Committee OE 2020, 10)

Of course, China has also advanced its own understanding of international human rights, emphasizing that monitors should understand and apply human rights with country “characteristics” (on “Chinese characteristics” see, for example, Chan, 2013; Ahl, 2015), the characteristics of developing countries, and so on. Moreover, China generally does not support UN investigation into the internal situation of states. For example, China famously joined Russia in double vetoes in the Security Council vis-à-vis Syria in the 2010s. More recently, China responded robustly to the report of the outgoing high commissioner on her landmark (and controversial) 2022 visit to China, including the Xinjiang Autonomous Region (OHCHR, 2022). China also pushes back where states are within its perceived sphere of influence. Looking to the future, some

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of our interviewees commented on how China’s projection into the South China Sea area (Interview, 2021e), and its Belt and Road initiative may yet give rise to further questions about how other states regard international human rights (Interview, 2021f). Other states are engaging more robustly with international human rights monitoring, although not necessarily with the goal of improving the human rights situation. There is evidence of increased responses to UN special procedure communications (available after a couple of months on https://​ spcommreports​ .ohchr​ .org/​ ), and more participatory involvement in treaty monitoring body periodic reviews from states which hitherto tended more toward disengagement or defensiveness. Until recently, “outright rejection of international human rights norms was mostly associated with non-democratic countries like China, Russia and Saudi Arabia, which have never shown anything but skepticism, at best, for universal human rights standards” (Klug, 2020, 25). Now, these states are overtly criticizing international human rights monitoring bodies in a way hitherto not witnessed in inter-state fora. Denial of responsibility for human rights violations is on the rise. Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein says that shame is in retreat (2018); while Klug observes that “the current articulation of a world-view, and mind set, which intentionally undermines the international human rights framework by countries [liberal democracies] that once claimed to be its biggest champion” is unprecedented in the era of the UN (Klug 2020, 25). With the rise in autocratic, populist governments, human rights are treated as optional by ever more states. Even the United Kingdom robustly disputed recent special procedure reports, although it used diplomatic language before the HRC (Smith, 2021); while Australia (Crepeau, 2015 and 2017) and the United States (Despuoy et al, 2005; Nowak, 2005) refused to guarantee UN special procedures mandate holders unfettered access. There have been improvements in places. Our interviewees highlighted the increased use of the language of international human rights within states and the more sophisticated use of legal arguments before the HRC (Interviews, 2021 c, e, f). But the ability to speak the language of human rights does not necessarily indicate a commitment to their normative goals. Rights violators are increasingly willing and able to use the language of human rights law to present justifications for their actions (Interview, 2021e). Human rights defenders and those that work with and support them are ever more evidently under attack (Lawlor, 2020). To sum up, the result is that the “best has been brought down and worst elevated with considerable bunching in the middle” (Interview, 2021c), in terms of compliance with international human rights monitoring. Consequently, it can seem that fewer states are being held accountable for infringements (Interview, 2021c).

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The secretariat of the OHCHR has been responding to this pushback with both traditional and novel means. There are also now many more actors emerging internationally, including non-state actors, and they are engaging at the highest level with the OHCHR (Interview, 2021e; McConnell, 2016). Efforts are ongoing to evolve methods of better engaging states with international human rights, and demonstrating the continued relevance and importance of respecting, protecting, and promoting rights and freedoms everywhere. Middle powers like Turkey, India, and Brazil are rising and more easily projecting their influence (Interview, 2021b). States have long used their projected power to block criticism of themselves and instead censure others (Interview, 2021a). This is continuing with the emerging powers and blocs. A good example is how China has utilized its wider connections to obstruct international oversight and the OHCHR in Xinjang Province. In anticipation of a significant statement led by Canada, with 44 supporting states, on alleged human rights violations in Xinjang (Canada, 2021), Chinese officials secured the support of 90 other nations to reject the criticism and launch an attack on Canada’s human rights record (Feng, 2021). This was particularly potent because the Canadian-led statement had also included a request for access for the OHCHR—access that was finally secured (with arguably some conditions) in 2022 (OHCHR, 2022). This exchange followed one in March/April 2021, with special procedures delivering in excess of 100 communications to countries and companies concerning activities in Xinjiang (WG Business and Human Rights et al, 2021). China responded brusquely to these (China, 2021), as it did in the wake of the high commissioner’s 2022 assessment (OHCHR, 2022). Other examples of traditional tensions are seen in the HRC, where in early 2021 China and Russia had reportedly coordinated to initially block the anticipated Fijian candidate from taking up the presidency on account of her strong record as a human rights advocate (Farge, 2021). One of our interviewees flagged the possibility that states with more dubious human rights records will begin to nominate more of their nationals to important positions on rights-monitoring bodies (Interview, 2021f). A more sustained push by states to fill these positions could impact how these offices function at a time when the OHCHR is trying to diversify its workforce (Interview, 2021a). Nevertheless, many of the monitoring mechanisms which the OHCHR supports comprise people serving in their individual capacity, so there is not necessarily any correlation between the views of a state and those of any of its nationals who serve on UN mechanisms. Another theme from our interviews is the location of the pushback. Sometimes, the pushback is felt more specifically against the UN as a whole than against the OHCHR in particular (Interview, 2021a). Yet where the OHCHR acts as a lightning rod for criticism, due to comments from the

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high commissioner or inherent tensions with special procedure holders, other offices could even benefit. One of our interviewees (Interview, 2021e) suggested the OHCHR and special procedure mandate holders were treated with greater hostility than, for example, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Thus, while human rights-centric agents and nongovernmental organizations were offered lukewarm assistance and occasional harassment, others working on inherently human rights-based projects received support from the government. In a sense, then, this comes down to how work was badged. Of course, although the OHCHR has the potential to draw hostility away from other actors, it brands itself “UN Human Rights,” so removing the term “human rights” is not a viable strategy. 4.2

Exposing Pre-existing Vulnerabilities in Funding and Resourcing

Our interviewees detailed the manner in which existing vulnerabilities and challenges within the OHCHR are being exposed and accentuated by the global transitions. In this section, we identify funding and resource allocation as one particular area which is acutely susceptible to power shifts. Funding is a sensitive issue across the UN system. The OHCHR receives less than 4 percent of the UN regular budget, even though human rights are meant to be central to all the UN does (Ban, 2013; Guterres, 2020). The OHCHCR’s work is therefore heavily supplemented through, and indeed reliant upon, fundraising for voluntary donations from states and others. Some of this is specifically for stipulated projects or areas (see https://​www​.ohchr​ .org/​EN/​AboutUs/​Pages/​FundingBudget​.aspx; OHCHR, 2022a, 477–548). Around two-thirds of the annual budget of the OHCHR is derived from voluntary contributions. In 2021, $1.131 billion was received from the regular UN budget and $227.7 million from voluntary contributions (2022a, 110; for the 2020 figures, see OHCHR AP, 2020). Our interviewee responses varied in respect of how difficult the current funding situation is to the OHCHCR; yet their comments uniformly highlighted the vulnerability of the office due to its meager budget. One described the funding crisis as “dire,” noting that staff were unable to travel last year and that much of the disarray was being hidden by the pandemic (Interview, 2021e). Others commented on how funding is better now than it was in 2020, when the OHCHR only had a budget available to exercise projects for two weeks and salaries needed to be paid (Interview, 2021c). Another explained that resources were a perennial problem within the human rights framework, noting that decreasing the OHCHR’s budget can be a straightforward way of suppressing its work (Interview, 2021f). The precarity of funding does contrib-

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ute to stress among OHCHR staff members and those who rely on the OHCHR for logistical and related support. It also directly impacts human rights monitoring. COVID-19 notwithstanding, funding deficits largely prevented UN special procedures from undertaking missions in much of 2020 (Coordinating Committee of Special Procedures, 2020). Treaty bodies also canceled sessions (UN Treaty Bodies, 2019). Commentators note that populist governments use funding as a tool against international human rights institutions (Neuman, 2020). In the wake of the evolving COVID-19 pandemic, many states have already reduced contributions to the UN or indicated planned reductions in overseas development funding (e.g., UK Parliament, 2020), much of which directly or indirectly supports human rights initiatives. This means OHCHR activities will inevitably focus on those rights/freedoms, and those countries, which attract “earmarked” funds from governments. Moreover, many day-to-day decisions will have to be made on priorities for the OHCHR, drawing on the guidance offered by the high commissioner’s Strategic Management Plan, which prophetically begins with a section entitled “A Changing Global Context” (OHCHR, 2018, 5). Much attention was paid to the link between the OHCHR’s work and its funding. One of the responses we received described the OHCHR as being disorganized, using money quickly rather than in an organized strategy (Interview, 2021b); although again, some of the money received is attached ab initio to specific projects. In respect of global power shifts, we again see the close connection between resources, funding, and the work of the OHCHR. With so much of the OHCHR’s budget coming from voluntary contributions, states have a lot of control over its work by earmarking and allocating contributions. This at least partially explains the longstanding preoccupation within the OHCHR for engagement on civil and political rights, rather than economic social and cultural issues. While the OHCHR insists rights are indivisible, interdependent, and interrelated, (Vienna, 1993), there is a clear emphasis on the more egregious violations of civil and political rights (Interviews, 2021). On the other hand, other UN entities have been more successful working on social, economic, and cultural rights (eg, UNICEF, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the International Labour Organization, the UNDP and the World Health Organization), though their activities are generally less politicized. Invoking the UN Sustainable Development Goals, rather than UN human rights treaties, can prove more productive in securing not only funding, but also governmental support (for linkages, see DIHR explorer, https://​sdg​.humanrights​.dk/​). The funding trends have again put pressure on the OHCHR to focus on more civil and political rights (Interview, 2021e). One interviewee gave a stark assessment of how these affect the day-to-day focus of the agency. They noted that as many of the “big donor” nations are Western states, where the main-

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stream media is mostly interested in civil and political rights, there is a direct correlation between this media focus and the work of the OHCHR (Interview, 2021d). Pervasive power shifts hold the potential for a more positive future engagement with human rights issues. Harnessing increasing influence within the traditional Global South and arising from east-Asian engagement is necessary, if challenging. We also must not ignore the influence of the budget on staffing. Many staff at the OHCHR are on precarious contracts, regularly working in Geneva or field offices, often for decades, but only on yearly contracts. Permanent positions are highly valued in a work environment when so many are offered no job security and, in the case of interns and UN volunteers, little or no monetary compensation. Funding thus affects work practices, which vary dramatically throughout the OHCHR and its offices. For instance, despite the moves to digitization and forays into developing its web presence, much of the work of the OHCHR remains paper-based and highly bureaucratic. While successive high commissioners have sought to implement efficiency drives, with varying success, the OHCHR remains woefully underfunded.

5. CONCLUSION Although underpinning the apex of global human rights machinery, the OHCHR is somewhat less susceptible to global power shifts than either the HRC or the treaty-monitoring bodies, though it still feels their effects. In this chapter we have sought to identify how current power shifts are accentuating an existing global pushback against human rights, and exploiting pre-existing vulnerabilities related to the funding and resourcing of the office. The OHCHR as a Secretariat, and proactive global human rights advocates and defenders, will always have a near-impossible task reconciling elements of their roles. The diplomatic skills of the new high commissioner will prove critical in ensuring continued access to countries, renewing memoranda of understanding with states for field presences and securing support for investigations and fact-finding missions—not least when mandated by the HRC. Trying to balance advocacy, monitoring, and defending of human rights is difficult even with the acquiescence of the state concerned, and so much more challenging without. Entry into states for human rights experts and field officers can become harder; engagement with state representatives more belligerent and hostile. Populist-stoked tensions against international agencies can even render their work more dangerous. At the same time, the very ability of the OHCHR to conduct its work can become more challenging. And yet, against this backdrop—one accentuated by a particularly hostile attitude toward human rights more generally—the work continues.

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NOTES 1. 2.

The authors note that this chapter was drafted in 2021. Rene Cassin, a drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, initially proposed an attorney-general for human rights, in 1947. Thereafter, various proposals were made for such a body; but concerns remained among member states over concentrating power in one individual (rather than a committee), the powers such a post would enjoy, the relationship of the role with the secretary-general and other familiar arguments going to the very nature of human rights. The 1967 United Nations Economic and Social Council resolution arguably came closest to being adopted, having a formulated objective and rationale (ECOSOC Resolution 1237 XLII 1967).

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Hassan, Daud (2006) “The Rise of the Territorial State and The Treaty of Westphalia” Yearbook of New Zealand Jurisprudence 9: 62–70. Helfer, Laurence (2020) “Populism and International Human Rights Law Institutions: A Survival Guide” in G Neuman, Human Rights in a Time of Populism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hernandez, Matheus (2018) “The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: A Difficult But Do-able Mandate” OpenGlobalRights, April 19 2018, https://​www​ .openglobalrights​.org/​The​-UN​-High​-Commisioner​-for​-Human​-Rights​-a​-difficul​ -but​-doable​-mandate/​?lang​=​English. Hopgood, S. (2013) The Endtimes of Human Rights. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Humphrey, John (1973) “A United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: The Birth of an Initiative” Canadian Year Book of International Law/ Annuaire Canadien de Droit International 11: 220–25. Hunt, Paul (2017) “Configuring the UN Human Rights System in the ‘Era of Implementation’: Mainland and Archipelago” Human Rights Quarterly 39: 489–538. Al Hussein, Zeid Ra’ad (2018) Opening Statement by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, 37 Session of the UN Human Rights Council, February 28, 2018, https://​www​.ohchr​.org/​EN/​NewsEvents/​Pages/​DisplayNews​.aspx​?NewsID​=​22702. Interview (2021a) Interview with UN Secretariat, June 2021, by videolink, on file. Interview (2021b) Interview with UN Secretariat, June 2021, by videolink, on file. Interview (2021c) Interview with personnel working closely with UN Secretariat, June 2021, by videolink, on file. Interview (2021d) Interview with UN Secretariat, June 2021, by videolink, on file. Interview (2021e) Interview with personnel working closely with UN Secretariat, June 2021, by videolink, on file. Interview (2021f) Interview with personnel working closely with UN Secretariat, June 2021, by videolink, on file. Kent, Ann (2013) China, the United Nations, and Human Rights: The Limits of Compliance. Philadelphia: De Gruyter Penn Press. Klug, Francesa (2020), “Key challenges to human rights in democracies at a time of transition: Where to now?” in Kasey McCall-Smith, Andrea Birsdall and Elisenda Casanas Adam (eds) Human Rights in Times of Transition: Liberal Democracies and Challenges of National Security. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Lawlor, Mary (2020) Final Warning: Death Threats and Killings of Human Rights Defenders. UN Doc A/HRC/46/35. Lee, Yanghee (2010) “The US and Non-Ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child” Child Welfare 89(5):1–6. Lynch, Colum (2017) “U.N. Human Rights Chief to Leave, Citing ‘Appalling’ Climate for Advocacy, Zeid Ra’ad Hussein Worries the Global Retreat from Human Rights Makes His Job Untenable” Foreign Policy, December 20, 2017, https://​foreignpolicy​ .com/​2017/​12/​20/​u​-n​-human​-rights​-chief​-to​-leave​-citing​-appalling​-climate​-for​ -advocacy/​. MacDonald, R (1973) “A United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: The Decline and Fall of an Initiative” Canadian Yearbook of International Law/Annuaire Canadien de Droit International 10: 40–64. McConnell, Lee (2016) Extracting Accountability from Non-State Actors in International Law: Assessing the Scope for Direct Regulation. Abingdon: Routledge. Mallory, Conall (2013) “Membership and the UN Human Rights Council” Canadian Journal of Human Rights 2(1):1.

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Neuman, G. (2020) “Populist Threats to the International Human Rights System” in G Newman, Human Rights in a Time of Populism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1–19. Newton, Alex (2019) The Business of Human Rights: Best Practice and Guiding Principles Abingdon/New York: Greenleaf, Routledge. Nowak, Manfred (2005) Press Conference on Response Received from United States on Access to Guantanamo Bay Detention Facilities: Manfred Nowak, Special Rapporteur on Torture, November 1, 2005, https://​www​.un​.org/​press/​en/​2005/​ 051031​_Guantanamo​.doc​.htm. Oestreich, Joel and Kendall Stiles (2023) “Introduction: Global Institutions in a Time of Power Transition” in Joel Oestreich and Kendall Stiles (eds), Global Institutions in a Time of Power Transition; Governing Turbulence. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. OHCHR (2018) United Nations Human Rights Management Plan 2018–2021, Geneva: OHCHR. Call No. CORE/OHCHR/PLN/12, https://​www​.ohchr​.org/​Documents/​ Publications/​OMP​_II​.pdf. OHCHR (2018a) Hungary: Opinion Editorial by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, https://​www​.ohchr​.org/​EN/​NewsEvents/​Pages/​ DisplayNews​.aspx​?NewsID​=​22765. OHCHR (2020) United Nations Human Rights Appeal 2021, December 2020, https://​ www​.ohchr​.org/​Documents/​Publications/​AnnualAppeal2021​.pdf. OHCHR (2021) Human Rights Council Holds Dialogue with Special Rapporteur on Eritrea and Starts Dialogue with High Commissioner on Sri Lanka, February 24, 2021, https://​www​.ohchr​.org/​EN/​HRBodies/​HRC/​Pages/​NewsDetail​.aspx​?NewsID​ =​26794​&​LangID​=​E. OHCHR (2021a) OHCHR in the World: Making Human Rights a Reality on the Ground, Our Work in the Field, https://​www​.ohchr​.org/​EN/​Countries/​Pages/​ WorkInField​.aspx. OHCHR (2021b) United Nations Human Rights Report 2020, Geneva: OHCHR, https://​www2​.ohchr​.org/​english/​OHCHRreport2020/​. OHCHR (2022) OHCHR Assessment of Human Rights Concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China, Geneva: OHCHR, https://​ www​.ohchr​.org/​en/​documents/​country​-reports/​ohchr​-assessment​-human​-rights​ -concerns​-xinjiang​-uyghur​-autonomous​-region. OHCHR (2022a) United Nations Human Rights Report 2021, Geneva: OHCHR, https://​www​.ohchr​.org/​sites/​default/​files/​2022–06/​OHCHR​_Report​_2021​.pdf. OHCHR AP (2020) United Nations Human Rights Appeal 2021, Geneva: OHCHR, https://​www​.ohchr​.org/​Documents/​Publications/​AnnualAppeal2021​.pdf. OHCHR (2021) Meeting Summary: AFTERNOON – Special Rapporteur Tells Human Rights Council that Serious Human Rights Issues Persist in Eritrea, June 21, 2021, Geneva: OHCHR, https://​www​.ungeneva​.org/​en/​news​-media/​meeting​-summary/​ 2021/​06/​conseil​-des​-droits​-de​-lhomme​-il​-ny​-pas​-de​-preuves​-concretes​-dune. Orellano, Marcos (2020) Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights Allegation Letter to Antonio Guterres UN Secretary General, AL OTH 55/2020. Orellano, Marcos (2021) Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights, Other Letters to the European Commission (OL OTH 201/2021), European Presidency (OL OTH 202/2021) and European Parliament (OL OTH 203/2021). Petrasek, David (2018) “Another One Bites the Dust – What Future for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights?’ OpenGlobalRights, February 8, 2018, https://​

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UNGA (2006) UN General Assembly Resolution 60/251 establishing the Human Rights Council. UN Doc A/RES/60/251 (2006). UN HRCl (2007) UN Human Rights Council Resolution 5/1 Institution-Building of the United Nations Human Rights Council. UN Doc A/HRC/RES/5/1 (2007). UN Treaty Bodies (2019) UN Budget Shortfalls Seriously Undermine the Work of the Human Rights Treaty Bodies, May 17 2019, https://​www​.ohchr​.org/​EN/​ NewsEvents/​Pages/​DisplayNews​.aspx​?NewsID​=​24621. UN WebTV (2021), searchable portal recording in full all interactive dialogues with UN Special Procedures in the Human Rights Council, https://​www​.un​.org/​webcast/​ schedule/​latest​.html. US State Department (2021) U.S. Decision To Reengage with the UN Human Rights Council, Press Statement, February 8, 2021, https://​www​.state​.gov/​u​-s​-decision​-to​ -reengage​-with​-the​-un​-human​-rights​-council/​. United States Mission to the United Nations (2018) Remarks on the UN Human Rights Council, June 16, 2018, https://​usun​.usmission​.gov/​remarks​-on​-the​-un​-human​ -rights​-council/​. Vienna (1993) Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, Adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna on June 25, 1993. UN Doc A/CONF.157/24, https://​www​.ohchr​.org/​EN/​P​rofessiona​lInterest/​Pages/​Vienna​.aspx. Vizard, Polly (2005) “The Contributions of Professor Amartya Sen in the Field of Human Rights” CASEpaper 91, London: London School of Economics and Political Science. Wang, Yi (2021) Remarks by H.E. Wang Yi, State Councilor and Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China, at the High-level Segment of the 46th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, February 22, 2021, “A People-centered Approach for Global Human Rights Progress” http://​www​.china​-un​.ch/​eng/​dbtxwx/​ t1855687​.htm. WG Business and Human Rights et al (2021) China: UN Experts Deeply Concerned by Alleged Detention, Forced Labour of Uyghurs, March 29, 2021, https://​www​.ohchr​ .org/​EN/​NewsEvents/​Pages/​DisplayNews​.aspx​?NewsID​=​26957. Wuerth, I (2016) “International Law in the Post Human Rights Era” Texas Law Review 96(2): 279.

6. The United Nations Development System: Change and Agency in the Secretariat Joel E. Oestreich 1. INTRODUCTION In 2020, Natalie Samarasinghe—executive director of the United Nations (UN) Association–UK and acting speechwriter for the president of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly—wrote of the coming final convergence at the UN of development and human rights. She asserted that the human rights-based approach to development (HRBA), which recognized the intimate connections between development and human rights, was quickly becoming orthodoxy at the UN; and that the concept was now almost fully institutionalized in both the UN Sustainable Development Group (UNSDG) and the UN human rights machinery (Samarasinghe 2020). Yet in the same year, Sophie Richardson, China director of Human Rights Watch, spoke for many observers when she said that Chinese investments were undermining the UN human rights system by offering funding to states with few, if any, rights restrictions (Richardson 2020). The actions of China in the development sphere, she said, damaged advancements in the rights-development link and threatened to set the world back to a time when the two ideas were not only separate, but at odds with each other. How can both these statements be true? Or at any rate, how can both be sincerely believed by careful observers of the UN development system? To be sure, substantial research (cited below) has been done into whether the influence of China and the other BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) has led to operational changes at the World Bank and in the agencies that make up the UNSDG. It is not the purpose of this chapter to argue whether the UN development system is changing its priorities in response to shifting power structures: as this chapter discusses and cites in greater detail below, the research clearly shows that both the World Bank and the UNSDG

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have been changing their development priorities, in ways that do not support a commitment to HRBA. However, both the causes of these changes and what they mean to overall UNSDG priorities cannot simply be ascribed to the emergence of new powers, which prefer a different set of development priorities. Instead, this chapter argues, there have been several forces working for many years against HRBA and other similar policies. Also, while analysts usually want to see a direct causal line between state preferences and the forces of resistance to the rights-development nexus, the actual situation is more complex. It is vital to see how state power and shifting balances filtered through the UN bureaucracy, how they are interpreted by UN staff, and how they interact with other incentives that staff face. This chapter discusses the overall UN development regime but focuses on one particular aspect of it: the integration of human rights and development. This is where there is the most concern about the influence of new donors, which find the rights-development connection an artefact of Western bias. It also includes the World Bank in its analysis—the largest and most intellectually influential part of the development system, if not strictly speaking part of the UN system—even though the Bank has not officially adopted a rights-based approach. The Bank does have policies that strongly influence how rights are considered in development policy. This analysis also includes those agencies such as the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and other such agencies with more direct relationships to the UN. This chapter proceeds as follows. First, it briefly considers the origins of the rights-development nexus, and how it has been institutionalized in the UN and (less formally) the World Bank. This is important, as it explains how staff have created, adapted, and institutionalized these controversial ideas. It then considers some of the forces in global politics that are working against rights-based approaches, and how these are projected onto international institutions. Next, the ways in which these institutions tend to ignore or resist efforts to have them change their ways are considered. The literature on the independence of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) is rich and well developed, and delineates several forces which tend to insulate these institutions from efforts to change them. This helps explain why things are not changing as one might expect if the UN were simply an instrument of national powers. Finally, some insights into the future of the development system are considered. Staff have many reasons for either adopting or ignoring rights-based approaches to development, and their reactions to these reasons can only be understood in the context of bureaucratic politics and incentives. Staff remain an important variable in understanding the future of the development system in a new power constellation.

