Abstract
The institutional design of international organizations usually expresses state sovereignty, as each state has the same formal rights and obligations. This includes equal speaking rights in international negotiations. Becoming vocal is a means for states to signal national interests and influence international norms as well as to express their sovereignty. However, an analysis of 520 international negotiations demonstrates that states vary considerably in the usage of speaking rights. To addresses this puzzle, the