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THE ORIGINS OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEVELOPMENT: INSTITUTIONS RESPONDING TO GLOBAL PRESSURES

The basic story that is told about the global development system, and the reaction to it by the emerging economies of the Global South, is usually along these lines: the system was created by hegemonic Western/Northern powers to reflect their own interests and their belief in liberal (and later neoliberal) economic orthodoxy; it is sustained by Western-controlled institutions staffed by believers in that orthodoxy; and it is challenged by the rising states of the Global South, which prefer different policies to those they see as exploiting them for the sake of the existing hegemonic forces (e.g. Woods 2006). The orthodoxy is expressed most clearly in the hegemony of the Washington Consensus: that set of economic policies promoted by the international financial institutions. The Washington Consensus and similar policies produced their own backlash. Part of this was the rise of a rights-based approach to development. By the 1990s, there was increasing pressure on the development system to shed the traditional separation between development policy on one hand, and social policy and human rights on the other. This came from the increased interest in “governance” as a development issue: the idea here was that development was no longer something that could be solved strictly by neoliberal economic policies, but also required political reform (World Bank 1992; Stevens and Gnanaselvam 1995; Sano 2002). Also, the mobilization of civil society to protest high-profile development disasters—such as the Polonoroeste project in Brazil, which destroyed the homelands of countless indigenous peoples; or the Three Gorges Dam in China, which led to the forced relocation of countless people upstream—required that development agencies consider the rights implications of their work (World Bank 2002). Development policy was seen to be failing because of the political limits on it: development professionals could not address important issues such as corruption and poor governance. The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action of 1993 called on all arms of the UN, including the development system, to consider human rights norms as part of the recognition that ignoring politics was no longer acceptable (Boyle 1995). Significantly, the emphasis on human rights in development did not come from any concerted policy of powerful state pressure on the UN development system, but largely from the system itself. This is a vital observation here. The UN bureaucracy is an important player in creating development policy; and shifting state power levels will not have a predictable or direct effect on the development system. The World Bank is a good example of this. We do

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know (as is discussed in more detail below) that the United States and other members pressure the World Bank on certain policies; but Bank presidents have always exercised considerable discretion—the most famous example being the evolution of the Bank under Robert McNamara from a mere financer of infrastructure projects to an anti-poverty agency (Ascher 1983; Ayres 1983). While US executive directors did support the Bank’s move to institute safeguard policies and an inspection panel, it was civil society pressure that was ultimately behind these developments (Clark 2003). The initial support for a children’s rights policy at UNICEF came not from the United States but from Poland; and it was fostered by the agency’s executive director, James Grant, and later a variety of smaller nations, rather than the United States or other major donors (Black 1996). At the UNDP, UNICEF, UN Women, and the rest of the UNSDG, an explicitly rights-based approach is now at the heart of development practice. A rights-based approach to development is expected to guide UN development practice, as expressed in a common understanding on HRBA and expanded by subsequent studies (United Nations Development Group 2003; UNDP 2006; Schmitz 2012; Filmer-Wilson and Mora 2018). A rights-based approach means seeing development and human rights as mutually constitutive and reinforcing: development becomes redefined as the promotion of a broad spectrum of rights (primarily, but not exclusively, economic and social); while promoting rights is seen as a key strategy in the process of economic development—whether that means implementing the right to education or the right to life—upon which other development efforts must depend. A rights-based approach to development gives a number of UN development agencies an explicit mandate to promote human rights. For example, the UNDP considers issues ranging from access to justice to right-to-information laws to sexual orientation and gender identity status as matters under its purview as a development agency. UNICEF has taken the entirety of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as the guiding document of its country programming. UN Women and the UN Fund for Population Action (UNFPA) have largely redefined themselves as agencies to promote the rights of women and children, along with UNICEF. The World Bank, notably, does not officially follow a rights-based approach to development. It does, however, have various policies that protect human rights. These include strong policies on gender and women’s empowerment, aimed clearly at improving women’s rights. Protection policies aimed at indigenous peoples, at those displaced by infrastructure projects, and at other vulnerable groups also incorporate rights into the foundation of development lending. A shift over the last decade or so toward promoting “equity” as a key development strategy also has a clear connection to human rights: not just the right to equal treatment, but to distributional justice, social protection, and even economic, social, and cultural rights as a key goal of development

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strategy (Darrow 2003; Oestreich 2020). Safeguard policies at the World Bank are intended to protect a wide range of social priorities; and the Bank’s Inspection Panel is instrumental in ensuring these policies are followed (Park 2010). Much of this interest has followed from high-profile protests from civil society organizations reacting to World Bank policies which seemed to cause as much harm as good among targeted populations. The Bank’s official stance on HRBA is telling: while rights remain important to the Bank in many ways, it recognizes their controversial nature and keeps them at arm’s length. This highlights the importance of the bureaucratic independence of these agencies, and their complex relationship with member states. It is also telling that a rights-based approach to development is rarely fully implemented around UN agencies (Sano 2000; Nelson and Dorsey 2018), and we must understand the role of UN staff in understanding why this is so. As the current author has written (Oestreich 2007; Oestreich 2014), rights-based approaches are taken up by some UN staff, and not by others. At the World Bank, protection policies are not always followed—often because staff there balk at their requirements, or wonder if they really improve development outcomes (Fox 2002; Ormaz and Ebert 2019). In agencies like UNICEF, it can depend on the technical training of staff: those in more technical areas like Water and Sanitation might be less open to a rights-based approach than in Child Protection (which, at the extreme, is sometimes referred to as a “rights ghetto” by staff). Some Executive Directors are more open to rights language than others, and a few are openly hostile. At those agencies that have fully taken up a rights-based approach—for example, UN Women and the UNFPA—the drive has been largely internal. Two key points come out of the story of human rights in the UN development system. The first is that these ideas are not simply a particular US or European-sponsored development orthodoxy. The UN itself has always considered itself an important ideas creator in the development sphere (Emmerij et al. 2001; Jolly et al. 2004); and the combination of human rights and development (including the related notion of a “right to development”) has a complex history. Second, the ways in which development ideas are implemented depend far more on how the Secretariat acts than a casual observer might think. For every staff member who is skeptical of how rights can promote development, there is another who will consider it a moral imperative to make the connection. Having seen these complex, not simple, origins of the rights-development link, we can better understand how the new challenges to the rights-development link are being approached.

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CHINA: REMAKING OR REFORMING DEVELOPMENT?

The most important challenge to the current development regime comes from increased Chinese funding and engagement with it. This is not to say that China has the most radical ideas of development reform, or even the biggest stake in changing the system. China continues to see itself as a developing country even as it becomes a source of development funding to others, and it frames much of its engagement with the development system through this lens (Ruipeng 2020). And China continues to provide a relatively small share of multilateral development funding, although this has been growing (Johnson and Zühr 2021). One challenge presented by China is its more overt use of development aid to pursue national goals, rather than from humanitarian impulse. At any rate, this has been the general perception of Chinese development aid; although it has also been questioned by other research (Dreher et al. 2021). Recent studies, for example, suggest that while Chinese development aid is highly motivated by trade and business interests, foreign policy influence is less of a factor than simple economic incentives (Oh 2020). Other studies find that this varies by sector—for example, with infrastructure development more driven by political factors than other programs (Guillon and Mathonnat 2020). It would clearly be a mistake to group all Chinese development aid into any single box: if any picture emerges, it is of widely varying and diverse sets of interests and motivations. And it is not as if the more traditional aid providers don’t also use aid to pursue national interests (Meernik et al. 1998). But high-profile cases of Chinese development aid serving political purposes have led to the perception that this represents a shift from earlier models: there has been an understanding that political motivations should be at least kept quiet, even if everyone involved understands that they still matter. More generally, new Chinese assertiveness in the development sphere has led to talk of a “Beijing Consensus” on development, as an alternative to the traditional “Washington Consensus” (Halper 2012; Chen 2017). This supposed consensus is built around a model that emphasizes government-led growth rather than a reliance on free markets; puts economic growth and poverty alleviation over human rights or empowerment; advocates more South-South cooperation; deemphasizes democracy promotion and advocates central governments; and commits to constant experimentation rather than to development orthodoxy (Dollar 2018; Cheng-Chia and Yang 2020; Ferchen 2020). We should not present the Beijing Consensus or the Chinese Economic Model as a single, comprehensive, and codified development model. Dowdle

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and Prado (2017) have suggested it is better referred to as a “Beijing Dialogue”—less a coherent alternative to the Washington Consensus (itself often modified since its initial formulation, and more central to some development agencies than others), and more a rhetorical tool poised against an orthodoxy that seems alien to many developing states’ experiences and priorities. Still, the notion of an alternative to current neoliberal orthodoxy is bolstered by the interests of a rising economic power. Chinese policy also manifests a resistance to connecting human rights and economic development. The intersection of development and human rights would seem to challenge a number of general precepts advocated by the Chinese government about how global development should work. For one, China is, if not actively hostile to the international human rights enterprise, then at least skeptical of its challenge to national sovereignty. A Chinese approach to human rights emphasizes the particularities of each country and its rights position, and rejects the universal application of norms without regard to “national conditions” (Subedi 2015). In 2018, for example, China promoted its notion of “human rights with Chinese characteristics” while redefining governance—a key element of a rights-based approach at the UN—to better fit with Chinese notions of development promotion (Worden 2019). China has made it clear that “Beijing now … seeks to grow its clout by extending its concepts of human rights and sovereignty,” particularly to other illiberal states but more broadly to states tired of the overarching power of Western ideals (Lee and Sullivan 2019). This approach also prioritizes the achievement of economic and social rights over civil and political rights, and the “right to development” over a rights-based approach to development (Worden 2019). In this, China is by no means alone: many aid-receiving states have begun to push back against the considerable number of human rights and social conditions that come with modern aid assistance, and the political changes that are promoted by development agencies (Eyben and Savage 2013). Some concrete initiatives of the Chinese government demonstrate where this rising power has taken issue with the current development system. One has been the pursuit of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an extensive set of interlocking infrastructure projects launched in 2013. China presents the BRI and the various programs associated with it (e.g., the “Digital Silk Road” and the “Health Silk Road” initiatives in Central Asia) as a massive infrastructure program that will benefit Chinese engagement with the rest of the world, while also putting excess Chinese capital to work helping develop other parts of the world and extending beneficial trade opportunities. Although it is difficult to put a specific monetary value on Chinese funding of the BRI and its various affiliated parts, it represents an enormous investment and partnership program spanning nearly every continent, and has had a notable effect on development financing.

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The BRI has been largely seen as a singular tool of Chinese economic diplomacy and power projection (e.g., Zhou and Esteban 2018). While some have perceived the BRI in starkly power-political terms as a force for Chinese power overseas, with little regard for human rights protections (Human Rights Watch 2019), others have made more nuanced arguments, showing that the BRI has indeed helped grow economies abroad (Maliszewska and van der Mensbrugghe 2019); and also that the decisions made about BRI funding have followed an ethically neutral business logic rather than being wielded purely as an instrument of political influence. As Lee Jones aptly summarizes it, China’s BRI is often seen as a challenge to the “traditional,” “liberal” international order—although the extent of this, the purpose of this, and even the truth of this remain contested (Jones 2020). In particular, the BRI is often accused of ignoring the human rights and safeguard policies that have been attached to the current development system (Human Rights Watch 2019; Salamatin 2020). Importantly, however, rather than the BRI shaping the UN system in new ways, the UN is itself pushing back against the BRI, trying (mostly in quiet ways) to bring international standards to the BRI. The Chinese government has already signed agreements, to some effect at least, to reform rights standards attached to both the BRI and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Kristin Cordell notes that “today’s international development architecture … [is] well poised to advance compliance with good governance norms and practice for development” (Cordell 2020); and Ali Guven notes that the financial architecture has its own ways of pushing back with its own norms, if often in an ad-hoc way (Güven 2017). UN Secretary General Guterres has negotiated with China over alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the supposition that a rights-based approach is necessary to achieve the SDGs. None of this is to dismiss the challenge of Chinese development financing to the traditional development architecture; but it does suggest that the institutions of the UN, rather than just other member states, have some say in this process. Similarly, the creation of the AIIB is seen as a concrete challenge to the existing development paradigm; spearheaded by China, it has promised to put fewer social and governance restrictions on lending, and there is evidence it has begun to affect the normative policies of other institutions (Peng and Tok 2016). This, too, has led to engagement with the UN and the World Bank, with similar pushback to see more rights programming in the AIIB. Overall, we see that despite Chinese power projection and resistance to rights-based approaches, UN staff have worked to modify Chinese policies and to support the rights-develoment link.

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OTHER RISING AND DECLINING POWERS

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China, as the primary rising challenger to the United States and its hegemony over development finance and development thinking, certainly deserves to be considered separately from the other BRICS nations; but the fact that we both group them as the BRICS and consider them separately says a great deal about the current situation of the bloc. While there does appear to be a coherent BRICS approach to development, and the BRICS states have articulated an agenda, it is also true that Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa are quite diverse in their approach to development economics, their geostrategic agenda, and their international influence. As Marina Larinova (Larinova 2020) summarizes, opinions about the BRICS run the gamut from a pointless exercise between hopelessly divided states to an emerging power bloc that will shape the twenty-first century, and many points in between. What does this BRICS agenda look like in development? A few clear themes emerge. At its heart is a desire to shift the balance of power in development: replacing a world where wealthy states provide benefits to poorer ones, they envision a world “beyond aid” where developing states interact on equal and mutually beneficial terms with wealthier states, and promote structural transformation (rather than mere “development”) of their economies (Lin and Wang 2017). BRICS rhetoric emphasizes greater South-South cooperation to create a more equal and equitable world trading system (Suchodolski and Demeulemeester 2018). More to the point here, BRICS states also have expressed opposition to the sorts of social as well as economic conditionality imposed on them by the World Bank and UNSDG development partners (Mwase and Yang 2012). There has been a consistent desire to emphasize infrastructure and economic growth in developing states; and an increasing frustration with the social protections of both the World Bank and the UNSDG, which are seen as impositions on national sovereignty (Suchodolski and Demeulemeester 2018; Remler 2020; Zeitz 2020). This includes creating new institutions, such as the New Development Bank, created by the BRICS states, which aims to shift the financial architecture of the development system. Within the existing institutions, the BRICS have asked for changes in the voting power at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank; and have otherwise sought to shift the balance of power away from the existing wealthy states, with so far decidedly disappointing results (Juutinen 2019). Behind this unified façade, however, there are a number of contradictions. For one thing, all the BRICS countries—including China—remain recipients of traditional development aid and financing from the World Bank. While

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China in particular, but other BRICS states as well, also contribute aid and financing, their contributions remain small compared to their own intake (Puppim de Oliveira and Jing 2020). And rather than fully challenging the current global order, the BRICS as a whole seem more interested in tweaking it to their own benefit—and not always even to the benefit of their citizens, but rather to their geostrategic advantage. “The BRICS”, according to one analyst, “tend to shore up Northern political and economic interests more often than providing solidaristic and counter-hegemonic policy stances” (Thompson 2020). It is important to note that all remain recipients as well as donors of aid. Most relevant here, there is a clear impression among observers that the BRICS countries—including in some ways China, but most particularly the others—are not really interested in wholesale change in the international system, or prepared to fully lead the multilateral system (Weinlich 2014; Mahubani 2020). 4.2

United States

We also should not forget to consider here the importance of the other side of the power equation: the (presumed) declining influence of the United States in world affairs. The historical power of the United States at the UN is obvious and needs little explication here. But it would be a mistake to overstate its influence either over the General Assembly and the Security Coucil, or over the secretariat. We have noted at the start of this chapter that connecting human rights and development was not, initially, something the United States pushed for; nor was the World Bank’s pivot toward poverty alleviation, although both found favor eventually with the United States. While studies find that World Bank lending clearly seems to favor US allies and interests, it is also clear that this is not nearly so simple as the United States simply demanding certain policies (Clark and Dolan 2021). Again, World Bank presidents and their top subordinates have always been jealous of their independence, even from the United States. And it is not just the World Bank. The World Health Organization, for example, has pushed back in its way against some US policies for some time—for example, around essential medicines and family planning (Pogge et al. 2010). The same is true at UN Women and UNICEF. During the Trump administration’s reinstatement of the “global gag rule” and defunding of the UNFPA, the agency’s executive director, Natalia Kanem, stated that, “Even now we have been defunded ... we have persevered,” and made clear the institution’s determination to continue with its work (Yi 2019). No country’s influence is simply unchallengeable. On the other hand, we should recognize that the United States, too, has at times opposed many progressive policies at the UN and in its agencies. Under

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US-appointed UNICEF Executive Director Anne Veneman, there was a clear impression that UNICEF was withdrawing its support for a rights-based approach, or at least softening that priority (Narayan 2005); more recently, former World Bank President Jim Yong Kim was seen as interested less in social policies than in pursuing more traditional lending practices and reasserting the bank’s financial power (Cordella 2018). The point here is that changes at any institution are not nearly so simple that they can be said to come from a particular constellation of powers and interests. Bank lending has shifted partly because of changes in the availability of private finance (Eyben and Savage 2013; Greenill et al. 2016; Strand et al. 2016). Staff actions aren’t just about state pressure, or even primarily about that.

5.

UN STAFF AND CHANGES TO RBA

Again, there have without a doubt been changes in UN development assistance recently. At the institutional level, various international agencies have ways of establishing and keeping their independence from states as well as other factors. In some cases, states fold in some discretionary freedom for IGOs, for strategic reasons; in others, IGOs work to carve out some independence for themselves (Haftel and Thompson 2006; Oestreich 2012; Johnson 2014). Executive directors also have levers of power they can use to promote their independence (Cox 1969; Schechter 1988). At the secretariat level, we see some change, but also some consistency, in respect to the challenges listed above to current development orthodoxy. What factors have mitigated against a simple model where the desires of rising or declining powers shift development policy? A few theoretical approaches help us understand this relative lack of influence by the revisionist states. 5.1

Principal-Agent Theory

One common approach to understanding the independence of IGOs has been the principal-agent approach (Lyne et al. 2006; Vaubel 2006). Principal-agent theory posits that states (the principals) contract IGOs (their agents) to solve collective action problems and perform other functions as needed. At the institutional level, we see that the agent(s) might have other priorities than their principal(s); agents can use the “slack” that comes from less-than-perfect supervision and an imbalance of knowledge to pursue their own interests. Those interests will presumably be material gain in the form of more resources, power, and other assets. Some factors will increase organizational independence: imperfect knowledge by the principals, divided principals, and lack of resources will all have an effect. Principals can try to control these problems by

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better supervision, with greater knowledge, or by creating incentives that align their own interests with those of the agent (Gailmard 2014). The World Bank in particular, with its powerful presidents, has been analyzed extensively from this perspective. Early presidents insulated themselves from state control as best they could, fearing that overt political meddling in lending decisions would threaten the Bank’s financial viability (Schechter 1988, Kraske 1996). The anti-poverty mission of the Bank, developed under Bank President Robert McNamara, was not initially supported by his principals; nor, as we have seen, was UNICEF’s embrace of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Ascher 1983; Oestreich 1998). These are only two examples of this sort of independence in the development sector. At the macro level, China and the BRICS simply do not have the leverage necessary to impose their will on IGOs in a consistent way—even less so than the United States does. The principal-agent theory helps us understand that simple changes in the power level of a principal do not translate into any automatic shift in the behavior of the agent. China has, for example, increased its voting power in the financial institutions; and has increased also its presence at the UN as it has committed to its own version of multilateralism. Analysts, however, consistently note that China still provides relatively small contributions to various development agencies (Ruipeng 2020). Lee and Sullivan observe that China is working to change UN development agencies “from within,” by increasing their ability to monitor and control bureaucracies and thus overcome principal-agent issues (Lee and Sullivan 2019). Weinlich suggests that the BRICS are largely “ducking for cover” (Weinlich 2014). David, too, highlights a reluctance of China to involve itself too deeply in oversight of global institutions. At the level of staff, many note (as has been cited in the opening chapter of this volume) in interviews that Chinese oversight and efforts to overcome principal-agent problems have been unsophisticated, and thus far not very effective. Overcoming principal-agent problems is not just, or even primarily, about money, but about understanding sophisticated bureaucratic politics and incentives. Several external analysts have also noted that while China has been active in placing its nationals within the UN, they are still learning to work the levers of power (Dollar 2020; Feltman 2020). This is backed up by interviews with UN staff conducted by the editors of this volume, in which it was noted that China had not successfully translated its greater presence into greater bureaucratic influence. Staff within the UNSDG showed little concern that there are efforts to affect development decisions at the regional and local level, except where they influence that particular state itself (e.g., lending decisions directly to BRICS countries). The lesson of the above examples is important: principal-agent theory has in the past been used to illustrate the independence of IGOs from the influence

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of the United States. Leaving aside for the moment an ascendant Global South, as the United States declines, we might expect that it too will put pressure on development IGOs—presumably to help shore up its own position. And here, too, as we have seen, even the United States is not able to easily translate its power into complete control over lending or development policy. 5.2

Bureaucratic Inertia

International institutions are, above all else, large bureaucracies. They are slow to learn and difficult to change; they institutionalize and routinize certain behaviors; they seek resources and power; they defend their existence even when they have perhaps outlived their usefulness (Gruber 1987; Taylor and Groom 1988; Green 1993; Wintrobe 1997). At their worst, the bureaucratic nature of IGOs (and other bureaucracies) allows them to internalize destructive habits and pathologies (Barnett and Finnemore 1999; Weaver 2008). But bureaucracies can also create useful regimes, invent new ideas, and coordinate international behaviors that then become institutionalized (Meyer and Rowan 1991; Haas et al. 1993; Ruggie 1993; Duffield 2007). Once IGOs have institutionalized certain behaviors, their bureaucracies make them part of their routine. Staff will continue to use “standard operating procedures” and cling to former priorities that they consider legitimate. Ironically, perhaps, some of the best studies of IGOs doing this have concerned their resistance to some of the types of policies under examination here: for example, against incorporating environmental concerns in global institutions, (Wade 1997); against gender mainstreaming (Razavi and Miller 1995; Eyben and Savage 2013); and against human rights themselves (Sarfaty 2005). But this “stickiness” of bureaucracies works both ways and explains much of why the rights-based approach to development remains central to many development institutions. Although it has been well documented that institutionalizing rights and social protection has been an arduous process, there is no reason to suppose that de-institutionalizing them will be any less difficult. At the World Bank, for example, there is now a functioning and influential gender infrastructure designed to promote women’s rights; a set of safeguard policies which protects the rights of indigenous peoples, those displaced by development, and so forth; a Governance Global Practice which oversees various policies related to good government, accountability, inclusiveness, and so forth; and various other institutional expressions of policies which bear directly on human rights. These were by and large difficult to implement, but have reached a certain institutional maturity. An Inspection Panel regularly checks World Bank projects for their adherence to these policies. Similarly, while studies by the current author (Oestreich 2017) and others (Meier and Gostin 2018; Nelson and Dorsey 2018) have shown the that some UNSDG

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agencies have a hard time shifting to a true rights-based approach, they also show that these policies are being implemented—however imperfectly—and that they have found institutional homes. There is no reason to believe that unwinding these will be any less difficult than creating them in the first place. Now, an observer might draw the opposite conclusion from this evidence and suggest that the commitment to rights-based approaches, or the World Bank’s version of them, has not fully taken root; and disappointment with the extent of the HRBA does suffuse work on the topic. But interviews and conversations with staff do not tend to back this up; and, at any rate, if there is pushback, that is more often seen as coming from practical internal factors. For example, staff at several agencies confess that they find it difficult to address human rights when their training is in public health, or nutrition, or infrastructure development. But this is not the same as seeing a challenge coming from emerging powers. They will also mention that actors such as the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UNSDG staff represent loci for HRBA that are not easy to ignore. The overall impression is one of a set of policies that is not fully implemented, but is well institutionalized—if more in some agencies (UNFPA, UN Women, UNICEF) than in others. Not least, within the UNSDG, there is now a very comprehensive set of guidelines about the use of HRBA, which itself is backed up by other documents on procedures, institutions, and resources (Nations 2015; United Nations Sustainable Development Group 2016). There are important institutional networks being created between the UNSDG and the Universal Periodic Review process (United Nations Sustainable Development Group, no date), the SDGs (United Nations Sustainable Development Group 2018; United Nations Sustainable Development Group, no date), and the OHCHR (United Nations Sustainable Development Group 2016; OHCHR 2017). It might be overstating it to say changing one requires changing all; but these bureaucratic networks are self-reinforcing, and they create their own momentum. 5.3

Regimes and Principled Ideas

The rights-based approach did not come from nowhere; nor was it imposed on the UN by the United States. In the case of the World Bank, as we have seen, the shift to things like safeguard policies and gender mainstreaming was largely driven by international civil society at large, not just US pressure (Park 2010). Protests were a regular occurrence at the annual World Bank–International Monetary Fund meetings. At UNICEF, an early adopter of a rights-based approach by using the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Executive Director James P. Grant picked up ideas about rights and devel-

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opment from outside the agency and pressed for their adoption, even against pressure from member states (Black 1986; Smyke 1990). The connection between rights and development, in other words, has been driven by more than simply state interests: it has been a reaction to forces in global politics that promote human rights and pressure agencies to incorporate rights norms. The current rights system, with its belief in the rights-development link, represents a global regime: a set of expectations about how development policy should be undertaken that exists outside of the interests of particular states, and shapes their expectations. IGOs then are, in Susan Park’s term, “norm consumers,” picking up, institutionalizing, and diffusing global norms. In this case, these norms have an effect on the identity of IGOs, and again, cannot be reduced to simple pulling of strings by member states. Park, to be sure, understands these norms to be contingent on other, rationalist bureaucratic imperatives, but still to have influence of their own (Park 2010). The power of principled ideas thus should not be discounted, as they have a normative effect on the global system. And within the UN development system, there remains a principled set of policymakers who consider the rights-development link to be a foundational, and moral, imperative. It was this element to which Samarasinghe referred, cited in the opening paragraph of this chapter. And this has also been expressed in, for example, the SDGs, such as Goal 5 on gender equality; Goal 10, which calls for a focus on equity rather than growth in global development; and Goal 16, which includes peace and justice. Anyone who has spoken with UN staff about development understands how many are motivated by their desire to act ethically and to improve lives; and that they operate not in a vacuum, but in an expanding moral system. When pressed about the growing pressure by emerging states to focus more on growth and to emphasize rights less, staff typically resist such imposition. Now, how much of this is because these staff represent a Western political outlook—that they are part of a hegemonic system that is itself slowly changing as the existing power structure changes—is outside the scope of this chapter. However, it does also extend beyond the UN system, to many other development actors. The power of normative beliefs should not be overlooked as staff respond to and resist shifting winds in the development system.

6. CONCLUSION The rights-based approach to development, and the various social protection policies of the global financial institutions, did not come from nowhere. They have developed over time, in response to factors such as the failure of earlier development policies to alleviate poverty and close the North-South

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gap; civil society pressures galvanized by real and perceived rights abuses by development agencies; the interests of UN member states; human rights activists, seeking new avenues for rights promotion and enforcement; and other forces as well. The process of implementing rights has not been smooth or untroubled. And the issues involved go well beyond simply the interests of the various states that make decisions regarding the development system. While there is scholarship, as we have cited, noting shifts in development lending in the direction favored by rising powers, the actual effect of shifting powers on the system is more complex than can be captured in statistical analysis. This chapter began with a contradiction between two close analysts of the development system; but the complex nature of UN bureaucracies means that both can, indeed, be true simultaneously. This chapter also began by noting that the story most often told, of a US-modeled development system designed to serve a certain set of liberal and Western-biased economic ideologies, is incomplete, in a way no explanation of highly complex and political phenomena can ever be complete. International agencies, in our modern understanding, are far more than the sum of their national components; and understanding their changing nature requires more than looking at shifting constellations of power. It also requires understanding the motivations and priorities of the people that make them up. Their preferences, independent of state behavior, and the bureaucratic systems in which they are embedded give shape to the current development system and help it resist the more ephemeral forces of change. The current regime is more complicated than any simple constellation of powers, and will not easily change as that constellation shifts.

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Rubenstein, eds. Incentives for Global Public Health: Patent Law and Access to Essential Medicines. New York, Cambridge University Press: 1–33. Puppim de Oliveira, J. A. and Y. Jing (2020). “The BRICS and International Development Assistance: Between the Old and the New. ” In J. A. Puppim de Oliveira and Y. Jing, eds. International Development Assistance and the BRICS. Singapore, Palgrave Macmillan: 1–12. Razavi, S. and C. Miller (1995). Gender Mainstreaming: A Study of Efforts by the UNDP, the World Bank and the ILO to Institutionalize Gender Issues. Geneva, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Remler, P. (2020). Russia at the United Nations: Law, Sovereignty, and Legitimacy. Washington, DC, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Richardson, S. (2020). “China’s Influence on the Global Human Rights System.” Global China. Washington, DC, Brookings Institution. Ruggie, J. G. (1993). “Multilaterism: The Anatomy of an Institution.” In J. G. Ruggie, ed. Multilateralism Matters: The Theory and Praxis of an Institutional Form. New York, Columbia University Press: 3–48. Ruipeng, M. (2020). China’s Growing Engagement With The UNDS As An Emerging Nation: Changing Rationales, Funding Preerences and Future Trends. Bonn, Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik. Salamatin, M. (2020). “China’s Belt and Road Intiatve Is Reshaping Human Rights Norms.” Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 53(4). Samarasinghe, N. (2020). “Human Rights and Sustainable Development: Together at last?” in T. Weiss and S. Browne, eds. Routledge Handbook on the UN and Development. New York, Routledge: 51–75. Sano, H.-O. (2000). “Development and Human Rights: The Necessary, but Partial Integration of Human Rights and Development.” Human Rights Quarterly 22(3): 734–752. Sano, H.-O. (2002). “How Does Good Governance Relate to Human Rights? ” In H.-O. Sano and G. Alfredsson, eds. Human Rights and Good Governance: Building Bridges. New York, Martinus Nijhoff: 1–18. Sarfaty, G. A. (2005). “The World Bank and the Internalization of Indigenous Rights Norms.” Yale Law Journal 114(7): 1792–818. Schechter, M. G. (1988). “The Political Role of Recent World Bank Presidents. ” In L. F. Finklestein, ed. Politics in the United Nations System. Durham, NC, Duke University Press: 350–84. Schmitz, H. P. (2012). “A Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA) in Practice: Evaluating NGO Development Efforts.” Polity 44(4): 523–41. Smyke, P. (1990). UNICEF and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. New York. Stevens, M. and S. Gnanaselvam (1995). “The World Bank and Governance.” IDS Bulletin 26(April 1995): 97–105. Strand, J. R., E. Flores and M. Trevathan (2016). “China’s Leadership in Global Economic Governance and the Creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.” Rising Powers Quarterly 1(1): 55–69. Subedi, S. P. (2015). “China’s Approach to Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Agenda.” Chinese Journal of International Law 14(3): 437–64. Suchodolski, S. G. and J. M. Demeulemeester (2018). “The BRICS Coming of Age and the New Development Bank. Global Policy 9(4): 578–85. Taylor, P. and A. J. R. Groom, eds. (1988). International Institutions at Work. New York, St. Martin’s.

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Thompson, L. (2020). “Locating BRICS Development Strategies in Global Development Policy Narratives.” In J. A. Puppim de Oliveira and Y. Jing, eds. International Development Assistance and the BRICS. Singapore, Macmillan: 35–58. UNDP (2006). Applying A Human Rights-Based Approach to Development Cooperation and Programming: A UNDP Capacity Development Resource. New York, United Nations Development Program. United Nations, (2015). Human Rights Up Front: An Overview. Geneva. https://​ interage​ncystandin​gcommittee​.org/​system/​files/​overview​_of​_human​_rights​_up​ _front​_july​_2015​.pdf. Retrieved April 18 2023. United Nations Development Group (2003). The Human Rights Based Approach to Development Cooperation Towards a Common Understanding among UN Agencies. New York, UN Development Group. United Nations Sustainable Development Group (2016). Guidance Note on Human Rights for Resident Coordinators and UN Country Teams. New York, UN Sustainable Development Group. United Nations Sustainable Development Group (2018). Switching Gears For 2030: Results of Development Coordination in 2017. New York, UNSDG. United Nations Sustainable Development Group (No date). “Universal Periodic Review: What is it? How is it relevant to my work?”. Retrieved February 25, 2020 from https://​unsdg​.un​.org/​2030​-agenda/​universal​-values/​strengthening​-international​ -human​-rights/​universal​-periodic​-review. Vaubel, R. (2006). “Principal-Agent Problems in International Organizations.” Review of International Organizations 1(2): 125–38. Wade, R. (1997). Greening the Bank: The Struggle Over the Environment 1970–1995. in D. Kapur, J. P. Lewis and R. Webb, eds. The World Bank: Its First Half-Century. Washington, DC, Brookings Institutions Press. 2: 611–734. Weaver, C. (2008). Hypocrisy Trap: The World Bank and the Poverty of Reform. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. Weinlich, S. (2014). “Emerging Powers at the UN: Ducking for Cover?” Third World Quarterly 35(10): 1829–44. Wintrobe, R. (1997). “Modern Bureaucratic Theory.” Perspectives on Public Choice. D. C. Mueller. New York, Cambridge University Press: 429–54. Woods, N. (2006). The Globalizers. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press. Worden, A. (2019). The CCP at the UN: Redefining Development and Rights. Prague, ACA Media. World Bank (1992). Governance and Development. Washington, DC, World Bank. World Bank (2002). Safeguard Policies: Framework for Improving Development Effectiveness: A Discussion Note. Washington, DC, World Bank. Yi, B. L. (2019). The UN Popluation Fund Workds on Family Planning and Maternal Health, But Might Face a $350 million Shortfall In Part Due to the US Funding Cut, Thompson Reuters Foundation. Zeitz, A. O. (2020). “Emulate or Differentiate? Chinese Development Finance, Competition, and World Bank Infrastructure Funding.” Review of International Organizations 16: 265–92. Zhou, W. and M. Esteban (2018). “Beyond Balancing: China’s Approach Towards the Belt and Road Initiative.” Journal of Contemporary China 27(112): 487–501.

7. The Impact of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on the United Nations Bimal Adhikari 1. INTRODUCTION It has long been argued that international institutions—defined as “formal and informal rules that prescribe the way actors should cooperate and compete in the international system” (Mearsheimer 1994, 6)—help powerful states further their foreign policy goals (Abbot and Snidal 1998; Koremenos et al. 2001). When international institutions fail to serve the interests of member states, dissatisfied rising powers try to change the rules of the game. These rising states have a menu of options to address their grievances. They can, for instance, try to reform existing institutions, as Chapter 1 posits; or they might abandon existing institutions and replace them with organizations that are more reflective of their worldview. Morse and Keohane (2014) describe these phenomena as contested multilateralism, and this concept has often been linked to China’s growing assertiveness on the global stage. As this volume recognizes and analyzes, the notion of a “rising China” and other BRICS powers has engaged the attention of both academics and policymakers. Academics have questioned the path that China will take regarding multilateralism. Some see prima facie evidence that suggests China has been jostling for leadership positions in the existing international institutions while concurrently creating competing institutions where it might have more influence. Jeffrey Feltman, who served as assistant secretary of the State Department during the Obama administration, has written that “especially since Xi became China’s president in 2013, Beijing has raised its profile within the very heart of the U.N” (Feltman 2020). Surpassing Japan, China is now the second-biggest contributor to the United Nations (UN), making up 12 percent of the UN’s regular budget. Despite several attempts to raise its profile within the UN and other existing multilateral institutions, China has not been able to fully realize its goals. 122

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Currently, Chinese nationals head only four of the 15 UN specialized agencies (Cheng-Chia and Yang 2020).1 Moreover, most of the high-ranking officials in the UN belong to Western countries. For instance, Novosad and Werker (2019, 3), analyzing appointments to senior positions in the UN Secretariat, confirm the intuition that “the United States is overrepresented, and China is significantly underrepresented.” The authors conclude that democratic countries have a disproportionately significant presence in the top echelon of the UN Secretariat—and this remains true even when factors such as the UN staffing mandate of competence and integrity are taken into account. Similarly, the United States and its allies have used the UN’s specialized agencies, by heavily staffing the Secretariat with their citizens, to exert great influence within the UN system, including in two principal organs: the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). China realizes that it cannot influence agencies and their secretariats as effectively as the Western powers can because although US nationals do not control as many senior positions in the UN Secretariat as they used to, the replacements for US nationals have mostly been “citizens of other rich democracies—largely the allies of the United States at the founding of the United Nations” (Novosad and Werker 2019, 3). US hegemony in the UN Secretariat is fading, perhaps, but still present. China is, to be sure, seeking a greater role in the UN to challenge the legitimacy of the US leadership. In the context of the current volume, it is China’s failure to find a political way to increase influence in the UN—rather than any overall lack of resources—which it feels holds it back at the UN and drives it to find other avenues of influence. A rising China puts pressure on UN offices to accommodate their desires; and these desires then are filtered through the work of the UN staff, who have its own agency in interpreting those desires, as discussed in Chapter 1. This chapter, however, takes a somewhat different perspective than the others in this volume on the relation between a rising power and the secretariats of international organizations. While China is certainly making inroads in the UN and its management (as Gregory Chin has carefully detailed in Chapter 3), this chapter posits that it has also sought to establish a competing and parallel multilateral institution, with more compliant staff; and that this, too, must be accommodated by existing institutions. For example, it has initiated the creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as a part of its ambitious “One Belt, One Road” initiative under Xi Jinping’s leadership. By contributing half of the initial total capital of the AIIB, China can command the largest voting share in the institution (Weiss 2017), while also creating a new global agency with staff more in tune with Chinese wishes. Thus, the paradox of increasing financial contributions to, and seeking leadership positions in, the existing multilateral institutions, while concurrently creating rival institutions, raises several questions about China’s take on

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multilateralism not captured elsewhere in this volume. Which aspect of the contested multilateralism is China focused on? Why is it seeking to increase its influence within the existing organizations? Why is it simultaneously creating competing organizations? And how do these two processes interact? Addressing these questions will shed light on the idea of why major powers jostle for greater control over the secretariat of major multilateral institutions. This chapter starts with the assumption that China’s influence within existing international institutions has not caught up with its growing ambition. It shows that, along with seeking influence in the UN Secretariat appropriate for its power status, China has looked to another avenue of influence: creating new bureaucracies outside the UN and the specialized agencies, where it can be more influential in changing global rules. Rather than exclusively asking how existing secretariats react to China, we examine how new secretariats further the interests of a rising state. The remainder of this chapter proceeds as follows. First, it fleshes out these two parallel activities: seeking more influence as a powerful state in global forums, and seeking more influence with the secretariats of these forums. Next, it discusses how the United States and its allies exploit existing multilateral financial institutions to garner support for their foreign policy agendas. It also posits that most high-ranking officials within existing multilateral institutions work at the behest of Western countries, often at the expense of Chinese interests. This section is followed by a discussion about how the AIIB serves China’s interests and why other countries actively support this parallel institution. China created the AIIB to compete with existing international agencies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and regional multilateral financial institutions like the Asian Development Bank (ADB), as it continues to feel that the Western states overly influence the existing international financial institutions, which do not sufficiently reflect Chinese interests. This chapter then details how the staff of existing multilateral financial institutions are coping with the growing influence of the AIIB. Thus, it opens up a different perspective on the independence and power of existing secretariats in the face of shifting power.

2.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UN IN WORLD POLITICS

Why should we focus on the UN and its structure? And why should China care? The UN is, arguably, the single most important institutional development in the realm of international affairs in the post-Second World War era. Scholars from all major schools of thought in international relations accept the significance of the UN (Barnett and Finnemore 2018). Unsurprisingly, powerful states compete to exert more significant influence in the UN to get more

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countries to support their worldview. These power plays are especially evident in two principal organs of the UN—the UNGA and the UNSC—but they are increasingly important throughout the system and include efforts to increase influence over the bureaucracy (Adhikari 2021). The role of these two bodies in development aid is worth delineating here. The UNSC, the most powerful single organ of the UN, is entrusted with maintaining global peace. Since an affirmative vote of nine states is required to pass any resolution, rotating members of the Council receive substantial benefits from membership, bilaterally, as well as through multilateral organizations. Some suggest that once a country rotates onto the UNSC, the amount of aid it receives from the United States increases by 59 percent, and the share of UN-mediated aid increases by 8 percent (Kuziemko and Werker 2006). Mikulaschek (2017), for example, suggests that European Union (EU) states that are temporary members of the UNSC can attract more budgetary support from the EU. While the importance of the UNSC and how Western powers seek to influence its decision-making is straightforward, how and why the US and its allies seek to influence decision-making in the UNGA have garnered less attention. The UNGA is the most representative and chief policymaking organ of the UN. It is the only body of the UN where all 193 member states are represented in all stages of the policy cycle (Panke 2017). The UNGA is responsible for electing the rotating members of the UNSC. It is also entrusted with the responsibility for electing personnel to the International Court of Justice. More importantly, the votes that countries cast in the UNGA are often used as a proxy to measure a country’s foreign policy position (Gartzke 1998). These sessions are particularly useful for small and middle-power states as the provision of one state, one vote, and majoritarian decision-making rules puts them on par with powerful states in the decision-making process. Also, as the most representative body of world opinion, the UNGA confers legitimacy on to state’s foreign policy (Datta 2014). Indeed, Carter and Stone (2015, 2) suggest that the United States seeks other countries’ support in the UNGA to “appear less isolated and to purchase legitimacy on key foreign policy issues.” Thus, US permanent representatives to the UN often make it clear as to how much importance they put on garnering greater support at the UNGA. Jeane Kirkpatrick, who served as US permanent representative to the UN during the Reagan administration, suggested to the US Congress that “voting behavior in multilateral organization like the United Nations, should also be one of the criteria we employ in deciding whether we will provide assistance, and what type of assistance and in what amount” (Kirkpatrick 1988, 275). Similarly, John Bolton, who served in the same capacity during George W. Bush’s tenure, remarked, “I’ve been of the view that votes in the United Nations should cost people, cost countries that vote against us” (Lynch 2018).

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More recently, Nikki Haley, who served as US permanent representative to the UN during the Trump administration, proposed that countries that vote against the United States in the UNGA should be barred from receiving financial assistance from the United States. Ambassador Haley writes that, “when foreign aid goes to countries that take our generosity and bite our hand rather than link up arms with us, it’s time to stop it” (Haley 2019). The United States already penalizes some states that vote against US interests in the UNGA by reducing the amount of more fungible government-mediated aid in favor of multilateral and nongovernmental organization-mediated aid (Adhikari 2019a). It is not only the United States that seeks influence here. Its major allies— France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom—also actively manipulate their foreign aid policy to influence recipient countries’ voting patterns. Countries that cast votes in the UNGA that displease them receive less government-mediated aid from the United States and its major allies (Adhikari 2019b). The United States and its allies also utilize the UN’s specialized agencies—notably the IMF and the World Bank—to garner support for their policies in the principal organs of the UN. Here, the staff of these agencies wield more power than they do in the “forum” organizations like the UNGA or the UNSC. We cannot, therefore, separate these institutions entirely, where the staff have wider ranges of autonomy, from the primary bodies of the main UN. How these secretariats can and cannot be controlled by rising powers is discussed next.

3.

THE STRATEGIC USE OF EXISTING INSTITUTIONS

The IMF and the World Bank remain vitally important specialized agencies of the UN, among the most important of all multilateral institutions. While ultimately in a legal relationship with the UNSC and UNGA, they are expected to be apolitical and technocratic, with professional staff instructed to act according to politically neutral standards. Yet we know, through various careful studies, that the IMF and the World Bank have long been used by the United States and its allies to achieve their goals. These powerful states exert their influence in subtle but quantifiable ways. For example, the IMF was created primarily to foster cooperation on fixed exchange rates across developed countries for financial stability in the wake of the Second World War. However, the IMF was also involved with the economic affairs of developing countries soon after the abandonment of fixed exchange rates in the 1970s (Vreeland 2019). As the lender of last resort, the IMF plays an essential role in the economic realm and developing countries. Acknowledging the power the IMF wields over recipient countries, the United States and its allies have employed it to further their foreign policy agendas. They maintain the largest voting share

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when decisions are made; their nationals dominate the staff of the IMF; and their economic ideology permeates the air that IMF staff breathe. If the rising financial power of a state could be directly translated into rising influence over multilateral institutions, we would expect to see changes in how the IMF operates and its responsiveness to Chinese influence. However, even after becoming one of the institution’s largest financial contributors, China still has little influence within the organization. In this regard, in 2010, Zhou Xiaochuan—the governor of the People’s Bank of China, who also concurrently served as China’s IMF governor—suggested reforming the IMF by significantly increasing the representation of developing countries in the IMF’s top echelon. Indeed, a vast majority of the IMF economists are trained in the United States; and the number of economists trained in developing countries, including China, make up a small minority. Even the Chinese nationals who work at the IMF are mostly trained in the United States and are widely believed less likely to reflect and advocate for policies that are more in line with Chinese development ideas. In this vein, Governor Xiaochuan remarked that reforming the governance of the IMF would “improve the development models prescribed by the IMF, which has led its dogamatist mentality” (Momani 2016, 271). To be sure, not all of this is a result of bureaucratic factors and the influence of the Secretariat. Take, for example, the allocation of voting rights within the institution. A state’s formal voting rights determine decision-making power in the IMF. These voting rights correspond to the number of executive directors in the IMF’s central governance body, largely responsible for the IMF’s day-to-day affairs. Currently, the United States possesses the largest voting share, 16.51 percent; followed by Japan’s 6.15 percent, and China’s 6.08 percent.2 Despite being the second-largest economy in the world, China wields less influence within the IMF than the third largest, and still trails the United States by quite a bit. In China’s view of the world, this is the result of a deliberate policy by the United States to retain its own outsized influence and to check legitimate Chinese efforts to have more say over global affairs and standards. Moreover, China’s accession to the third spot in the IMF is the outcome of an intense years-long struggle to increase its footprint and play a role appropriate to its growing size and power. The United States, which possesses veto power in the institution, did not ratify the recommendation of the then IMF managing director to increase China’s voting share from 3.8 percent to 6.1 percent for more than five years. Even after the ratification of the recommendation, the IMF remains strongly dominated by the Western powers (Wang 2018). Why would the United States be so reluctant to give China more power within the IMF? The United States and its allies have found the IMF to be a very powerful vehicle to provide legitimacy to their vision of the global order. For example,

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influential and pioneering studies of IMF lending (Dreher et al. 2008; Dreher et.al. 2015) find that temporary membership in the UNSC is associated with 30 percent fewer conditions on IMF loans. However, the influence of the IMF in manipulating other countries’ voting patterns is not limited to the UNSC. Recipient countries that vote more in line with the United States, Japan, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom at the UNGA are more likely to receive IMF loans. Dreher and Jensen (2007) find this relationship to be particularly strong prior to the recipient country’s national election. The logic holds that the United States and its allies support the recipient country’s leadership by providing more loans prior to the election to improve their chances of winning elections. Similarly, such countries also tend to receive a favorable inflation forecast from the IMF. More closely related to this book’s theme, we see that US staff do use their influence within the IMF to further the US foreign policy agenda. It has been reported that IMF staff from other countries have expressed their concerns about the overt politicization of the IMF decision-making process (Oatley and Yackee 2004). The authors suggest that IMF loan programs are an outcome of bargaining between various stakeholders, including IMF departments, loan applicant states, and high-level IMF officials—particularly the members of the Executive Board. Oatley and Yackee (2004) suggest that American executive directors often coordinate with the US Treasury Department to formulate their IMF lending decisions. Executive directors are not themselves part of the Secretariat of these institutions, but they have influenced these institutions both directly and indirectly. Such partisan influence in the IMF’s loan decisions was explicit during the Cold War, when the US Congress explicitly required US executive directors to refuse loans to communist governments. Along similar lines, Copelovitch (2010) suggests that IMF staff (as agents of the executive directors, and of states more generally) often act on behalf of their major financial backers (principals). Since the United States and its allies—particularly the powerful G5 countries—are major financial contributors to the organization and are close US allies, these countries’ staff promote programs that are more in line with their governments’ positions. IMF staff are more beholden to their governments when borrower countries are strategically important to their home country. However, in cases of loan requests from states deemed less important by the major contributors, staff have greater autonomy. In short, the author claims that “IMF lending behavior depends … also on the relative influence of states and Fund bureaucrats in particular cases” (Copelovitch 2010, 51). Yet at the same time, we see more independence—a selective independence—where other decisions are being made. The point here is not only that IMF lending decisions (and those of other such agencies) are affected by power politics; that is well known. The more

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relevant point is that staff are an important part of this power transmission. Other contributions to this book have emphasized the independence of staff: the ways that they resist pressure; prefer bureaucratic norms and priorities over those given to them by states; or simply act as independent variables in understanding decisions. But an observer of these agencies might well determine that they are an important independent variable that needs to be controlled if powerful but under-represented states are to have the influence they feel is their due. We ought not to overstate the independence of these agents. If only by the nature of their ideological similarity with the G5 states, they help promote the interests and beliefs of those states. As with the IMF, the United States and its allies also exert significant influence on World Bank operations. They have frequently used the World Bank as a tool to bolster support for their preferred policy positions within the UN’s principal organs. Originally conceived as an institution to help Western countries rebuild from the ruins of the Second World War, the World Bank, too, shifted its focus to developing countries during the immediate post-war era. Although tasked with the responsibility of eliminating global poverty, the World Bank has been co-opted by the United States to further its vested objectives. Similar to the IMF, China is the third most influential country in the institutions as proxied by the vote share. However, its influence within the Bank remains quite low. As with the IMF, it is no secret that countries receive favorable treatment from the World Bank when they support Western powers’ policy agendas. Consider how a country’s behavior in the UNSC affects the treatment it gets from the World Bank. Dreher et al. (2009b) again find that countries that are elected as the rotating members in the UNSC are more likely to have World Bank-funded projects. More concretely, such countries receive an 87 percent increase in disbursements from the World Bank. The United States has also exhibited a similar pattern in the UNGA. These facts, as with the statistics regarding the IMF above, might be well known but they bear repeating in this context. It is not only the revelation that these agencies are political that is important here; it is that they are political in one direction that matters. The United States continues to exert outside influence, aided and abetted by other G5 countries. Thus, we see that countries that back UNGA resolutions supported by the United States receive increased funding from the World Bank. And, importantly, the role of the Secretariat—of the staff at the World Bank, as the staff at the IMF—is inescapable. There is a perception that the staff are not so independent, and are not responding “as they should” to power shifts—that is to say, are not taking more into consideration the desires of rising powers, particularly China. So, for example, Andersen et al. (2006) find that countries voting in line with the United States on the resolutions that it deems important

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for its national interest receive more financial support from the World Bank. Kersting and Kilby (2016) also find that the World Bank promptly disburses investment loans prior to national elections for countries that express similar foreign policy preferences as the United States. Countries that hold opposing foreign policy views relative to the US witness slower disbursement of loans from the organization. Clark and Dolan (2021) further suggest that countries that support the US cause in the UNGA receive loans without many stringent conditions. The authors suggest that World Bank staff seek to demonstrate to the United States—its largest financial contributor—that it supports US causes. Moreover, since the institution is located in Washington DC, US government officials regularly hold meetings with the World Bank staff, perhaps influencing them to work at the behest of the United States. It is in this vein the authors suggest that World Bank officials, “consciously anticipating American preferences, which they act on out of career concerns, or from the staff’s own U.S.-biased beliefs,” design less stringent programs for countries deemed as friends of the United States (Clark and Dolan 2021, 39). Indeed, high-ranking World Bank staff wield significant influence over its lending decisions. Kaja and Werker (2010), for instance, find that being elected to the Executive Board of the World Bank results in an average of $60 million additional loans from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, one of the major development financing institutions of the World Bank. The Western powers have not only politicized the IMF and the World Bank; they have also exploited regional multilateral financial institutions to contain their geopolitical rivals. These findings, again, are not new. They are presented again to highlight not just the role of power within these institutions, but the importance of staff as a mediating variable. It is all too easy to think of them as mere objects of power relations rather than subjects in themselves, but that must not be ignored. And these dynamics are present in regional development institutions too. When we turn to the other major player in this space as far as China is concerned, the ADB, we see similar dynamics. Created as an institution “to foster economic growth and co-operation in the region of Asia” (Rathus 2008, 88), much like the IMF and the World Bank, the ADB has also been used as a vehicle to further the United States’ and its allies’ interests in the region. Indeed, since the ADB’s inception, Japan, in particular, has enjoyed a privileged position within the Bank. Member countries agreed to give the presidency to Japan as it was the major financial contributor from the region. The president also enjoyed a great degree of autonomy in managing Bank operations. For instance, for certain categories of Bank operations, the president does not have to consult with the board of governors in order to keep politics away from the agency. These were mere talking points, as evidenced by the fact that Japanese government officials have been actively shaping

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the ADB’s decisions since its early days. Japan regularly sends government officials on “temporary leaves of absence” of two or three years to work in the Administration Department of the ADB.3 This informal practice, Wan (1995, 516) suggests, “contributed to the emergence of a close trans-governmental tie between the Ministry of Finance and its reserved posts in the ADB.” Furthermore, the author suggests that “Japan’s leadership served both its own interests and the interests of the bank” (Wan 1995, 516). So, at the regional level, the United States and Japan, in particular, have utilized the ADB to constrain China’s growing influence in the region; and the role of the Secretariat must be considered here also. Some analysts have suggested that the ADB’s decisions are even more heavily influenced by political concerns than those of the IMF or the World Bank (Kilby 2006). Despite calls for the ADB to be funded by member states, it agreed to outside financing, with 48 percent of the funds coming from outside sources. In fact, the United States is the joint-top shareholder along with Japan in the institution. The ADB also accepted the idea of basing voting rights based on financial contribution and creating a separate position of executive director for the United States. Also, any amendment to the charter would require a two-thirds supermajority—which essentially makes it beholden to the same group of countries that control the IMF and the World Bank (Kellerman 2019). A large body of scholarship has shown how the ADB’s decisions are driven by the political considerations of the United States and its allies. For instance, countries with deep trade ties, and those that receive more bilateral aid from Japan, are favored by the ADB. Similarly, Lim and Vreeland (2013) posit that the Asian rotating members of the UNSC receive more favorable loans from the ADB (ADB 2020). Such blatant Western influence in the ADB and the quid pro quo approach have been a major source of resentment for countries like India and China. These frustrations are compounded by the fact that low voting power of regional members to reject non-regional members’ agendas within the institution. As one employee of the ADB suggested, “every time … donor countries have to give more money to the ADB, they always ask what they are going to get in exchange” (Kellerman 2019, 123).4 Kellerman (2019) further suggests that the strategic use of existing multilateral institutions by the United States and its allies is what led it to establishing a countervailing alternative: the AIIB.

4.

WHAT PURPOSE DOES THE AIIB SERVE FOR CHINA?

The AIIB was created to challenge the dominance of existing international financial institutions that have largely been led by the United States and its allies.

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Liao (2015) writes that “the creation of the AIIB means that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank – the two dominant players in development lending and international financial regulation – now have an Asian counterpart” (Liao 2015). Indeed, the primary motivation behind the creation of the AIIB can be traced to China’s longstanding grievances against the West-dominated institutions, where it failed to exert much influence. For instance, Governor Zhou Xiaochuan in 2011 suggested that the directorship of the IMF should be reformed, and that developing countries should also have a chance to lead the agency. More concretely, he suggested that “the make-up of top [IMF] management should better reflect changes in the global economic structure and better represent emerging markets” (Momani 2016, 273). He also suggested that the World Bank should be reformed to better reflect the changing economic realities of the world. With the creation of the AIIB, China has compelled existing institutions to initiate reforms, giving China a bigger voice in the decision-making process. Moreover, China has also been able to garner greater support for its policies of non-intervention in domestic affairs in the UN system, at the expense of the United States, with the creation of the AIIB. Some scholars interpret this phenomenon as China’s attempt to challenge the normative power of the United States (Brazys and Dukalskis 2017). But how exactly has AIIB succeeded in eroding the United States’ normative power, and what does this have to do with the Secretariat? First, the AIIB has weakened the relationship between the allies, as some have opted to join the institution. Despite US efforts to convince states not to join the AIIB, a total of 57 countries opted to become Charter Bank members. Twelve of these are North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, including Germany, France, and the United Kingdom; three are military allies of the United States in the Asian region—specifically Australia, South Korea, and New Zealand; and 14 are part of the G-20. Maher (2016) suggests that the US allies are increasingly likely to engage more with China, thus weakening the Atlantic Alliance. One of the reasons they would do so lies in the fact that countries like the United Kingdom, France, and Germany are less dependent on the United States for their protection than they were during the Cold War years. The support of close US allies to the AIIB has allowed China to increase its influence globally, particularly in developing countries, without straining relationships with many Western countries. Second, the Secretariat of the AIIB is also composed heavily of former employees of West-led international financial institutions from powerful Western countries, thus giving the Bank inside knowledge on how to use this to further China’s objectives and also providing international credibility. Currently, two vice presidents out of five are European nationals, namely from the United Kingdom and Germany. The chief risk officer hails from France. The chief financial officer is from New Zealand. A Swede holds the title of

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chief economist.5 In the past, some high-ranking officials from Western countries made remarks to assuage skeptics of the AIIB. Joachim von Amsberg, a German national who served as vice president of the Bank from 2016 to 2021, suggested that, “It is really important, given the initial suspicion about the AIIB. Dispelling those suspicions is a key message to clients and shareholders” (Seno 2017). Von Amsberg previously served as the vice president of the World Bank. More recently, current Vice President Sir Danny Alexander, who previously served as the chief secretary to the Treasury of the United Kingdom, sought to frame the AIIB as an institution that seeks to abide by the rules-based international system and not something that should be perceived as a threat to the existing global order. In an event organized to mark the membership of the 100th state to the AIIB, Sir Danny mentioned that “another 43 members have joined in the last three years is recognition that AIIB has established itself as part of the rules-based international system, with strong governance and high international standards” (Xinhua 2019). While in many ways, the AIIB resembles traditional West-led international financial institutions, in one particular way, it is quite different: it is less concerned with attaching conditionalities to the loans that it provides. It is easier for the AIIB to do so since the president has great leverage in making lending decisions. This is one reason why some developing countries are more drawn toward the AIIB. Recipient countries often argue that the conditionalities attached to IMF and World Bank loans are too stringent. Since the AIIB has adopted a much laxer policy on attaching conditions to its loans, many disgruntled developing countries have resorted to the AIIB for financial support. Much like its foreign aid policy, China has ensured that it will not use the AIIB to impose political reforms. This is the official position of the Chinese government, which is clearly stated in the document entitled Position Paper of the People’s Republic of China on the United Nations Reforms (People’s Republic of China 2005). This policy of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs is codified in the Operational Policy on Financing document, which clearly states that the AIIB should refrain from interfering in domestic political affairs of its members: “The Bank, its President, officers, and staff shall not interfere in the political affairs of any member, nor shall they be influenced in their decisions by the political character of the member concerned”.6 Indeed, AIIB President Jin Liqun has repeatedly reaffirmed the non-interference approach of the Bank. In an interview immediately after the inauguration of the Bank, he mentioned that “China is the largest shareholder of the Bank, but it is only one shareholder and I can tell you the Bank will not do anything that is driven by politics, and will not interfere in political affairs” (Anderlini 2016). Understanding the inherent problems associated with conditionalities, China has adopted a much laxer foreign assistance policy than Western countries. And, like the United States and its allies, it has found that dispensing eco-

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nomic assistance does help garner more support in international forums. For instance, Dreher and Fuchs (2015) find that countries that vote more in line with China in the UNGA, in general, receive more economic assistance. More specifically, countries with overlapping voting patterns in the UNGA on issues relating to Taiwan receive more aid from China (Dreher et al. 2018). Likewise, Flores-Macias and Kreps (2015) find that as countries’ trade ties with China deepen, they are more likely to express similar foreign policy preferences in the UNGA. Using the voting pattern in the resolutions that are deemed important by the United States, the authors find that deepening trade ties have swayed African and Latin American countries to support Chinese preferences in the UNGA, especially those concerning human rights. In a similar vein, Brazys and Dukalskis (2017) find that China has been deploying its growing economic might to subtly alter the international norm. Using a novel dataset on repeated resolutions, the authors find that China provides an economic incentive for countries to move away from backing US-supported resolutions. The authors conclude that China is seeking to “gradually erode a set of norms in relatively quiet and indirect ways via the UNGA” (Brazys and Duakalskis 2017, 744). Scholars have recently identified that countries that join the AIIB are also more likely to express greater support for Chinese foreign policy in the UNGA. Kaya et al. (2021) find that countries that hold more dissimilar foreign policy positions vis-à-vis China receive relatively more funding from the AIIB in the hopes of improving bilateral ties. Along similar lines, Vieira (2018) finds that while early joiners of the AIIB were mostly countries with similar political ideologies as China, the countries that joined later included a significant number of democratic countries. The author suggests that this phenomenon denotes the growing traction of a counter-hegemonic intergovernmental organization. Given this heightened influence of the AIIB, it would be instructive to explore how existing international financial institutions have responded to the phenomenon.

5.

EXISTING MULTILATERAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS’ RESPONSE TO THE AIIB

To the surprise of many, existing institutions and Western allies of the United States have been quite receptive to the AIIB. In addition to major US allies such as the United Kingdom and Germany agreeing to become founding members, the AIIB was granted the status of a permanent observer in the UN in 2018.7 This status allows the AIIB to engage with the UNGA and the Economic and Social Council—two principal organs of the UN—giving it the same recognition as other regional banks such as the African Development Bank and the ADB. AIIB President Jin Liqun remarked that this move by the

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UN was a welcome endeavor as both the UN and the Bank seek to improve living standards in Asia and beyond by fostering economic growth (AIIB 2018). Similar remarks have been made by lower-ranking officials of the AIIB as well. Gerard Sanders, general counsel of the institution at the time, suggested that: We will have better and more timely information about what the UN is thinking of the issues of importance to the AIIB, and hopefully we will be able to make some modest contribution to the work of the UN over time. (Xiao 2018)

How has this been reflected in existing institutions and their secretariats? Institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank have also initiated reforms to appease growing and disgruntled China. One of the biggest successes of the AIIB has been to get the IMF to add the Chinese renminbi as one of the currencies that make up the Special Drawing Right (SDR) (IMF 2016). The provision allows the renminbi to be used for lending to countries that require cash injections during economic turmoil. Previously the basket of currencies included the US dollar, the euro, the Japanese yen, and the British pound. Although the United States can veto IMF decisions, it chose not to do so, thus allowing the renminbi to be included in the SDR basket. Although two major financial backers—the United States and Japan—are not members of the AIIB, the World Bank has agreed to work cooperatively with it. Some scholars suggest that the World Bank should have no problem coordinating with the AIIB, as the AIIB is “nested to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), thus firmly situated within the existing international financial order” (Wan 2016, 58). Indeed, the ADB estimates that the Asia-Pacific region alone has a financing gap of $800 billion per year needed to maintain growth momentum; and that coordination between the AIIB and the World Bank can fill that gap (ADB 2017). In this vein, in April 2016, the presidents of the World Bank and the AIIB signed the first co-financing framework agreement. This was followed by the signing of a memorandum of understanding which states that “the AIIB and the World Bank Group are active in certain common development areas and believe that, by closely cooperating, coordinating and working in partnership, they can improve the development impacts of their present and future operations” (AIIB 2017). This cooperative move by the World Bank, which had previously opposed the creation of the AIIB, is noteworthy. In recent years, the ADB has also been receptive to the AIIB. Reports suggest that the AIIB had consulted with the ADB as well as the World Bank prior to its official launch regarding the possibility of the AIIB playing a complementary role to the existing multilateral financial institutions (Hong 2016). Indeed, the Japanese finance minister at the time, Taro Aso, remarked that,

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“As demand for absolute quantity of (infrastructure) financing is growing… it’s not a zero sum game between the AIIB and ADB” (Reuters 2015). In May 2016, the two multilateral financial institutions signed the Memorandum of Understanding for Strengthening Cooperation (ADB 2019). The ADB has also assisted the AIIB by providing technical support to its projects, and has co-invested in projects in countries such as Bangladesh, Georgia, India, and Pakistan. It is in this regard, at the opening of the ADB’s 50th Annual Meeting in 2017, that the ADB president remarked: we need more investment in infrastructure … we can cooperate with the AIIB because they are focusing on infrastructure … the media tries to make rivals of ADB and AIIB as if we are in confronting relationships but there is no need for that. (Seiff 2017)

Similar remarks were made by the IMF managing director with regard to the possibility of working alongside the AIIB. She mentioned that the IMF would be “delighted” to work with the Bank (Patton 2015). These instances suggest that the existing multilateral financial institutions are willing to work alongside the AIIB. This is especially important because prior to the AIIB’s official launch, some ADB staff had expressed deep cynicism toward it (Troilo 2014).

6. CONCLUSION The meteoric rise of China’s economy and global engagement has raised several questions about the future of the liberal world order and its institutions, including the IMF and the World Bank. With the creation of the AIIB, these questions have become more pertinent. This chapter argues that the United States and its allies’ politicization of existing international financial institutions and their failure to accommodate China’s interests led to the creation of the AIIB. The chapter posits that China recognizes that the UN is still the only international body that can provide legitimacy to its actions. However, the United States and its allies’ blatant use of its specialized agencies and the regional multilateral financial institutions to garner support for their preferred policies, and their control over the staff of these agencies, have encouraged China to create a rival institution. Tentative evidence suggests that the AIIB has already helped China persuade more countries to support its policies, including in the UNGA. Staffing the AIIB with high-profile former employees of West-led international institutions has enabled the Bank to become an effective vehicle for promoting Chinese interests globally. Recognizing the growing popularity of the AIIB, existing multilateral financial institutions have shown themselves willing to work with it. The competing staff have successfully put pressure on existing structures.

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While the creation of one more institution to help alleviate poverty and aid developing countries in their developmental aspirations is a welcome endeavor, there is also significant room for concern. One pressing issue revolves around the future of existing liberal economic institutions. As they have agreed to work with the AIIB, will they start to become more illiberal? Will the existing institutions also provide assistance disregarding the political conditions of recipient countries? Or will the United States and its allies stop politicizing the IMF, the World Bank, and the ADB to gain legitimacy? Second, the influence of the AIIB in influencing recipients’ behavior at the UN remains to be further examined. It would also be instructive to note whether the creation of the AIIB is a stepping-stone for China to create something bigger to replace the liberal world order. Finally, how big a role can we expect the Secretariat to play in furthering China’s interests vis-à-vis the AIIB? This all remains to be seen.

NOTES 1.

2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7.

These agencies include the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and the International Civil Aviation Organization. Western countries strongly oppose China’s claim to leadership roles, as evidenced by recent controversies surrounding the election of the FAO chief (see Feltman 2020). https://​www​.imf​.org/​external/​np/​sec/​memdir/​eds​.aspx, last accessed November 29, 2021. The Administrative Department was later divided into two departments: the Budget, Personnel, and Management System Department; and the Office of Administrative Services (Wan 1995). As of 2020, non-regional members composed mostly Western countries had a 34.876 percent of the voting rights in the ADB. Japan had 12.751 percent of the total vote share, putting the United States and its allies in a comfortable position in the Bank’s lending decisions. https://​www​.aiib​.org/​en/​about​-aiib/​governance/​senior​-management/​. https://​w ww​. aiib​. org/​e n/​p olicies​- strategies/​_ download/​o peration​- policy/​ Operational​-policy​-on​-financing​-March​-20​-2020​.pdf. There are 110 non-member states, entities, and organizations that have received authorization to participate as observers in UNGA sessions.

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8. Rethinking Institutional Independence: The WHO as a Challenged Institution Stephanie Strobl 1. INTRODUCTION In an age of unprecedented globalization, numerous challenges emerge which put the current transnational system to the test. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that countries sometimes have no other choice than to cooperate to contain threats to national and global health security. In governing this cooperation, states are assisted by the flagship institution concerning health matters: the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO is there to provide remedies and regulatory frameworks to mitigate global health crises requiring collective action. However, just as the transnational system in general is challenged by new constellations of power, so is the WHO, and especially its Secretariat. This leads to the central question of this chapter: is the WHO Secretariat’s independence from these shifting power structures sufficient for it to fulfill its mandate? To answer this question, this chapter uses the framework of public health emergencies of international concern (PHEIC). This is a tool introduced by the International Health Regulations (IHR) to highlight that an event constitutes a public health risk to other states through the international spread of disease. The determination of a PHEIC is in the hands of the director-general, the WHO Secretariat’s chief technical and administrative officer. This chapter examines which steps of the PHEIC determination process leave room for national interference and how they are being used in practice. The Chinese exertion of influence over the PHEIC determination of 2019-nCoV, now COVID-19, serves as a practical example of how states are trying to control the WHO’s Secretariat. This is a recent example, and one which well captures the recent dynamic of outside influence on the WHO. Chinese influence on the WHO during the COVID-19 crisis provides a good test case to see where the necessary independence of United Nations (UN) agencies and their staff can be challenged, how they respond to that challenge, and what the implications are for global governance. 142

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Lastly, this chapter discusses the repercussions of this behavior on both the WHO’s Secretariat, the organization’s authority, and global health governance (GHG) as a whole.

2.

GLOBAL HEALTH GOVERNANCE AND THE FACILITATION OF COOPERATION

To understand these issues, it is useful to present a short summary of the theory behind how and why intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) are meant to facilitate collective action in the case of cross-border spread of disease; a definition of what is meant by institutional independence; and a brief overview over both the WHO’s authority and its institutional setup. This will help clarify why the issue of independence is so important here; and what challenges are faced when powers rise and fall, and thus when the forces exerted on UN staff rise and fall with them. Cooperation can be defined in several ways. One of the most common definitions is that of actors adjusting their behavior to the individual or shared preferences of others through a process of policy coordination (Axelrod & Keohane 1985). Applied to GHG, or more specifically to the PHEIC context as set out in the IHR (2005), this means that actors – which is to say states – are supposed to adjust their policy decision-making and implementation to goals set by the WHO (WHO 2005a). This means, inter alia, strengthening domestic public health response capacities (Article 13(1) IHR).1 Cooperation by state parties is further specifically requested to support WHO-coordinated response activities (Article 13(5) IHR). The WHO Secretariat, in turn, is supposed to cooperate and coordinate its activities with other intergovernmental organizations or international bodies (Article 14(1) IHR), to ensure the application of adequate measures for the protection of public health (Article 14(2) IHR). Therefore, in the IHR (2005), the concept of cooperation is specifically envisaged and legally prescribed. There are several theoretical approaches to analyze a state’s cooperation in GHG. First, there is a more liberal perspective based on the idea that cooperation arises out of a common interest. Jeremy Youde, for example, embraces this view by introducing international society as a manifestation of a shared interest which in turn affects a nation state’s behavior in favor of compliance (Younde 2017). He then argues along the lines of the English school of international relations theory, elevating institutions concerned with GHG to primary institutions. These are not exclusively bureaucratic apparatuses to facilitate cooperation efforts, but are clusters of social rules and practices providing a framework for interaction (Linklater & Hidemi 2006). Going back to the definition of cooperation used earlier, this would mean that actors adjust their

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behavior to the preferences of the majority by making policy choices most suitable to achieve the common goal of disease containment. Second, the functionalist conception further developed this idea of a common interest, toward a more operational approach. Following the Second World War, Mitrany suggested a network of international agencies to integrate individual national policies, at first focusing on low politics, such as economic and social considerations, with the objective of promoting “natural growth through common activities” (Mitrany 1943). Similarly, Sewell postulated that political leaders had to engage with new organizational forms to foster common action, especially within technical areas (Sewell 2015). In a GHG context, this would mean that states coordinate collective action—for example, in the case of the cross-border spread of disease—through a specialized agency, in this case the WHO. The cooperation would be specifically institutionalized with the idea of spreading and deepening cooperation through these institutions. Third, cooperation in GHG can also be seen from a more neorealist perspective. In this case, cooperation may also be a tool to maximize a state’s own interests in the event of a public health crisis. In the case of global health, one peculiarity of the setting might be that it is not about states maximizing their relative gains compared to other actors (as a realist would normally expect to see), but about absolute gains to increase the chances of self-preservation. With subordinate concerns about relative gains, cooperation is facilitated (Snidal 2002), or indeed possible, even from a realist’s perspective. This means that every actor might strive for the containment of disease in a coordinated and cooperative manner, and this striving is based primarily on its own motives, whereby secondarily a common interest is fulfilled. Regardless of whether the common interest is a primary or secondary concern, in case of a public health emergency, most states have little choice but to cooperate, as their resources are generally insufficient to handle crises of a global scale on their own. But this dependence on the WHO and other global actors is itself dependent on the resources available to states. Actors with fewer means and an overall unstable health system find themselves in a weaker position vis-à-vis global actors, as they are more dependent on the cooperation efforts of resource-laden states. States relate to the WHO differently, in other words, depending on their relative capabilities in the health sector and their overall resources. The WHO Secretariat often functions as an intermediary, inter alia, to assist state parties in developing surveillance capacities (Article 5(3) IHR), or to provide guidelines (Article 13(1) IHR), technical assistance (Article 13(3) IHR), or an assessment of the effectiveness of control measures (Article 13(4) IHR); but this function will vary depending on the power of the states. Moving on to the topic of this volume in particular, there are two main reasons why it is especially vital for an institution like the WHO to have

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quasi-independent preferences. This means, in the case of an international organization, preferences which are agreed upon by all of its member states and therefore valid for the institution as a whole, rather than dictated by any single powerful state. On the one hand, harmonized preferences, objectives independent of individual interests, and decision-making by majority vote on how to achieve them are vital for the institution’s functioning. An institution can only be functional if its principles and goals are independent from the individual agendas of its member states with regard to its executive proceedings. This is relevant not only for internal policy, but also for external action. The highest possible level of functional independence is especially vital when the institution’s policies have implications for other actors. This is because these actions are only legitimate if they are not rendered biased by another actor’s preferences, which could even infringe on fundamental principles such as the self-determination of states as stipulated in the Charter of the United Nations (Article 2(1) UN Charter – UN 1945). At the same time, independence increases an institution’s credibility, which is considering a more passive aspect: that is, how credible claims of an institution regarding its impartiality and attachment to democratic principles actually are. To uphold these claims, it is necessary for the institution that the possibility of individual manipulation of the institution is unlikely. In this case individual manipulation can originate from any acting unit, such as states, regional supranational entities, other IGOs, or organizations from the public or private sector. A politically dependent IGO does not act credibly, or on a legitimate basis, if influence from the latter cannot be excluded. This lack of credibility subsequently leads to a decline in trust in the institution, which can even have repercussions for the institution’s legitimacy as soon as mistrust overshadows the technical expertise which in most cases is the leitmotiv for the creation of the respective institution in the first place. However, and importantly here, independent institutional preferences are not the same as independent institutions; they are just one aspect of it. The “independent preference” of an institution is, ultimately, individual state party interests harmonized to one singular institutional preference through a bargaining process and agreed upon by majority vote. The framework for this is normally defined in detail within the institution’s constitution, and is often dependent on the weight and seriousness of the decisions at stake. Thus, independent preferences do not guarantee an institution’s overall independence, which encompasses far more aspects of the institution’s work, such as autonomy, neutrality, or delegation (Haftel & Thompson 2006). Given all this, an institution can never be completely independent. According to principal-agent theory, as described in previous chapters of this book, authority is conditionally given by a principal to an agent, whereby the agent acts on behalf of the principal (Hawkins et al 2006). This relationship

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is governed by a formal or informal contract. These contracts also determine the degree of authority of the agent (Hawkins et al. 2006), and therefore, of the institution. This means that a state, for example, may grant authority to an IGO to govern over certain matters in order to maintain cooperation at the international level. This is in the state’s larger interest. In case of GHG, states do transfer a certain degree of authority to other actors to set the ground for cooperation and to benefit from the expertise of specialized agencies on health matters. The most exemplary case is the containment of disease. This means that the authority of an institution like the WHO emerges out of its legally granted, but conditional, legitimacy. This is agreed to, for example, in an international agreement (eg, the IHR), and it has epistemologically derived legitimacy as an expert body for health matters. Therefore, specialized institutions may have two general sources of authority: a limited one based on a more conditional legitimacy according to the principal-agent theory; and much broader legitimacy arising from a quasi-monopoly of knowledge and resources as a specialized institution. In practice, states can still actively shape the WHO’s agenda, especially through the World Health Assembly (WHA). The WHA is the WHO’s plenary body where delegations of member state representatives meet to determine the WHO’s General Programme of Work, approve the annual budget, steer activities of the Executive Board, and elect both its members and the director-general (Lee 2009). The Executive Board is composed of 34 technically qualified members to implement the decision of the WHA and to generally facilitate its work (WHO 2021a). These two governing bodies are in place to directly address member states’ interests. Next to these two governing bodies, the WHO Secretariat—consisting of the headquarters in Geneva, six regional offices, and 149 country offices (WHO 2021b)—is the administrative organ staffed with technical experts carrying out the WHO’s program. The structure of the WHO already indicates that it is not enough to focus on a macro-level analysis of states as principals giving conditional authority, and on the WHO as the respective agent holding different degrees of authority. Instead, it is also necessary to analyze fundamental micro-level processes, such as international organization staff, to provide a full picture of how the identity of the institution itself is formed. As this book argues overall, the role of staff cannot be entirely removed from the calculation of state interests affecting institutional preferences. This applies especially to the WHO Secretariat, with its experts implementing and carrying out the program as set by the WHA, as their action directly affects how the WHO’s mandate is fulfilled. Even though these experts must work along the lines of the agenda as set by member state representatives, and are accordingly limited in this dimension, they bring their own professional and personal preferences to the organization, shaping its

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work and proceedings. We turn to this issue next, and consider it in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in particular.

3.

THE WHO AND THE CHALLENGE OF THE CROSS-BORDER SPREAD OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE

The WHO, again, is the flagship institution creating the basis for cooperation in global health. As the governing international institution on health matters in the formal sense, its mandate is to ensure “attainment of the highest possible level of health by all people” (WHO 1946). This is a broad and open approach, as it does not target the mere absence of disease but leaves room for every dimension of health which also includes, for example, social determinants of health. It leaves broad leeway for WHO staff to define the various dimensions of health promotion. As flexible as the WHO’s mandate is, so too are its tasks and responsibilities. Along with the coordination of health work, they are the establishment of a network between the United Nations, specialized agencies, governmental health administrations, and professional groups; the assistance of governments on request; the establishment of appropriate technical assistance; the eradication of epidemic, endemic, and other diseases; the proposition of regulations; the promotion of research and prevention; and the development of standards. The institutional framework has remained largely the same since the foundation of the WHO in 1946. However, the WHO’s specific work regarding health promotion has changed significantly over the years. To be sure, containing infectious disease has always played a decisive role in the interpretation of the WHO’s mandate. In 1903, the International Sanitary Convention (ISC) emerged as the first-ever binding agreement concerning health matters out of a series of conferences at the end of the nineteenth century, aimed at limiting the risk of the spread of infectious disease, which had increased with the extension of trade. Out of the ISC, the Office International d’Hygiène Publique was founded in 1907 to manage emerging international treaties and agreements, which was a task the WHO took over upon its foundation (Gostin & Katz 2016). In 1951, the Fourth World Health Assembly adopted the International Sanitary Regulations (ISR) (Foreword IHR) which then bundled the pre-existing international sanitary conventions and agreements. The ISR, in turn, were replaced by the IHR in 1969 (Foreword IHR), which were extended and adjusted to changing needs over time. Today, the IHR define the term “disease” as “an illness or medical condition, irrespective of origin or source, that presents or could present significant harm to humans.” This is in order to maintain the relevance of the IHR despite the ongoing evolution of diseases (Foreword IHR). However, abandoning the original limitations of the

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ISR, and later the IHR, to yellow fever, plague, and cholera was not the only substantial change. In the latest revision of the IHR in 2005, PHEICs were introduced. The WHO has evolved, therefore, in various ways to accommodate modern circumstances and scientific progress. The IHR define a PHEIC as “an extraordinary event which is determined (i) to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and (ii) to potentially require a coordinated international response” (Article 1 IHR). This implies that this event requires immediate action and a coordinated international response (WHO 2005b), and may lead to international travel or trade restrictions (Part V – Public Health Measures IHR). Until now, six events have been determined by the WHO director-general to constitute a PHEIC: Pandemic Influenza A (H1N1) (in 2009 – WHO 2010); polio (in 2014 – WHO 2014, 2019d); Ebola in West Africa (in 2014 – WHO 2019b); Zika (in 2016 – WHO 2016b, 2016c, 2019a); Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (in 2019 – WHO 20201, 2020b, 2020c); and COVID-19 (in 2020 – WHO 2019c, 2020d, 2020e). These different crises already show why the definition of a PHEIC is rather broad. It also, vitally, needs to leave room for interpretation to be able to encompass several different pathogens, modes of transmissions, geographical preconditions, healthcare systems, political contexts, and cultures. It grants discretion to the agent. That said, the document Examples for the Application of the Decision Instrument for the Assessment and Notification of Events that may Constitute a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in Annex 2 IHR (2005) provides a more tangible explanation of which criteria need to be fulfilled for a crisis to qualify as a PHEIC. The criterion serious encompasses, such things as the number of deaths; the degree of infectiousness; the indication of treatment failure; the effect on health staff; population density; vulnerable population at risk; and the need for external assistance (Annex 2 IHR). Unusual takes into account if there is an unknown agent at stake; if the evolution of a disease is unforeseen; or if the occurrence of the event is unusual for the area or season. Unexpected means that a disease emerges which had been eliminated before. Lastly, the significant risk of international spread targets the potential for cross-border movement, potentially requiring international travel or trade restrictions. A state party is required to notify the WHO within 24 hours of having assessed an event potentially constituting a PHEIC as soon as it fulfills at least two of these four criteria as given in the decision instrument (Article 6(1) IHR). After an event is notified, the WHO may also take into account reports from sources other than notifications or consultations (Article 9(1) IHR) and address a verification request to the concerned state party (Article 10(1) IHR). The results of these communications between the WHO and the affected state party may be shared with all state parties and, as appropriate, with relevant

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intergovernmental organizations (Article 11(1) IHR) if certain conditions are met. Acting upon this information, the director-general may assess, in consultation with the state party, whether an event constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (Article 12(1) IHR) by taking the decision instrument of Annex 2, the advice of the Emergency Committee (EC), the information provided by the state party, and scientific principles and evidence into account (Article 12(4) IHR). Hence, the determination that an event constitutes a PHEIC is the sole responsibility of the director-general. It is an authority delegated to them, and works effectively when they are independent judges of the situation, albeit working with their delegated authority without interference from states. This is vital for outwardly legitimate decisions to be made.

4.

STATE INTERFERENCE IN THE PHEIC CONTEXT

That said, and having elaborated on what a PHEIC is and how it is determined, we now turn to how these proceedings supervised by the WHO Secretariat can nevertheless be influenced by national interests. The key process is how the director-general’s opinion is formed. Given Article 12 IHR (2005), we need to examine several ways in which states could possibly influence the director-general’s decision. As the decision instrument of Annex 2 cannot be altered, this leaves the EC, information provided by a state party, and scientific principles and evidence to be taken into consideration. This section explains what these are and how they can be manipulated by states. The EC consists of experts selected from the IHR Expert Roster on the basis of the expertise and experience required for any particular session and with regard to the principles of equitable geographical representation (Article 48(2) IHR). Its members are appointed by the director-general in accordance with the WHO Regulations for Expert Advisory Panels and Regulations (Article 47 IHR), and explicitly do not act on behalf of their respective government. The composition of both the IHR Expert Roster and the EC is published regularly, making them transparent platforms of experts. Furthermore, chosen professionals sign both a declaration of interests, which is reviewed by the Ethics Committee, and a confidentiality undertaking (Strobl 2019). However, in theory, member states still have a subtle way to influence the director-general’s decision via the EC. Under the IHR, one expert can be appointed to the IHR Expert Roster at the request of each state party (Article 47 IHR); and at least one member of the EC is supposed to be an expert nominated by a state party within whose territory the event arises (Article 48(2) IHR). This means that one of the experts may bring national interests to the negotiation table. Still, regional expertise and experience of the affected country are

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necessary to consider local factors in the design of the crisis response. Further, as the EC consists of numerous experts and votes in a “one man, one vote” manner, one vote is very unlikely to make a difference. The information provided by the state party is a far more promising approach to influence the director-general’s decision. States may have an incentive to withhold information, fearing the possible negative economic (and other) consequences of travel and trade restrictions. Further, the spread of disease is a threat to national human security, making this topic a very sensitive issue for national governments. Hence, state parties may have an incentive to provide, for example, biased information or to withhold information in order to shape the WHO’s response according to their own needs or preferences. Lastly, scientific principles and standards are assumed to be unbiased and free of interest due to carefully conducted scientific research. The IHR (2005) authorizes the WHO Secretariat to take into consideration reports and resources other than notifications or consultations (Article 9(1) IHR), which means that (potentially biased) scientific studies may influence the WHO’s decision-making, even though thorough review processes are supposed to limit the risk of misinformation. This section has shown that there are points where national interests may influence the director-general’s decision to determine a PHEIC in theory, even though these points do not seem very significant at first glance. In the following section, the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis is used to give a current and practical example of how far-reaching national influence actually can become.

5.

THEORY IN REALITY CHECK: HOW CHINA SHAPED THE EARLY DAYS OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

China actively tried to exert influence over the decision of Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as to whether to determine the spread of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), now COVID-19, a PHEIC. When the first EC on 2019-nCoV met on January 22, 2020, the committee members were torn as to whether to advise the director-general to determine a PHEIC. In the following press conference, Tedros concluded that more information was needed (WHO 2021c). Later that day, China made a surprise announcement of excessive public health measures taken concerning public transportation in several regions (WHO 2021d). On the second day, on January 23, 2020, the committee members remained divided. Even though some aspects were pointing in the direction of a PHEIC determination—such as increasing case numbers and the severity of the disease—some experts were hesitant, both due to the limited case numbers abroad and especially due to China’s last-minute announcement of unprece-

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dented efforts of containment (WHO 2021d). There was still hope that these measures would prevent further spread. The prevalent uncertainty among experts naturally contributed to their hesitancy. In the press conference following the EC meeting, almost all participants highlighted that there were still many unknowns to address, such as the source, mode of transmission, and containment measures. According to Didier Houssin, the chair of the EC, it was still “too early” to declare a PHEIC (WHO 2021d). Even though it is common that at the beginning of a public health crisis, information is scarce and experts must make decisions on incomplete data, there is conclusive evidence that the Chinese authorities intentionally restricted data flow. They did this to exert influence over the decision-making process of the WHO staff. Not only are there reports supporting the claim that China notified to the WHO weeks after the first clusters of cases appeared in the beginning of December 2019 (Kim 2020); there is also evidence that China significantly underreported case numbers at the time of EC meetings, significantly downplaying the crisis (Nishura et al. 2020; Li et al. 2020; Imai et al. 2020). When press conference transcripts are closely examined, there is considerable evidence also that the WHO was aware that China was withholding information. The UN Secretariat, in other words, was aware of the efforts at manipulation. Didier Houssin, for example, stressed that one of the most necessary measures to prevent the worst from happening was the improvement of sharing of information and cooperation (WHO 2021c). Further, Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, found the following words to plead for more data sharing: “It will be extremely helpful at this point that China … is to share that disaggregated data, because it’s really important … So we look forward to receiving that data from China as soon as possible” (WHO 2021c). The staff were in a veiled dialogue with China, pushing back as far they could against this manipulation, but also with limited leverage. On January 29 and 30, 2020, the EC convened again. This time, its vote was clearly in favor of determining the spread of 2019-nCoV a PHEIC, with the only dissenting vote from the Chinese representation (Interview 2020a). Tedros finally declared a PHEIC—just a few days after he had met Chinese President Xi Jinping. A journalist present at the press conference following the PHEIC determination framed this in the following striking words: The second question has to do with your visit to Xi Jinping. I just wanted to make sure that we understand when the last time that a D-G like you flew to a country to meet with the head of state during an evolving outbreak to request more detailed data and permission? (WHO 2021e)

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The Chinese government therefore had a very active part in shaping the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially with its handling of data and information. What consequences does this have for the WHO Secretariat? The Secretariat mostly consists of technical and administrative staffs. An EU representative active in GHG framed the WHO’s experts’ attitudes toward their work in a way that they were specialists with a professional pride, and were unlikely to be pressured—with a potential exception if they represented an authoritarian country (Interview 2020b). An ambassador from a Central Asian state found the following metaphor for WHO and political influences: WHO has science in its DNA. See it in a way that external influences are bacteria, and you have antibiotics for it. But there is also AMR [antimicrobial resistance] and some do not want to use antibiotics. Politics would be a virus for which antibiotics do not help. (Interview 2020c)

This metaphor exemplifies the situation at the WHO. The organization’s Secretariat is composed of mainly norm and value-driven medical and natural scientists, who make decisions based on their professional expertise. Hence, where technical areas are concerned, these experts will retain their autonomy and independence. The latter are necessary preconditions to work on a scientific basis which favors the results of a controlled experiment over subjective attitudes. However, within the WHO Secretariat, there are not only technical, but also inherently political positions, such as the position of director-general. As the aforementioned ambassador framed it: “Politics is inevitable as soon as societies work together, but it’s important to keep it at the margins” (Interview 2020c). Sometimes this is not possible—for example, in cases in which the WHO is dependent on member state cooperation. This applied also in the early days of COVID-19, when the WHO was dependent on Chinese cooperation for data in order to make sense of the unfolding crisis. This can be seen, for example, in the excessive (and unprecedented) praise of Chinese efforts throughout the press conferences following the first EC meetings. Just to give a few examples from one single press conference: We would have seen many more cases outside China by now … if it were not for the government’s efforts and the progress they have made to protect their own people and the people of the world …

The speed with which China detected the outbreak, isolated the virus, sequenced the genome, and shared it with WHO and the world are very impressive, and beyond words. So is China’s commitment to transparency and to supporting other countries …

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In many ways, China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response, and it’s not an exaggeration … Let me be clear. This declaration (of a PHEIC) is not a vote of no confidence in China. On the contrary, WHO continues to have the confidence in China’s capacity to control the outbreak. I’ll repeat this. Let me be clear. This declaration is not a vote of no confidence in China (WHO 2021e). This excessive praise for Chinese cooperation, together with the director-general’s meeting with President Xi Jinping shortly before, leaves a bitter aftertaste, knowing about China’s handling of data at this time. The PHEIC determination and access to data clearly came at a price. However, both were necessary for an effective crisis response, leaving the WHO with no choice than to bend. Hence, Secretariat staff sometimes cannot resist to change practices and priorities if they want to achieve their objective. This dependency on member state benevolence forces the Secretariat’s staff to accommodate to preferences to dominant states.

6.

STATE INTERESTS AND THEIR EFFECT ON COOPERATION AND INSTITUTIONAL INDEPENDENCE

If there is a possibility that state parties are potentially influencing the decision-making process of a PHEIC determination within the WHO Secretariat, what does this mean, both on a more general level and for institutional independence? As mentioned, the WHO furnishes the basis for global cooperation on health matters, which can be democratically shaped by its member states through the organization’s governing bodies: namely the Executive Board and the WHA. Through the bargaining processes within these governing bodies, especially the WHA, the WHO’s program is formed by and adapted to member state interests. These proceedings are envisaged by and according to democratic and legal standards, as they are based on explicit agreements, like the Constitution of the WHO or the IHR (2005). However, it becomes problematic when states influence decisions taken beyond this legal basis. It becomes even more problematic when unofficial or discreet channels and means are being used—for example, by altering the information provided to the WHO Secretariat, withholding data from the EC, or selectively providing scientific evidence, as seen in the example of Chinese interference in the PHEIC determination process in January 2020. This exertion of influence challenges, and may in some cases even infringe on, the negotiated conditional legitimacy granted by member states to the WHO Secretariat, which in turn limits the functional capacity of the latter. Similarly, cooperation can be undermined when state parties refuse to

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comply—for example, when recommendations of the WHO are not implemented, which can be seen as a challenge of the epistemologically derived legitimacy based on the WHO Secretariat’s expertise. No matter which source of WHO authority is being challenged, it considerably weakens the WHO and has also repercussions on the credibility of the WHO Secretariat. Some of the consequences are already visible. Some member states, for example, feel left behind with regard to the WHO’s proceedings. A health attaché of a Latin American state expressed concern that some lower-income countries had already lost grip on the WHO due to budget constraints, a lack of influence on program determination, and reporting fatigue (Interview 2020d). An ambassador of a Central Asian state pointed in the same direction, highlighting that lower-income countries sometimes could not afford specialized staff for health matters and could not plan as long term as resource-laden states with regard to capacity building (Interview 2020c). The latter is nothing new for international organizations, as an observable difference in technical capacity between low- and high-income countries is known. Hence, resource-laden states may have a higher impact due to the quality of expertise gained by higher investments in education and research. This will inevitably lead to inequality in the ability to contribute to or influence the WHO’s decision-making process. Unfortunately, the Secretariat has few or no means to counter all these phenomena. In fact, it is a serious problem that there is no sanctioning mechanism in place for states that violate rules and principles, and no opportunity for the WHO to directly control national implementation measures. Theoretically, the only possibility is a sort of blame-and-shame mechanism. This is rarely used in reality, as the WHO is too dependent on member state benevolence, as already seen in the COVID-19 example. If the WHO Secretariat offends member states, it risks losing its ability to fulfill its mandate. Hence, it can never be truly independent or immune from national interests—neither in case of emergency nor on a more general level. The latter is evident, for example, in the WHO’s budget. Assessed contributions are the share of the WHO’s total budget to be paid for by member states, which is currently only 20 percent of the overall budget (WHO 2021f). The rest of the budget consists mainly of voluntary contributions of states, other UN organizations, intergovernmental organizations, philanthropic foundations, and the private sector (WHO 2021f). This means that this funding comes earmarked for certain projects according to the interests of the donor. A member of the WHO Secretariat found the following striking words for this: “WHO can’t be independent when only 20% of funding is assessed and the rest needs to be begged for!” (Interview 2021).

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7. CONCLUSION After having elaborated on phenomena such as cooperation, interdependence, and institutional independence, this chapter outlined the WHO’s institutional setup, its mandate, and its two sources of authority—based on the conditional negotiated legitimacy and the almost uncontested epistemologically derived legitimacy. Further, it presented what a PHEIC is; how it is determined; and at which points national interests could interfere in this process—namely the EC, the information provided to the WHO Secretariat by the affected state, and scientific evidence related to the crisis. It then showed how China used these channels to influence the director-general’s decision to determine a PHEIC in the early days of COVID-19, and assessed the consequences this has for the WHO’s Secretariat. Even though Secretariat staff have a high normative commitment due to professions based in medical and natural sciences, and should therefore have a natural incentive to remain autonomous, it is often not possible to do so. To fulfill its mandate, the WHO Secretariat not only is dependent on member state benevolence—for example, for access to data or appropriate funding for programs—but also has no sanctioning mechanism in place to penalize misconduct. However, national interference has consequences not only for the WHO’s Secretariat, but also for GHG as a whole. No matter if the WHO’s negotiated and epistemologically derived authority is challenged by national interference, the organization is considerably weakened. Why would member states continue to influence the WHO and regularly transcend the borders of the legal and the official? Generally, there are several imaginable incentives to influence the WHO’s decision-making in the PHEIC context—for example, on the one hand, to restrict information out of fear of travel and trade restrictions; and on the other, to alter information in favor of one’s own individual preferences. No matter the motive, the costs of national interference are high. COVID-19, for example, has shown that the containment of infectious disease is too complex to be handled by one individual actor alone, which highlights the dire need for a strong, overarching actor to govern transnational cooperation. The WHO is the obvious international actor here. The question is: how can the organization actually be a strong and overarching actor if its conditional authority is undermined when member states refrain from handing over sufficient real authority as soon as sensitive elements are touched in a state of emergency; or if its unconditional authority, based on its expertise in health matters, is infringed by the lack of independence of the WHO’s Secretariat vis-à-vis national interests? We understand that regarding threats to global health—which can include the spread of infectious diseases—the world is interconnected and interdependent to an extent which does not allow for hesitation about how to coop-

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erate, or about the degree to which authority is handed over to an expert body with the expertise to handle the threat. However, this is just another symptom of the current developments. In fact, global health seems to be a manifestation of a worldwide trend whereby international cooperation is decreasing and undue interference is on the rise, with a resulting weakening of institutional independence of organizations, such as the WHO, and hence the capacity to solve global problems by collective action. This is a big price to pay for a little bit of self-determination and self-interest.

NOTE 1.

All references to the IHR can be found under WHO 2005a.

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Li Jiawei, Xu Qing, Cuomo Raphael, Purushothaman Vidya, Mackey Tim. (2020). “Data Mining and Content Analysis of the Chinese Social Media Platform Weibo During the Early COVID-19 Outbreak: Retrospective Observational Infoveillance Study.” Journal of Medical Internet Research Public Health Surveillance 6(2): 18700. DOI: 10.2196/18700. Linklater, Andrew, and Suganami, Hidemi (2006). “The English School of International Relations.” In Hidemi Suganami and Andrew Linklater, eds. Cambridge Studies in International Relations. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mitrany, D. (1943). A Working Peace System: An Argument for the Functional Development of International Organization. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs. Nishiura Hiroshi, Jung Sung-Mok, Linton Natalie M, Kinoshita Ryo, Yang Yichi, Hayashi Katsuma, Kobayashi Tetsuro, Yuan Baoyin, Akhmetzhanov Andrei R (2020) “The Extent of Transmission of Novel Coronavirus in Wuhan, China, 2020.” Journal of Clinical Medicine January 4, 9(2):330. DOI: 10.3390/jcm9020330. Sewell, James Patrick (2015). Functionalism and World Politics: A Study Based on United Nations Programs Financing Economic Development. Princeton: Princeton University Press.  https://​doi​.org/​10​.1515/​9781400876211. Snidal, Duncan (2002). “Rational Choice in International Relations.” In Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse, and Beth Simmons, eds. Handbook of International Relations. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications Ltd. Strobl, Stephanie (2019). Power Politics in Global Health Governance. Vienna: Vienna School of International Studies. United Nations (1945). Charter of the United Nations. San Francisco: United Nations. WHO (1946). Constitution of the World Health Organization. Geneva: WHO. WHO (2005a). International Health Regulations. Geneva: WHO. WHO (2005b). “IHR Procedures Concerning Public Health Emergencies of International Concern (PHEIC).” http://​www​.who​.int/​ihr/​procedures/​pheic/​en/​. WHO (2010). “Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 – Update 112.” https://​www​.who​.int/​csr/​don/​ 2010​_08​_06/​en/​. WHO (2014). “WHO Statement on the Meeting of the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee Concerning the International Spread of Wild Poliovirus.” https://​www​.who​.int/​mediacentre/​news/​statements/​2014/​polio​-20140505/​en/​. WHO (2016a). “Yellow Fever Outbreak Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda 2016–2017.” https://​www​.who​.int/​emergencies/​yellow​-fever/​en/​. WHO (2016b). “Zika Situation Report.” https://​www​.who​.int/​emergencies/​zika​-virus/​ situation​-report/​5​-february​-2016/​en/​. WHO (2016c). “Zika: The Origin and Spread of a Mosquito-Borne Virus.” https://​www​ .who​.int/​bulletin/​online​_first/​16–171082/​en/​. WHO (2016d). “Yellow Fever Situation Report.” https://​www​.who​.int/​emergencies/​ yellow​-fever/​situation​-reports/​15​-july​-2016/​en/​. WHO (2019a). “Countries and Territories with Current or Previous Zika Virus Transmission.” https://​www​.who​.int/​emergencies/​diseases/​zika/​countries​-with​-zika​ -and​-vectors​-table​.pdf​?ua​=​1. WHO (2019b). “IHR Emergency Committee on Evd Drc North Kivu.” https://​www​ .who​.int/​dg/​speeches/​detail/​ihr​-emergency​-committee​-on​-evd​-drc​-north​-kivu. WHO (2019c). “Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (Mers-Cov).” https://​ www​.who​.int/​en/​news​-room/​fact​-sheets/​detail/​middle​-east​-respiratory​-syndrome​ -coronavirus​-(mers​-cov).

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WHO (2019d). “Poliomyelitis.” https://​www​.who​.int/​news​-room/​fact​-sheets/​detail/​ poliomyelitis. WHO (2020a). “New Ebola Outbreak Detected in Northwest Democratic Republic of the Congo; WHO Surge Team Supporting the Response.” https://​www​.who​.int/​ news​-. WHO (2020b). “Ebola Virus Disease Democratic Republic of the Congo – External Situation Report 94.” https://​www​.who​.int/​publications/​i/​item/​10665–332189. WHO (2020c). “WHO Director-General’s Statement on IHR Emergency Committee on Ebola Virus Disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” https://​www​ .who​.int/​news​-room/​detail/​14–04–2020​-who​-director​-general​-s​-statement​-on​-ihr​ -emergency​-committee​-on​-ebola​-virus​-disease​-in​-the​-democratic​-republic​-of​-the​ -congo. WHO (2020d). “Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Situation Report – 150.” https://​ www​.who​.int/​docs/​default​-source/​coronaviruse/​situation​-reports/​20200618​-covid​ -19​-sitrep​-150​.pdf​?sfvrsn​=​aa9fe9cf​_2. WHO (2020e). “Statement on the Meeting of the International Health Regulations (2005) Emergency Committee Regarding the Outbreak of Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV).” https://​www​.who​.int/​news​-room/​detail/​23–01–2020​-statement​-on​ -the​-meeting​-of​-the​-international​-health​-regulations​-(2005)​-emergency​-committee​ -regarding​-the​-outbreak​-of​- novel-coronavirus-(2019-ncov) . WHO (2021a). “Executive Board”. https://​www​.who​.int/​about/​governance/​executive​ -board. WHO (2021b). “WHO Reform. WHO Presence in Countries, Territories and Areas: 2021 Report.” https://​apps​.who​.int/​gb/​ebwha/​pdf​_files/​WHA74/​A74​_INF3​-en​.pdf. WHO (2021c). “Emergencies Coronavirus EC Meeting Transcript.” https://​ www​ .who​.int/​docs/​default​-source/​coronaviruse/​transcripts/​ihr​-emergency​-committee​ -for​-pneumonia​-due​-to​-the​-novel​-coronavirus​-2019​-ncov​-press​-briefing​-transcript​ -22012020​.pdf​?sfvrsn​=​b94d86d9​_2. WHO (2021d). “International Health Regulations Emergency Committee on Novel Coronavirus in China.” https://​www​.who​.int/​docs/​default​-source/​coronaviruse/​ transcripts/​ihr​-emergency​-committee​-for​-pneumonia​-due​-to​-the​-novel​-coronavirus​ -2019​-ncov​-press​-briefing​-transcript​-23012020​.pdf​?sfvrsn​=​c1fd337e​_2. WHO (2021e). “WHO Emergencies Coronavirus Emergency Committee Second Meeting.” https://​www​.who​.int/​docs/​default​-source/​coronaviruse/​transcripts/​ihr​-emergency​ -committee​-for​-pneumonia​-due​-to​-the​-novel​-coronavirus​-2019​-ncov​-press​-briefing​ -transcript​-30012020​.pdf​?sfvrsn​=​c9463ac1​_2. WHO (2021f). “How WHO is Funded.” https://​www​.who​.int/​about/​funding. Youde, Jeremy (2017). “Global Health Governance in International Society.” Global Governance 23(4): 583–600.

9. The Guardian of Global Trade Governance? Examining the Role of the WTO Secretariat Wei Liang 1. INTRODUCTION The solution devised to address the problem of the lack of global cooperation after the Second World War was the founding of multilateral institutions, with sets of negotiated rules, norms, and decision-making procedures governing specific issue areas. These were typically managed by a secretariat based in headquarters. The secretariats were designed and created by states, and they were to be overseen by those states to be sure they were faithfully fulfilling their mandates. However, depending on the different governance features and issue areas, secretariats of various international organizations can play different roles and have differing levels of agency and independence. They can leverage their powers through daily management, agenda setting, and coordination of negotiating positions, to achieve differing levels of discretion and even power. This chapter focuses on the World Trade Organization (WTO) in particular. The WTO is a multilateral institution that governs global trade. For a long time, compared to most other intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), it was known as an effective organization with near-universal membership,legalized rules, an efficient dispute settlement mechanism and rule enforcement (Petersmann 1998; Weiler 2000). Created in 1995, the WTO succeeded the previously less institutionalized General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and added a broad range of eight new agreements regulating trade-related global investment, services, agriculture, and intellectual property, among other things. However, the relative success of the WTO until recently was not derived from a powerful Secretariat. On the contrary, the WTO has a weak bureaucracy, which “is kept on a short leash by its members” (Keohane and Nye 2001). It has a very small staff; and member states have emphasized from the start that the GATT/WTO is a “member-driven” organization rather than one 159

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with an influential permanent staff. Compared with other international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the World Bank, the autonomy of the WTO Secretariat is strictly limited. In other words, the WTO Secretariat lacks the resources and authority to aim high and accomplish more than its enumerated functions. The unique governance structure of the WTO Secretariat, in addition to other factors, contributes to both the strength and weakness of the WTO as a global trade governance organization. Currently the WTO is in a deep crisis. Its effectiveness, legitimacy, and credibility have been questioned by a number of states, led by the United States, driven by dissatisfaction regarding various issues before the WTO. As a result, we have also seen a surge of analysis exploring the causes and consequences of a WTO in crisis. However, most of these studies have focused on the behaviors of key member states such as the United States and China; the lack of progress in the Doha Round negotiation; or the retreat of globalization and the rise of populism in many countries. Little attention has been paid to the WTO Secretariat as the bureaucracy managing this organization. This chapter attempts to address some key questions surrounding the WTO Secretariat. What are the roles played by the WTO Secretariat in achieving the fundamental mission of the WTO? How have its role and impact evolved over time? And what are the interests and preferences of the WTO Secretariat in this ongoing debate about reforming the WTO? This will help shed light on the ways the key member states—including rising powers—try to influence the WTO staff, and what level of agency they have in pursuing their own agenda in the face of global power shifts.

2.

BACKGROUND OF THE GATT/WTO SECRETARIAT

An essential goal of the WTO is to improve the welfare of people around the world through trade policy. The WTO’s founding Marrakesh Agreement recognizes that trade should be conducted with a view to raising standards of living; ensuring full employment; increasing real income; and expanding global trade in goods and services, while allowing for the optimal use of the world’s resources. In 1948, the United States and its Western European economic partners founded the GATT. In essence, both the GATT and its successor are US creations. The GATT served mostly as a negotiating forum to reduce trade barriers, as it had limited authority and covered a narrow mandate, such as liberalizing trade in manufactured goods. The WTO was created later, based on the agreements achieved through the Uruguay Round negotiations. Although the WTO incorporated the GATT along with many of its principles, rules, and practices, the legal mandate and institutional structure of the WTO were

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strengthened to allow it to become a more “formal” international organization with a full, if small, Secretariat and a permanent bureaucratic structure. With its 22,000-page Uruguay Treaty, the WTO expanded its authority to cover more trade and trade-related areas, including agriculture, services, intellectual property rights, and foreign direct investment. It also redesigned the dispute settlement mechanism with the addition of an Appellate Body, to ensure more binding compliance responsibilities of member states and the timelier resolution of trade disputes. However, the supportive role of the Secretariat has in some ways remained unchanged since the transition from the GATT to the WTO. The WTO must be highly responsive to the preferences of member states. The GATT was an informal association of contracting parties, with a Secretariat limited merely to serving the committees and preparing background notes upon request (Wolfe 2004). The WTO Secretariat is based in Geneva and has a staff of around 700, which—while bigger than before—still makes it the smallest secretariat among all the major IGOs. According to its website, the main duties of the WTO Secretariat are: to provide technical and professional support for the various WTO bodies; to provide technical assistance to developing-country members; to monitor and analyze developments in world trade; to advise governments of countries wishing to become members; and to provide information to the public and the media. The Secretariat is tasked with managing the six major duties of the WTO, including facilitating the implementation of agreements; providing a forum for negotiation; administering the Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM); administering the Trade Policy Review Mechanism; cooperating with other global economic governance institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank; and providing technical assistance to developing countries, especially the least developed countries (LDCs). The director-general (DG) is responsible for managing the whole Secretariat and the organization at large. However, since the WTO is a member-driven organization, the primary role of the DG and the WTO Secretariat is to act as “honest brokers” in, or as “facilitator[s]” of, the decision-making processes within the WTO (Van Den Bossche and Zdouc 2021). Thus, the duties of the Secretariat primarily involve the provision of professional, technical, and legal support for the WTO committees; and the provision of technical assistance and training for developing countries. It is expected to monitor trends in global trade and to analyze and publish objective trade data; to facilitate accession negotiations with potential new members; to organize ministerial conferences; to mediate (if invited) between the parties involving in trade disputes; and to help coordinate the multilateral (and plurilateral) trade negotiations that are taking place within the WTO framework. Paradoxically, because the WTO is a member-driven organization and it continues to rely on the consensus decision-making principle, the Secretariat

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can play a unique role in light of the ever-increasing number of WTO member states, which are deeply divided on almost every decision. It is true that the WTO Secretariat has rarely initiated its own proposals; but it can make a vital contribution by helping member states reach agreement, inserting its own preferences into the agenda for WTO reform, and ultimately serving as an essential actor in the process. The Secretariat has a strong interest in continuing the mission of the WTO and promoting its growth, and can leverage its abilities to work toward these goals. As decisions are made by consensus, neither the DG nor the WTO Secretariat has any decision-making powers of its own. For example, the Secretariat plays a not-insignificant role in helping the chairs of the various WTO negotiating committees to structure small-group conversations; identifying gaps in proposals submitted by different member coalitions; narrowing the differences between negotiators; and suggesting ways to converge on common goals.

3.

POWER SHIFTS IN GLOBAL TRADE AND IN THE WTO

There is growing skepticism about the effects and benefits of greater international economic integration in high-income countries. This contestation is partly driven by important new trends in global trade. These include the growing influence and competitiveness of the emerging economies; and the unprecedented level of participation by developing countries in international trade. Concurrently, emerging economies (China, India and Brazil in particular) are also playing an increasingly prominent role in WTO rule-making and agenda setting. Today, the WTO has a near-universal membership of 164 economies. Among them, two-thirds are developing countries and 41 have joined since the inception of the WTO in 1995. These include China, Russia, Vietnam, and a large number of transitional and developing economies. However, developing countries’ share in world exports has failed to expand in the last decade, despite their continued integration into global trade. Developing countries’ share of global trade stood at 39.7 percent in 2013 and was essentially unchanged, at 40.1 percent, in 2021. Similarly, the share in world exports of the LDCs has stagnated or even slightly declined: it was 1 percent in 2011 and just 0.93 percent in 2021 (SDG Pulse 2022). Thus, while developing countries are increasingly part of international trade, they have been unable to benefit greatly from international trade. Many developing country member states have attributed this lack of progress to the unbalanced rules within the WTO, which have unfairly favored developed countries (Ismail 2005). Given their still limited impact on global trade, the increase in the number of developing country WTO member states would not matter so much if it had

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not been accompanied by the expanding influence of a handful of emerging economies in the past two decades. Altogether, the “BRICS”—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—now account for more than 40 percent of global population; 23 percent of the global economy; 18 percent of trade in goods; and 25 percent of foreign investment (BRICS Summit 2022). China in particular has become the largest trading country in the world: its share of world exports increased from 4 percent in 2000 to 15 percent in 2021 (SDG Pulse 2022). By comparison, the United States accounted for 8 percent, Germany for 7 percent, and Japan for 3 percent of global exports of goods in 2021. More importantly, China has become the largest trading partner of more than 120 countries. Between 2000 and 2021, China’s share of total imports of goods expanded rapidly from 3.4 percent to almost 12 percent. In 2020, developing economies shipped most of their exports to the United States ($1.4 trillion), China ($1.1 trillion), and the EU 27 ($1 trillion) (SDG Pulse 2022). As their volume of trade has increased, the key emerging economies have also exerted greater influence in the WTO. They have demonstrated a new pattern for non-Western players participating in multilateral institutions, and have consequently changed the dynamics of global governance. Collectively, China, India, and Brazil served as the champions of the developing country coalitions—such as the G20, G33, and G90—in the Doha negotiations. Before the launch of the new round, and before China joined the WTO, developing countries successfully rejected the demands made by developed countries to add a number of issues—including investment, government procurement, competition policy, and trade facilitation—to the Doha Round negotiations at the Singapore Ministerial Conference (Evenett 2007). Later, in the Doha negotiations, the coalition that formed around the BRICS effectively brought an end to the longstanding dominance of the G4 (the United States, the EU, Canada, and Japan—also known as the “Quad” countries) during the GATT era. This turned the Doha Round into a “Doha development round” by adding a development dimension to the negotiations for the first time in GATT/WTO history. The BRICS were also invited to the “greenroom” and became part of the inner circle of powers in the negotiations (Van Grasstek 2013). In contrast to the interactions and policy coordination among the Quad countries in previous GATT/WTO negotiations, the BRICS have presented a unique model of “coopetition.” While sharing common interests in countering developed countries’ demands for ambitious market opening and rigorous trade rules, they have also held divergent views and adopted different strategies in WTO negotiations to promote their respective national interests. With the arrival of this more visible, proactive, and diverse group of emerging players, WTO negotiations have become more complex. This has made the achievement of fundamental WTO negotiation principles, such as single undertaking and consensus-building, almost impossible. Some scholars suggest that while

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presenting themselves as the leaders of the “Global South,” the emerging powers have prioritized their own interests in the negotiations, often at the expense of other smaller developing countries (Hopewell 2021).

4.

INCREASING INCLUSIVENESS OF THE WTO SECRETARIAT?

While it is certainly the case that—in the abstract—a greater diffusion of power can be positive for the governance of global trade, we want to better understand the link between the bigger role played by the emerging powers in international trade, their increased representation in the WTO Secretariat, and the implications for WTO governance. As part of the legacy of the Bretton Woods system, IGOs have long favored staff from developed Western countries (as outlined in other chapters in this volume). For instance, European citizens hold 392 staff positions at the WTO, accounting for more than half of the total. Just 30 percent of staff members come from developing countries (Indian Times 2020), including 13 from India, 16 from China, 14 from the Philippines and 39 from Africa (WTO 2020). This underrepresentation stands in contrast to their growing share of global trade (See Appendix 9.1). This could be driven by the resistance of IGOs to changing their existing practices (Hanrieder, 2015); or to a steep learning curve which means rising powers have limited numbers of trade experts available; or to path dependency as a result of heavy reliance on existing social networks to recruit Secretariat staff (Parizek and Stephen 2021). However, compared with the staffing composition two decades ago, the representation of emerging economies in the Secretariat has increased significantly (Parizek and Stephen 2021). It seems that the growing weight of the emerging economies in international trade—especially China, India and Brazil—has given them a greater presence in the WTO Secretariat than in the past. In 2000, 23 out of 26 WTO division directors were from developed countries—a much higher ratio than previously (Bridges Weekly 2000). If a secretariat’s bias in favor of great powers is largely a result of who staffs it (Steinberg 2002), one way for developing countries to promote their global influence is through greater representation in the secretariats of international organizations. We know that states use formal IGOs to help achieve their policy goals (Abbott and Snidal 1998). Although the WTO Secretariat has no decision-making powers, it can influence the processes and procedures of various functions of the organization. The institutionalist perspective emphasizes power maximization and understands that member states compete for influence within IGOs. They do this both through formal mechanisms, such as control of rule-writing and decision-making; and through informal channels

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of power via bureaucratic politics, staffing representation, and agenda setting (Stone 2013). One important mechanism of informal influence is representation in the professional staff of IGOs (Dijkstra 2017, 610; Novosad and Werker 2019). The more cooperatively minded, institutionalist perspective emphasizes the importance of including rising powers and even peripheral states in organizational operations to sustain IGOs, improve their legitimacy, and promote inclusiveness (Ikenberry and Wrigh, 2008; Stephen 2012). Equally important to the diversity and inclusiveness of the composition of the Secretariat’s staff is the nomination and selection of the WTO DG. The primary formal responsibility of the DG is to supervise the WTO Secretariat, which itself is tasked with providing independent support to WTO members. Thus, the DG’s position is primarily administrative. The WTO DG has no formal power in the process of agenda setting, negotiation, or dispute settlement. They cannot force WTO members to take any particular action or make specific decisions. However, they assume both behind-the-scenes and public-facing roles that allow them to influence the WTO’s overall direction. One notable development at the WTO Secretariat has been its appointment of DGs from developing countries. Up until 2002, every GATT and WTO DG was a Westerner, from Europe, New Zealand, Switzerland, or Canada. In contrast to other multilateral agencies, at the WTO the approach to selecting a new DG is open and relatively transparent. There have been eight DGs spanning the GATT and WTO eras (Hoekman and Mavroidis 2013) Since the turn of the twenty-first century, the WTO has taken strides to appoint DGs from the developing world. A lack of consensus in 1999 led to the compromise of three-year terms each for Mike Moore of New Zealand (1999–2002), and Thailand’s Supachai Panitchpakdi (2002–05). Roberto Azevêdo of Brazil served as DG from 2013 to 2020. His appointment in particular was viewed as a victory for the developing world, since as former trade minister he spearheaded a win for Brazil over the United States in their high-profile cotton subsidy dispute—a rare case of a developing country prevailing in a trade dispute against a developed country. The current DG—Nigerian-born Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala—was selected through the same winnowing process as her predecessors. The chairs of the three major WTO committees—the General Council, the Trade Policy Review Body, and the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), known informally as the “Troika” —met with each WTO member’s ambassador to find out their respective preference for DG. This process was repeated until a finalist emerged by consensus (Reinsch 2020). What has changed is that China’s role in the selection process has become more salient. Some scholars and observers suggest that “China would almost certainly block a US appointment and vice versa, leaving leading nations and regional groupings searching for a compromise candidate who can command a consensus among the WTO’s 164 member

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nations. Formal voting is a last resort” (Beattie 2020). For example, Mexican negotiator Jesús Seade Kuri, who was seen as too close to the United States in 2020, was strongly opposed by China (Singh 2020b). The selection process for the current DG clearly illustrates the growing leverage of developing countries in the WTO. At the final stage of the process, her candidacy was supported by almost all WTO members, including African states, China, the European Union (EU), and Japan; but it was strongly opposed by the Trump administration—despite Okonjo-Iweala’s dual US citizenship (Shiraishi and Fang 2020). The US position made it impossible for the General Council to conclude the process with Okonjo-Iweala as the appointee in its November 2020 meeting. The Biden administration’s endorsement in January 2021 finally brought the United States into line with the rest of the WTO members, paving the way for Okonjo-Iweala’s appointment as the head of the WTO. Despite the prolonged process, the appointment has been viewed positively, making Okonjo-Iweala the first African leader of the WTO (see Appendix 9.2). As one EU official stated, the decision was “a clear signal towards Africa” (Thomas 2020). In the past decade, we have witnessed a more inclusive WTO Secretariat with a larger number of employees from developing countries and the appointment of DGs from Asia, Latin America, and Africa. This trend has subtly transformed the focus of the WTO Secretariat, which increasingly emphasizes issues relating to the concerns of developing countries, includes more development-relevant issues in WTO agenda setting, and provides greater technical and legal support to developing country members to help build up their trade capacity. It has also led to a change in the WTO ministerial meetings to include more discussions on providing necessary policy space for developing countries to pursue a development agenda.

5.

EMERGING POWERS AND THEIR ROLE IN WTO REFORM

Paradoxically, the greater inclusiveness of emerging powers in the WTO and its Secretariat has helped improve the WTO’s legitimacy as a multilateral institution; but at the same time, it has contributed to the WTO’s ineffectiveness and helped fuel today’s crisis. Many scholars maintain this largely stems from the tensions between the United States and China on policy practices, and between the two different economic systems they represent (Hoekman and Wolfe 2021; Mavroidis and Sapir 2021) This section elaborates on this point by examining two issue areas that have paralyzed the functioning of the WTO in recent years: the Appellate Body of the WTO DSM; and negotiations on fisheries. These represent important functions of the WTO, including encouraging member states’ trade liberalization policies; providing forums to

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negotiate new trade agreements; and arbitrating trade disputes. The failure of WTO members to reach a consensus on what has gone wrong and how to fix it in relation to these two critical issues has caused the ongoing impasse in the global effort to revive the WTO and make it a much-needed growth engine for the post-pandemic global economic recovery. 5.1

Dispute Settlement and the Appellate Body Crisis

A central function of the WTO is to enforce its negotiated agreements through the independent third-party adjudication of trade disputes between its members. Once considered the “jewel in the crown” of the WTO, the DSM enjoyed a rules-based compliance record that few other international organizations could achieve. Today, however, the WTO DSB is completely unable to function. The Trump administration began to question the relevance of the WTO by criticizing the judicial activism of its Appellate Body. The United States is concerned that through its rulings, the Appellate Body has overstepped its mandate and exercised arbitration power, reinterpreting written rules beyond what was agreed by the WTO members. Consequently, the United States has blocked the appointment of new judges to the WTO’s Appellate Body since 2018; although there are signs the Biden administration may be shifting this policy. Efforts to respond to the US complaints have led to an open policy debate among the WTO members on how to reform the current dispute settlement system. To be fair, many trade scholars and policy observers had identified the problems associated with the WTO DSM long before they were picked up by the Trump administration (Howse 2001). Many commentators argue that the WTO DSM is “the victim of its own success” (Sacerdoti 2020). Due to its importance and effectiveness in settling trade disputes among members, it is resorted to (or abused by) both developed and developing countries more frequently than the system can handle. One criticism of the DSM concerns the slow pace of work. It now takes an average of 511 days for member states to obtain a ruling from the panel, and 112 days to obtain a ruling from the Appellate Body. This compares with the 180 and 90 days respectively required by the Dispute Settlement Understanding (Sacerdoti 2020). Member states find the delays frustrating, as they cannot correct the unfair trade policies or practices of their trading partners in a timely manner to control the damage being done to their national firms. In addition to the soaring number of disputes, the delays have been caused by the lack of experienced lawyers provided by the WTO Secretariat (Linicome and Connon 2014). More seriously, the DSM is abused mainly by developed countries. Although developed countries constitute less than 25 percent of all WTO members, they account for the majority of panel requests and Appellate Body reports. Of the

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49 LDCs in the WTO, only one has submitted a case: Bangladesh filed a consultation request regarding Indian anti-dumping measures against exported batteries (Reich 2017). The WTO Secretariat is responsible for providing both legal and technical assistance to developing countries in their use of the DSM. However, the lack of senior lawyers, and in some cases the lack of senior economists (Bown and Malacrida 2010), have constrained the ability of small developing countries to utilize the DSM to defend their trade interests and benefit from their membership in the WTO. Although most other developed countries—including the EU, Canada and Japan—strongly opposed the United States’ move to block the appointment of the Appellate Body panelists, they share some of the concerns about the adjudicative function of the WTO not “repairing itself” by incorporating proposed reforms; and about abuse of the Appellate Body by WTO member states, which choose to appeal the majority of decisions and exhaust all legal remedies (Cottier 2020). The emerging powers—including India, China, and Brazil—have a good compliance record in correcting unfair trade practices once a WTO ruling has been issued. Nor are the emerging powers opposed to addressing the concerns raised by the United States regarding the DSM. They have worked together with the EU, Canada, and Japan to propose new approaches to reform the DSM. In a communication to the General Council in 2018, the EU, China, Canada, India, and Norway responded positively to the criticisms raised by the United States by suggesting improvements to the Appellate Body in relation to issues such as outgoing Appellate Body members; the 90-day rule on information provision; the meaning of municipal law; and the precedent of WTO panel reports (WTO Document 2018: WT/ GC/W/752/Rev.2). As argued by the former chair of the Appellate Body, Ambassador Ujal Bhatia, the crisis of the Appellate Body was indeed a crisis of trade multilateralism, as the United States tried to use it as grounds to push for the reform of the entire WTO system (Bhatia 2019). The real problem of the WTO DSM and the root of the United States’ frustration with it lies in its inability to address the “China problem,” or more broadly, the “emerging powers problem.” In recent years, numerous scholars have pointed out that China’s economic system is incompatible with the neoliberal principle of the WTO, which has contributed to the failure of the DSM. China has a reasonably good record on compliance, but this has been labeled “paper compliance” (Webster 2014), since it reflects China’s strategic attempt to comply merely with the written rules, instead of with the spirit and basic ideals of the WTO (Mavroidis and Sapir 2021). Thanks to its growing economic presence, China—together with other emerging powers such as India and Brazil—has gained greater diplomatic leverage and legal capacity to counter the dominance of the United States in the WTO (Shaffer and Gao 2018; deLisle 2018; Hopewell 2016). Collectively, they have formed a power-

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ful coalition that counters the effectiveness of the US-led WTO, and in many cases, US trade interests in general. As bluntly put by former United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer: It is impossible to negotiate new rules when many of the current ones are not being followed. This is why the United States is leading a discussion on the need to correct the sad performance of many members in notifications and transparency. (Wolfe 2017)

Of course, there are many issues to blame for the current impasse in the WTO DSM; but chief among them is that the United States has been critical about the system whose creation it supported, but has failed to come up with a practical solution to fix the problems. The WTO Secretariat has been stuck in the middle, along with various groups of dissatisfied members. 5.2

Emerging Powers in WTO Fisheries Subsidies Negotiations

Fisheries subsidies are among the most recent topics of negotiation in the WTO framework. These have important implications for the future of the WTO. From the discussions over whether the issue should be included in the Doha Round agenda to the hectic and lengthy 21-year negotiation process, and finally the adoption of an agreement on curbing fisheries subsidies at the WTO’s Twelfth ministerial meeting held in June 2022, the process sheds light on the role (or lack thereof) played by the WTO Secretariat in liberalizing trade through multilateral negotiations. Fisheries subsidies were first raised as an environmental problem at the WTO, even though this is a critically important development issue in the developing world. The negotiations were unique in the history of the GATT/ WTO in addressing a trade issue that intersects with both the environment and development. The complexity of the negotiations was due to a North-South divide regarding the general support for environmental issues in the North, and concerns regarding development in the South. However, specific to the fisheries negotiation, the coalitions for and against the negotiations to curb fisheries subsidies were mixed between developed and developing countries. The members of negotiating group “Friends of Fish,” which sought to reduce fisheries subsidies, include both developed countries (Australia, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, and the United States), and developing countries (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Pakistan, and Peru). Given the divergent preferences among the United States, the EU, and a large group of developing countries on the issues that should be included in the Doha Round, the role of WTO DG Mike Moore (who served from 1999 to 2002) and General Council Chairman Stuart Harbinson (1994–2002)

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was to diplomatically collect information from the WTO members, process this, address the strong skepticism of key members, and narrow down the differences. The ultimate goal was to get the Doha Round launched after the delay since the Seattle Ministerial Conference. The United States and the EU disagreed on the issue of whether to add fisheries subsidies to the new round. The United States pushed for negotiations on fisheries subsidies; while the EU (together with Japan and South Korea) rejected this proposal. They instead argued that as a subsidy issue, it was already part of the general talks under the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures and there was thus no need to negotiate it as a standalone issue (Jones 2010). The US preference ultimately prevailed, with strong support from the WTO Secretariat. Influenced by Moore’s diplomatic maneuvering, the United States and other WTO members were willing to accommodate European demands on other environmental issues such as the relationship between WTO rules and the multilateral environmental agreements (VanGrasstek 2013). In addition, Moore’s decision to announce this new round as the “Doha Development Agenda” convinced many developing country members that despite the US focus on the environmental impact of fisheries subsidies on overfishing, curbing the subsidies would reduce the amount of high-seas commercial fishing being undertaken by developed countries and would therefore bring economic benefits to fishermen in the developing world. Negotiations began in 2001 at the Doha Ministerial Conference with a mandate highlighted in the Doha Ministerial Declaration to “clarify and improve WTO disciplines on fisheries subsidies, taking into account the importance of this sector to developing countries.” The goal of the negotiations was clarified in the 2005 Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration to call for both the prohibition of harmful subsidies and the grant of appropriate and effective special and differential treatment (SDT) to developing members. This strategic framing of an issue of importance to development and poverty reduction successfully engaged developing country members in the negotiations. However, despite the hard work of the WTO Secretariat, and in particular the chair of the negotiating group, the multilateral negotiations made little progress for many years. Draft rules were prepared by Ambassador Guillermo Valles Galmes of Uruguay in 2008, but member states could not agree upon the specific terms of SDT and the scope of prohibited subsidies (Wong 2021). In 2022, Chairman Dennis Francis of Trinidad and Tobago openly stated that “there is too little convergence on even the technical issues and indeed virtually none on the core substantive issues, for there to be anything to put into a bottom-up, convergence legal text” (WTO 2011). Just like other multilateral negotiations within the WTO framework, the fisheries subsidies negotiations encountered divergent views, interests, and preferences among the WTO membership. The BRICS became key players

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in the negotiations. As in other WTO negotiations, the BRICS endeavored to maintain solidarity among themselves, and to continue to lead and represent the developing country coalition in the negotiations. For instance, they collectively issued a statement after the BRICS Summit held in India in 2021 that vaguely supported the conclusion of the fisheries subsidy negotiation before the Twelfth Ministerial Conference, but presented no concrete steps to do so: We underscore the significance of the ongoing WTO negotiations on fisheries subsidies and urge all WTO members to continue working towards achieving meaningful outcomes in the fisheries subsidies negotiations by MC12. We further recognize that appropriate and effective special and differential treatment for developing country members including LDCs should be an integral part of these negotiations, as mandated by the WTO Ministerial Decision of 2017 and SDG 14.6. (BRICS 2021)

The complexity of the negotiations lies in the conflicts of interest among both the developed countries and the developing countries. In addition to the disagreement between the United States and the EU mentioned above, developing countries were split in their negotiating positions. The top-five subsidizing nations—China, the EU, the United States, South Korea, and Japan—provide four times as much in subsidies as all the low-income countries combined (Sumaila et al. 2019). The fact that China, as the largest subsidizer, was insisting on being treated as a developing country and enjoying SDT wass strongly opposed by the developed countries. At the same time, it caused cleavages within the developing country coalition. China’s continued reluctance to scale back its subsidies increasingly set its negotiation preferences apart from those of the other emerging powers and low-income countries alike. Brazil and India tacitly distanced themselves from China in the negotiations (Liang and Zeng, forthcoming). India proposed that developing countries with gross annual national incomes below $5000 be exempt from the need to take on commitments for cuts in fisheries subsidies. Brazil introduced a revised proposal on October 20, 2020 to reduce and limit WTO members’ fisheries subsidies based on the size of their fisheries subsidies (IISD 2020). These proposals excluded China from enjoying SDT given its gross domestic product per capita, the size of its subsidies, and its focus on high-seas fishing. In particular, small developing countries seemed to realize that siding with China would not help them to receive additional SDT from developed countries in the negotiations. While China was a relatively quiet player in the negotiations and only submitted a couple of proposals on SDT together with a few other developing countries, India was a much more proactive actor in the negotiations. As repeatedly argued by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, India’s concerns are that irrational subsidies and overfishing by many countries are hurting Indian fishermen and their livelihoods (Financial Express 2021). In the meantime, India argued for a longer phaseout period for its own subsidies

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to commercial fishing operations. It took a strong stance on this until the last minute of the negotiations. An article in the Financial Times revealed that Goyal “lectured baffled delegates about the role of fish in Indian mythology, religion and culture and mused that the traditional fishers’ life in India has intertwined with the oceans and seas since times immemorial” (Beattie 2022). Many believed that the fisheries subsidies negotiations were low-hanging fruit for the WTO members, as there was already a consensus to take action to curb fisheries subsidies in order to liberalize trade, promote development, and protect the oceans. However, the negotiations failed to narrow the gap between developed and developing members—and even among the developing countries themselves—for two decades. The fisheries subsidies negotiations are crucial in keeping the WTO relevant as a global trade governance organization. As stated by DG Okonjo-Iweala, “I think everyone agrees with me that if there is anything that would demonstrate that the WTO is back and capable of having positive results, it is a good outcome early enough this year to these fisheries subsidies negotiations” (Okonjo-Iweala 2021). It was ostensibly a diplomatic victory for the WTO when agreement was finally reached at the Twelfth Ministerial Conference in June 2022. But many observers suggest that this was mere posturing by the member states to save the WTO, given that the agreement itself lacks substance. In fact, many scholars and trade negotiators have pointed out that it has “big holes” and is “very disappointing” (Guardian 2022). The agreement creates a global framework that limits subsidies for illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing; for fishing over-depleted populations; and for vessels fishing on the unregulated high seas. However, it dropped “capacity enhancing” or “harmful subsidies,” the issue at the center of the 20-year negotiations. Moreover, enforcement of the agreement is mainly reliant on self-reporting by national governments, which will inevitably lead to weak implementation. As a result, some environmental NGOs have said that the agreement is “saving face but not saving fish” (Oceana 2022). This case reflects the reality that the WTO Secretariat faces today: increasing conflicts of interest among its members; a lack of leadership from the traditional Western countries; and increasing disharmony among the developing countries. The chair of the fisheries subsidy negotiations, Ambassador Santiago Wills of Colombia, issued another revised draft of the agreement on the eve of the Twelfth Ministerial Conference. In his statement to mark the release of the text, he emphasized that: In some places the draft text is my best attempt to suggest an outcome that I think is most likely to attract consensus. In some areas I am delighted to say it is not my work at all. Instead, the text presented came from groups of members with very

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different starting positions and who, working together, resolved their differences and presented to the plenary a text they could all accept. (WTO 2022)

The negotiation chair completely omitted the references to “capacity-building” and “harmful subsidies,” as member states could not reach consensus on who should be eligible for an exemption from the ban on harmful subsidies. In the past, SDT normally grants exemptions to countries that self-identify as developing countries; but the rise of China and other emerging powers has made this concession unacceptable to the developed members. The modest results of the negotiations have extended the relevance of the WTO; but they have also demonstrated the weakened position of its management team—the Secretariat—in bridging the differences among member states and facilitating the convergence of preferences in light of the ever-growing tensions among the new “Quad”: the United States, the EU, China and India.

6. CONCLUSION Currently, each of the WTO’s three primary functions—negotiating, monitoring, and settling disputes—is under stress, in large part because members cannot reach consensus on how to improve them. The WTO is struggling to maintain its relevance and credibility as the anchor of the global rules-based trading system, even while its legitimacy remains. As Douglass North defines them (accurately, in the opinion of this author), international institutions consist of both informal constraints and formal rules negotiated by states, in order to “create order and reduce uncertainty in exchange” (North 1991). While the WTO is a member-driven organization, as we have said, the institutional functions to facilitate negotiations, administer agreements, monitor members’ compliance, and assist in the capacity-building of developing countries have empowered the WTO Secretariat to an extent that should not be underestimated. The WTO as an organization simply cannot operate without the institutional support of the WTO Secretariat (Van Grasstek 2013). Besides servicing the operational needs of the organization, on some occasions the WTO Secretariat and in particular the DG have stepped up to play a proactive role. They participate in bridging the gap between member states in negotiations; they mediate between disputing parties at the DSM; and they influence the agenda-setting process of the ministerial meetings. The relationship between the WTO Secretariat and member states has always been tricky. It is the implicit goal of the Secretariat to promote its own authority over member states; and in turn, member states—especially developed country members—have consistently opposed this. Relatively speaking, developing country members tend to have greater respect for the authority of the WTO Secretariat and are more dependent on its technical/legal assistance

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(Interview in Beijing, Summer 2019). In order for the WTO to work effectively and to maintain its relevance for member states, including by ensuring greater representation of the developing world on the staff, the WTO Secretariat has become more responsive to the preferences of emerging economies—in particular, their demand that it emphasize the link between trade and development. This, unfortunately, has irritated the developed country members, led by the United States. Consequently, despite its importance and legitimacy, this new focus on development, and the assumption that granting preference to developing countries will promote development, has derailed the ambitions of developed countries toward further trade liberalization. This is particularly true in relation to the issue areas that matter most to developed countries. Given these institutional constraints, the role of the WTO Secretariat will remain limited and contested. With the new reality of a growing membership and the rise of the emerging powers, it must strike a balance between its organizational role, the interests and preferences of the large developed countries, and the new demands of the largest emerging powers. While it perhaps cares more than any single member state about the relevance and legitimacy of the organization, the WTO Secretariat is not in a position to drive change or to make bold reforms. It will require commitment from the major powers—especially among the new “Quad” (the United States, the EU, China, and India)—to collectively kickstart the reform process and provide the much-needed institutional catalyst for post-pandemic economic recovery.

Appendix 1

Network of trading partners

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Appendix 2

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Organizational chart of the WTO

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10. Conclusion to Global Institutions in a Time of Power Transition Kendall Stiles and Joel E. Oestreich 1. INTRODUCTION This project has aimed to improve our understanding of how power transitions affect global governance, particularly with respect to international governmental organizations (IGOs) and the international civil servants that inhabit them. It seeks to show that these civil servants are important variables in understanding how IGOs change in response to power shifts, but also are independent variables of their own. IGOs themselves are agents in this process; and their agency is not only the fact that they exist—their ability to shape behavior by virtue of their institutionalized norms and rules—but the fact that they are staffed by people with their own desires, culture, preferences, and ideas. We began with a series of conjectures in the two opening chapters. Some related to the overall dynamics of power transitions; some addressed IGO autonomy generally and independence of the staff specifically; and finally, in Chapter 2 we addressed some important normative questions regarding how the staff should respond to changes in the distribution of power among states. We have focused on two important rising powers—China and Brazil—and analyzed the policies and activities of several IGOs, including the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Asian International Investment Bank, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the World Health Organization (WHO). In the process, we have gained valuable insights, many of which can be generalized and allow us to assess the original propositions. It is to this task that we now turn.

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POWER TRANSITION THEORY

We begin by reviewing conjectures about the nature of power transitions. As we know, international relations scholars have invested considerable effort in understanding power transitions, although much of this work does not 179

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directly relate to global governance. In general, scholars find power transitions to be fraught with danger and violence. The general assumption is that dominant actors will resist efforts by revisionist states to supplant them and alter the world order, but generally fail to prevent the transition. They also see power transitions as times of shifting norms and global rules. International institutions, when they are considered as important intervening variables, are generally seen as representing a global order that has some objective reality. They are “social facts,” the embodiment of a rules-based order. Less attention, however, is paid to those that actually constitute these social facts: the Secretariat, which has its own priorities and desires. It, too, is a variable here; rising and declining powers will struggle also over their loyalty and power—a form of “social atomism” which understands the central (but, to be sure, not sole) role of individuals when understanding social phenomena. Gregory Chin provides a clear description of the interaction between IGOs, their secretariats, and the major powers—particularly with respect to China’s rise, and particularly where material capabilities are concerned. While China has not yet matched the United States with respect to international financial capabilities or certain technological and military capabilities (e.g., technological innovation, aircraft carriers), it sees its trajectory as irresistibly upward. Further, it believes its natural status in the international system and in a variety of global governance institutions has been blocked by the dominant actors such as the United States and Western Europe. While Chen believes that these revisionist tendencies can be channeled through careful accommodation—and that the staff of various United Nations (UN) agencies have worked adeptly to do so—Bimal Adhikari sees China’s efforts to create parallel and alternative international economic institutions as a direct challenge to the existing international order. By playing the central role in creating institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), China can ensure that it will be able to dominate their operation while also being able to constrain the influence of Western states that join—thus turning the institutional tables. But Adhikari acknowledges that the governing principles of these new institutions do not differ dramatically from the existing Bretton Woods order. This underscores China’s preference to operate through multilateral mechanisms rather than unilaterally. It is, indeed, recognized by all the present authors that China is not withdrawing from multilateralism, but only trying to bend it more to its own will. And China is still working hard to expand its influence in the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Taken together, it seems that the fear of violent global upheaval or a wholesale challenge to rules-based institutions is not borne out by what we have seen thus far. With respect to Brazil’s interests, Hugo Bras and his co-authors have made it clear that the country’s material capabilities have not yet given it the freedom to disregard existing global norms in areas such as human rights and health.

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Instead, Brazil has faced pushback and even outright derision from IGO staff; and this has itself been an important part of checking Brazil’s achievement of its policy goals in these institutions. Interestingly, a lot of this has come from UN staff themselves, rather than member states with opposing interests. Brazil has challenged the existing set of priorities and norms. More generally, the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) seem both divided and largely ineffective with respect to creating a new world order. Oestreich, too, makes this point in his chapter on development: the BRICS have their questions about how development is to be practiced and promoted, but they do not all have the same interests or the same power to effect change. Liberal theory predicts that power transitions can be managed, although liberal scholars disagree on the likelihood of a process that will maintain the existing order in a recognizable form. Some scholars argue that absent a hegemon, a group of likeminded states will step up to guarantee the provision of collective goods. The evidence seems to be lacking to support this conjecture, however, as the two leaders of the Bretton Woods conference—the United States and the United Kingdom—have spent much of the last decade actively undermining key elements of the system. As Wei Liang has pointed out, the United States went to great lengths during the Trump administration to undercut not only the substance of the WTO rules but also its institutional procedures, including especially the Appellate Body of the dispute settlement system. Although not addressed systematically in this project, the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union has sent shockwaves through the liberal economic order that have amplified the anti-globalist and populist rhetoric of countries in the Global North and South (see Bras on Bolsonaro’s trade policies). Populism and illiberal democracy generally have also undermined support for human rights, as discussed by Rhona Smith and Conall Mallory. As of the time of writing, there appears to be a vacuum with respect to leadership of the conventional liberal order. On the other hand, several authors have noted that IGOs have some level of pull and influence on even the more recalcitrant states. As we will see in the next section, IGOs and their staff have been able to resist rapid changes to the rules and norms; and have at times been able to use their powers to discipline rule-breakers, as in the case of the WTO Dispute Settlement Body, which has ruled against US tariffs on steel and other goods (Liang), as well as Brazil’s human rights violations and defiance of health protocols during COVID-19 (Smith & Mallory; Bras). Whether this means the world will experience a time of strong regimes “after hegemony” is difficult to say—particularly since some IGOs have been largely ineffective (Strobl). Other theories of power transition have focused on ideas and narratives, pointing out that in some cases, what determines rules and practices is not rooted in material capabilities. Oestreich and others acknowledge that those with the money and weapons often seem to have the most persuasive argu-

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ments, so changes to the dominant values are likely tied to power. Smith and Mallory point out that the United States and China have both, for very different reasons, been skeptical of the value of global human rights norms. Trump and Xi represent rather extreme examples of this, but are not obviously departing from tradition. China has been promoting a new development model in a variety of fora—one that emphasizes state-led development with far less regard for civil society involvement and respect for human rights. As Oestreich points out, some of these ideas hark back to an earlier phase of World Bank policymaking, when politics were supposed to be kept strictly separate from Bank decisions. This idea itself was overturned as a result of new thinking in academic and activist circles during the 1980s—not least because the Secretariats of various UN agencies lobbied to have them altered. So in addition to Oestreich’s comments on development thinking, we see that in both the OHCHR and the WHO, staff have endeavored to sustain and diffuse principles of human rights and science-based epidemiology (rooted in professional training), respectively, in the face of pressure from states (Smith & Mallory; Strobl). They have indeed pushed back, as best they can, against the creeping encroachment of politics. The implication of normative leadership is that the staff themselves are players in the international arena, not just tools of member states. The counternarratives of Brazil and China, among others, also correspond to Gramscian and postcolonial theories of norm transition mentioned earlier— although not necessarily in the direction the theorists might have predicted. It is ironic, for instance, that countries that have instigated and benefited considerably from globalization—the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and Brazil—have taken a leadership role in undermining these norms, for the sake of nationalist narratives. Populism seems to be the primary motivating factor in the wealthier Western states, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom: a reaction to the perception that IGOs and multinational corporations are taking on governance functions at the expense of states. The counterpart to this is an anti-Western narrative found in the Global South. We see a reaction to globalization in both leftist and rightist, nativist movements in Western states. These each in their own way seek to shield local cultures and traditions from corruption by intellectuals, moneyed elites, and globalist governance structures. Taken together, ideas from the left and right and the North and South may appear to merge in an anti-hegemonic program; although once the details emerge, it is likely this will fracture along national lines. Taken together, this project suggests that where IGOs are concerned, theories of power transition are incomplete when they approach the question of the global ruled-based order. This order, we know, is expressed in global institutions. That these institutions “matter”—that they have a social reality that should be considered, independent of the interests of individual states—is well

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established in the international relations literature, except that which sticks to the most intransigent realism. While the agency of these organizations—and particularly of their staff—remains undertheorized, it does have an effect on the future of these institutions. Our contention is that we must acknowledge that state power and global bureaucracies interact in much more complex ways than any easy theory can capture. While the most powerful states clearly have an advantage in telling their story, the narratives and principles held in the arsenals of IGOs and professional associations and multinational corporations may sometimes win the day—or at least fight an effective delaying action. Likewise, ideas may create strange bedfellows that disrupt normal coalitions and alliances, such that opinions and policies follow something other than normal class or balance of power divisions and logics.

3.

IGO AND STAFF AUTONOMY

What can we learn about IGO-member state relations, particularly with respect to IGO autonomy? This question of staff autonomy is at the heart of this chapter, and gives it its ethical weight as well as its contribution to understanding how IGOs operate from a theoretical perspective. We have, in a sense, separated the autonomy of staff from the autonomy of institutions; it is not just about what the institution wants, but how individual staff see their roles and their place in the larger global structure; their perception of changing power balances—and our commitment to a method of individualism, a focus on the people who make up IGOs. In particular, we consider IGO staff as a variable and actor in the relationship between states—rising, falling, and otherwise—and the staff they “hire” to run their global institutions. Rational design theories of IGOs anticipate that powerful states will decide on a case-by-case basis the parameters of an IGO’s mandate and authority, but always preserve the right to revoke both when it serves their interests. Further, it argues that states—particularly the powerful ones—keep levers at their disposal to control IGOs, including steering their policy priorities, dominating their practices and procedures, withholding or redirecting funding, and replacing staff. This is often with the aim of using the IGO to help advance the national interests of the powerful states. Our study certainly suggests that this perspective has some legitimacy. Chin argued that China has not hesitated to use its influence to shape UN policy on particular issues, although not across the board. Smith and Mallory showed that China has used its capabilities and diplomatic strength to build sympathetic coalitions on the Human Rights Council (HRC). Adhikari discusses the links between voting congruity and IGO aid packages, pointing out that states that vote with Western powers have tended to receive far more aid than others. This also correlates with receiving non-permanent seats on the UN Security

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Council and the IMF Executive Board. It is reasonable to imagine that all of these things create a causal cycle. He shows that China also seems to reward political loyalty when making aid decisions. Smith and Mallory highlight the challenges the human rights machinery faces at the hands of member states which can, for example, wield the levers of funding to get their way. Strobl point out that when powerful actors such as China resist cooperating on epidemic management, they can often delay accountability. Oestreich observes that the foundational institutions after the Second World War were designed by the great powers of the day—often for purposes that lacked legitimacy from the outset. And Liang, as mentioned earlier, reveals that the United States is sometimes willing to attack the foundations of institutions such as the WTO, even though they have served US interests well for decades. On the other hand, Bras shows that belonging to the second tier of states with respect to capabilities exposes a government to harsh consequences for failure to follow global norms. Brazil’s confrontational approach has been rewarded with diplomatic isolation and reprimand, and a lessening of influence. Likewise, Strobl points out that the director-general of the WHO uses a different playbook when dealing with weaker and more dysfunctional states, since they are in greater need of what the international system has to offer. Oestreich shows that even though the BRICS countries would like to fundamentally alter the parameters of development assistance, they lack the legal and material capability to do so. Taken together, it seems clear that power is a key factor in explaining a state’s relationship with most IGOs. The correlation between state power and IGO practices and policy outcomes is clearly not as simple as rational design theory might suggest. For example, some IGOs have a large membership that sets policy by consensus, making it difficult for any one country to exercise too much influence. As Strobl and Liang point out, broad policy directives for the WHO are laid out by the World Health Assembly, while the General Council of the WTO does the same—and both operate mostly by consensus. This is generally true of the UN General Assembly as well. Looking at individual agents in IGOs helps us see where these theories fail, and where there are efforts to maintain a status quo in the face of revisionist, rising powers. The principal-agent approach is helpful in showing that states very often delegate considerable power to IGOs and allow them to operate at least somewhat autonomously within fairly broad parameters—often tied to the need for expertise and skill. At the same time, states—individually and collectively— seek to maintain the option to reassert themselves when it appears to them that the IGO agent is shirking or slipping in the execution of its duties. China has rallied its BRICS partners to urge acceptance of a top-down, large-scale infrastructure model of development in various UN agencies and programs, as pointed out by Oestreich. In the area of human rights, a number of Western

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European countries became alarmed at the degree of politicization of the Commission on Human Rights and in 2006 pushed for its replacement by the HRC. Smith and Mallory point out that the change has not been particularly successful, as recent patterns indicate that some illiberal and autocratic states have been able to form voting blocs that insulate fellow rights violators. Even where member states understand the need for objective, fact-based decision-making where public health is concerned, Strobl points out that states routinely intercede with members of the Emergency Committee to redirect the WHO’s focus and actions. They also sometimes withhold information that is unflattering or attempt to blunt WHO action by announcing “extraordinary containment measures”—as was done by China in connection with COVID-19 in February 2020. The OHCHR has an open mandate to review the human rights practices of all UN members, as Smith and Mallory point out. This very often pits it against powerful states, as one might expect. But for the most part, governments are willing to honor the authority of the OHCHR; although they endeavor to undercut OHCHR authority—which recently prompted the UN high commissioner for human rights to resign in protest. Likewise, WTO member states generally submit to oversight and judgment by the WTO dispute settlement system, as explained by Liang; but they also devise ways to diminish its authority or simply ignore rulings. For their part, IGOs have used certain tools to stretch the limits of their principal-agent contract. For instance, Oestreich shows that much of the current thinking on the place of human rights in development has come not from inside the traditional diplomatic system, but rather from academic and activist circles—often from individuals convincing others of the legitimacy of their perspective. This is also largely true of human rights more generally. Sometimes these efforts are supported by diplomats from second-tier states in Western Europe, such that Norway and the Netherlands and their partners exercise outsized influence. A key component of the principal-agent model is the fact that many IGOs are staffed by subject-matter experts who push at the limits of their mandates. This is particularly evident where power transitions bring to the fore states that are generally less committed to Western professional norms. But this is also the case where populist regimes come to power, bringing with them an anti-science and anti-intellectual bias. The WHO is expected to apply professional scientific methods and standards when determining whether an epidemic is erupting. As Strobl points out, this even means allowing the organization to do its own independent data-gathering and to consult freely with epidemiologists around the world. Development projects are also expected to be informed by the state of the art in such fields as economics, sociology, and engineering, as pointed out by Oestreich. This can lead to policy adjustments

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as the knowledge foundation shifts; but it can also result in considerable continuity where a scientific consensus exists. Aware of the influence and independence of staff in IGOs, some states have worked to ensure that their national interests will be taken into account despite their lack of control over individual staff. For example, as pointed by Chin, China has become increasingly eager to install its nationals in UN posts from the bottom to the senior echelons. It is worth recalling that China is severely underrepresented at UN headquarters, with just over 1,000 staff—or a little under 1 percent. The same was previously true at the higher levels, although systematic efforts have since largely rectified the situation. This has given China some influence over development policy, in particular—although Chin also pointed out the limitations of specific personnel changes in shifting an organizational culture writ large. More human rights skeptics are being hired at the OHCHR, according to Smith and Mallory, in part due to pressure from illiberal member states. And naturally, China is in a position to ensure that a disproportionate number of its nationals are hired at the AIIB and other agencies it is creating, as Adhikari observes. Adhikari shows how this can be translated into influence by creating alternative institutions, rather than just shifting the institution itself—which points to the difficulty of the entire enterprise! Funding is mentioned in Chapter 1 as another factor influencing IGO autonomy. In general, when all states pay their dues—and said dues cover the entirety of the agency’s day-to-day operations—IGO autonomy is increased. Staff do not need to please states on a day-to-day basis. On the other hand, where states agree to cover only a small fraction of an agency’s operating expenses or fall into arrears, the IGO must go begging for funds. States can manipulate an agency by directing funds toward particular types of projects and away from others. Only rarely does such an agency develop a high degree of stability (although UNICEF’s network of national NGOs insulates it fairly well). As we see in the cases presented, states are aware of this dynamic and have cut their funding when they need greater influence over IGOs. As Smith and Mallory explain, the OHCHR must generate two-thirds of its operating budget on its own, with the result that it is dependent on particular governments stepping up to make voluntary contributions. Because the contributions are voluntary, states have considerable latitude to aim them at certain types of activities—some of which fall outside the agency’s historical focus. The WHO was famously the target of dramatic shifts in funding during 2020 as it became a political football in a game between the United States and China. Since 80 percent of its budget comes from non-traditional dues payments, the crisis was less real than apparent, however—as Strobl explains. The WHO was accustomed to turning to agencies such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to cover operating costs. But it was obviously vulnerable to political manipulation.

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Finally, mention is made of the role of identity in shaping IGO autonomy. Much of this has already been addressed; but it is worth reiterating that IGO staff are often professionally trained and belong to strong epistemic communities. In addition, many are passionate advocates for social justice and are tied to transnational activist networks. As we have seen in the discussion of ethics in IGOs, it is often difficult for these international civil servants to carry out programs which they think betray their professional or personal standards. In addition, many of the agencies discussed in this book are long established, and have therefore accumulated a history and identity that transcend the preferences of those who happen to be working there at any one moment. The WHO, for its part, has its origins as a branch of the League of Nations and so predates the UN itself. In some cases, that identity may be anachronistic. As mentioned by Oestreich, it is hard to separate the Bretton Woods institutions of today from their post-Second World War founding. It has been difficult, for example, for the World Bank to incorporate a rights-based approach to development given its accumulated precedent and procedure. All of this means that any particular staff member working in any particular agency may have to reconcile a variety of “identities” associated with the job—and the need to work with member states.

4.

ETHICS AND THE INTERNATIONAL CIVIL SERVANT DURING POWER TRANSITIONS

To what degree do these chapters help us understand the ethics of global governance during times of power transition? Recall that IGOs find themselves in an ethically ambiguous place: on the one hand, they have been given a mandate, authority, staff, funding, and a certain degree of latitude to achieve some collective good; but on the other hand, the contracts that create IGOs almost invariably reserve ultimate power to member states, each of which is a sovereign entity free to enact its own domestic laws and develop its own foreign policy. This means that whatever the principles governing the institutions at their founding, it is within the purview of member states to change them in accordance with their own preferences and power. Furthermore, the provisions of almost every agency’s founding documents—along with major amendments enacted over time—are crowded with contradictions. The most obvious examples are Article 2 of the UN Charter, which guarantees the sovereignty equality of all members, and Article 42, which provides for collective security measures to reverse and punish aggression; while Articles 23 and 27 grant five countries permanent membership on the Security Council and a veto over all resolutions. Similarly, since the United States has a veto over IMF Executive Board decisions, it can choose to ignore the rules of financial prudence that govern everyone else.

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As a result, any particular staff member at any one time is likely to be torn about which priorities merit their attention and devotion. One school of thought—call it the “sovereign-democracy” approach—dictates that staff should carefully follow the shifting preferences of member states rather than remaining overly loyal to obsolete documents or injecting their own personal and professional preferences into the mix. Chin implies that this is what is expected of the many newly hired Chinese nationals working at the UN headquarters, for example. Adhikari implies the same with respect to Chinese nationals working at the AIIB, pointing out that the staff at Bretton Woods institutions have generally been white Westerners and have had no problem advancing the interests of wealthy European and North American countries from the founding. Strobl observes that it is difficult for members of the WHO Emergency Committee to resist pressure from China or other countries when they contact them directly. Such an approach need not necessarily be considered a capitulation, since responsiveness to state preference is a reasonable ethical duty for the staff. On the other hand, the cases show that where power is in transition, the staff can find themselves in vulnerable positions. Bras highlights that the staff can become paralyzed and indecisive when it comes to sorting out which country’s influence to weigh more heavily, when powerful actors not only disagree with each other but sometimes carry out policies that directly undermine an agency’s raison d’être. As Smith and Mallory point out, human rights language can become a weapon in the hands of powerful actors eager both to punish their enemies and to deflect criticism. In such a situation, staff members finding the truth and judging fairly may inevitably lead to state recrimination and abuse. Similarly, development workers at UNICEF and the United Nations Development Programme are finding it increasingly difficult to carry out rights-based projects that are not repudiated by China or other illiberal states (Oestreich). It appears, then, that a purely sovereign-democracy model of perfect responsiveness to state preference is untenable in many IGOs. It is also probably unethical where member states are pressuring staff to undertake endeavors that they believe are inherently wrong—for example, contrary to basic principles of multilateralism, human rights, and the peaceful resolution of disputes. This implies that staff should move in the direction of loyalty to the purposes of the organization, first and foremost (the “thick” model of staff responsibility). Of course, this also means thinking through which provisions of the agency’s founding documents should be prioritized since, as we mentioned, many charters are contradictory. And, more important, staff members need to know at what point state preferences might trump agency loyalty (the “thin” model). The comparison between how staff have approached China and Brazil is instructive. It is clear from Chin’s chapter that UN officials—particularly

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the secretary-general—have been eager to engage with China and to expand its presence in exchange for its resources. Since this aligned with Beijing’s preference, things progressed quickly. This seems to follow the thin model. Yet we also see that the UN officials were trying to convince Beijing and its representatives to accept existing UN priorities—a thicker model. As Bras observes, Brazil under Bolsonaro was not treated with the same enthusiasm as China, and instead was castigated for his policies. Was China given more leeway even though its record on a number of issues central to UN principles is not much better than Brazil’s? Perhaps a key difference between the two is that China still spoke well of multilateralism generally, while Brazil disdained it. Chin implies that Chinese nationals may in the long run accept a thin or even thick model of loyalty to the institution, rather than a purely sovereign-democracy model of loyalty to Beijing. The cases seem to indicate a certain degree of flexibility and adaptability on the part of the staff. Most generally accept a thinner version of institutional loyalty, observing that although staff would rather do what they believe they were hired to do, sometimes he who pays the piper calls the tune. As Smith and Mallory point out, the OHCHR sometimes operates like an NGO-for-hire agency, and makes it a priority to fulfill the demands of those states making voluntary contributions. Likewise, although the World Bank would like to appear to be independent of the United States for the most part, it is unsurprising that it is the least committed to a rights-based approach to development. On the other hand, there is evidence that some UN staff are willing to put the agency first—even at the price of their job, as mentioned with respect to the UN high commissioner for human rights, who resigned rather than “bend the knee” to states that he felt were undermining the organization’s basic purpose. But these moments are rare. Rather, there is some evidence that the UN is having a harder time retaining young professionals—and one of the reasons might be the expectation of adapting to state preferences. Several authors reported concerns on the part of more senior staff regarding the difficulty of trying to interpret which statement by which diplomat was deserving of serious attention. While it would be unfortunate if all the idealists working at the UN became disenchanted or discouraged, it is perhaps inevitable that at some point in everyone’s career, they will encounter a conflict between the ideal and the pragmatic. This tension is baked into the life of international civil servants, as is also the case with most soldiers and diplomats. One cannot typically choose one’s superior—and when there is more than one, it is necessary to make strategic choices at times. What is key is to know one’s bedrock beliefs and the core commitments of the institution, and to know what would seriously threaten either one—and to be willing to walk away from the job if that happens.

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Taken together, the studies in this book underscore the importance of understanding the interplay between institutions and power politics, between interests and ethics, and between the ideal and the pragmatic. The task of working in international institutions during a period of power transition is among the most difficult in the world. While billions are counting on these individuals to deliver on their institutions’ promises, they must also take care to ensure that the organizations can function in a shifting and often hostile environment. To flip the script, it is also worth reminding states of their profound duty to honor treaty commitments and to embrace peace and prosperity rather than just the national interest and political advantage. The stakes are simply too high to revert to the sort of rivalry and war that we are already seeing in places like Ukraine.

Index Africa 14, 43–4, 46, 53, 164, 166 AIDS 46 Annan, Kofi 43–4, 48, 52–3 Argentina 51, 170 Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) 19, 108, 123–4, 131–3, 180, 186, 188

Constructivism 3, 5–6 COVID-19 10, 12–13, 18–19, 56, 67, 73, 83, 85, 92, 142, 147–8, 150, 152, 154–55, 181, 185

Ban, Ki-Moon 44, 48, 52–3 Biden, Joe 1, 12–13, 31–3, 76, 166–7 Bolsonaro, Jair 16–17, 62, 65–76, 181, 189 Brazil 2, 14, 16–17, 20, 26, 47, 50–51, 61–77, 90, 101, 103, 109, 162–65, 168, 171, 179–82, 188–9 democratic institutions 67, 72–4 Bretton Woods system 9, 14, 18–19, 164, 180–81, 187–8 BRICS 2, 35, 62, 65, 101, 109–10, 112, 122, 163, 170–71, 181, 184 Bush, George W. 43, 125

environment 16–17, 32–3, 50, 53, 67–8, 70–74, 84, 113, 169–70, 172 European Union 2, 35, 51, 65, 70, 85, 125, 166, 181

democracy 16–17, 32, 62, 68, 106, 123, 134, 145, 153, 181

Food and Agriculture Organization 51–2 Functionalism 3, 5, 144 global civil society 72, 114, 182 Global South 18, 32, 55, 65–66, 93, 103, 113, 164, 182 Gramsci, Antonio 3, 6, 182 great powers 2–4, 6, 9–10, 25, 41, 63–4, 164, 184 Group of 77 32–5

Canada 51, 90, 163, 165, 168 China 1–2, 7, 10, 12–20, 26, 31–5, 38, 41–57, 61–2, 66, 87–90, 101, 103, 106–10, 112, 122–4, 127, 129–37, 150–53, 155, 160, 161–6, 168, 171, 173–4, 179–86, 188–9 Belt and Road Initiative 14, 18, 89, 107 Chinese Communist Party 15 Chinese values 34 foreign aid 14, 34, 45–46, 54, 56, 106–7, 109–10, 133–4 representation in UN 31, 42–3, 46–52, 56, 124, 189 UN Association of China 46 UN peacekeeping 16, 31, 34, 42, 44–45, 53, 56–7 Cold War 3, 9, 12, 28, 128, 132 Colombia 50, 169, 172

Haley, Nikki 12, 45, 126 Hammarskjold, Dag 15, 30, 37 hegemony 2–7, 12, 18, 25, 27, 31, 35–8, 103, 109–10, 115, 123, 134, 181–2 hegemonic bloc 6 hierarchy 3–4, 6, 16, 83 Hu, Jintao 42, 46 India 2, 10, 12, 14, 26, 35, 47, 49, 51, 62, 90, 101, 109, 131, 136, 162–4, 168, 171–4, 181 Industrial Development Organization 50 International Civil Aviation Organization 50, 52

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international financial institutions 1, 103, 124, 131–6 International Governmental Organizations (IGO) 1–2, 7–9, 16–17, 20, 25, 37, 41, 43, 46, 54, 66, 102, 111–13, 115, 143, 145–46, 159, 161, 164–65, 179–88 autonomy 7–8, 179, 183, 186–7 thick 15, 27, 29–30, 35–37, 188–89 thin 29–30, 35–37, 188–9 international norms 2–4, 7, 17, 20, 25, 34, 36, 52, 55–57, 64, 85, 89, 103, 107–8, 115, 134, 159, 181–2, 184–85 International Monetary Fund 1, 8–9, 14, 18, 124, 126–37, 160–61, 180, 184, 187 International Telecommunication Union 50 Iraq War (2003) 43 Japan 10, 35, 44–45, 47, 122, 126–8, 130–31, 135, 163, 166, 168, 170–71 liberal theory 4–5, 9, 17–19, 27, 36, 56, 61, 64, 67, 89, 103, 107–8, 116, 136–7, 143, 166, 168–9, 172, 174, 181, 185–86, 188 Millennium Development Goals 46, 50, 53, 56 neoliberal theory 9, 18, 36, 103, 107, 168 non-aligned movement 32, 34 Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) 17, 80–93, 114, 179, 182, 185–86, 189 Pakistan 45, 55, 67–8, 74, 76, 136, 169 peacekeeping 16, 31, 33–4, 42, 44–45, 47, 53, 55–57, 67, 76 power transition 1–3, 6–7, 10, 17, 81, 86, 179–82, 185, 187, 190 declining powers 3, 25, 109–11, 180

rising powers 3–4, 10, 12, 15–16, 25–26, 29, 42–3, 52–3, 57, 62, 88, 107–10, 116, 122–3, 126, 129, 160, 164–65, 179, 184 theory 6, 179 principal-agent theory 8, 26, 29, 111–13, 145–46, 184–85 realist theory 3–5, 144, 183 Russia 1–2, 10, 12, 14, 26, 31, 33–35, 47, 51–3, 62, 88–90, 101, 109, 162–3, 181 SARS 50 South Africa 14, 62, 82, 101, 109, 163, 181 sovereign-democracy model 188–9 status 3–4, 6–7, 31, 53–4, 104, 124, 180 sustainable development goals 18, 49–50, 56, 108–9, 112–15, 172 Sustainable Development Group 18, 102, 114 Taiwan 14, 48, 134 Trump, Donald 1, 12, 14, 31–3, 45, 51, 65–67, 74, 76, 85, 87–8, 110, 126, 166–7, 181–2 Ukraine 1, 10, 31, 33, 35, 190 United Nations Development Programme 8, 42, 91–2, 102, 104, 188 United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization 8, 92 UNICEF 8, 18, 91–2, 102, 104–5, 110–12, 114, 179, 186, 188 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 35, 72 United Nations Peace and Development Trust Fund 45 United Nations Secretariat 7–8, 15, 17–18, 26, 28, 31, 36–7, 41–3, 49–57, 61–2, 67, 81–5, 90, 93, 105, 110–11, 123–9, 151, 180, 182 United Nations Security Council 2, 9, 32, 34, 43–4, 47, 52–3, 63, 67, 88, 123, 187

Index

United Nations staff 1, 12, 26–8, 29–31, 33–4, 42, 46–8, 52–3, 55–56, 102, 105, 108, 111–12, 115, 123–4, 143, 145, 181–2, 189 and great powers 1, 12, 33–4, 52, 102, 108, 143, 181 charter 27–8, 30–31, 35–37, 64, 145, 187 ethics 12, 26, 29–30 neutrality 26, 28, 31 priorities 189 United Kingdom 1, 10, 12, 35, 47, 50–51, 65, 89, 126, 128, 132–4, 181–2 United Nations 1–2, 8, 25, 27, 38, 41–7, 61, 63, 66–7, 70–73, 80, 91–2, 101, 122–3, 125, 133, 142, 145, 147, 179–80, 188 agenda-setting 9, 173 budget 44, 46, 55, 91–3, 122 charter 2, 27–31, 34–7, 63–4, 131, 145, 187 core principles 37 Department of Economic and Social Affairs 42, 48–49, 53, 56 Secretary-General 28, 30, 43–5, 47–50, 52–4, 73, 84, 100, 189 system 1, 15–16, 34, 41–3, 46, 52, 57, 62, 82–3, 87, 91, 102, 108, 115, 123, 132

193

United States 1, 3, 7, 10, 12, 14, 31–34, 38, 43–45, 49, 51, 63, 67, 85, 87–9, 104, 109–10, 112–14, 123–37, 160, 163, 165–74, 180–82, 184, 186–7, 189 and IMF 126–37 and WTO 166–74 Washington Consensus 36, 103, 106 Wen, Jiabao 42 World Bank 1–2, 7, 11, 14, 18, 101–5, 109–14, 124, 126, 129–37, 160–61, 179, 182, 187, 189 Executive Board 2, 130 World Food Program 32, 42, 45, 54 World Health Organization 12, 19, 50, 56, 67, 74, 110, 142–56, 179, 182, 184– COVID-19 67, 142, 148, 150, 152, 154–55, 181, 185 PHEIC 19, 142–3, 148–51, 153, 155 World Intellectual Property Organization 51 World Trade Organization 12, 19, 39, 65–66, 159–74, 179, 181, 184–85 Appellate Body 12, 161, 166–8, 181 Xi, Jinping 14, 42, 123, 151, 153, 182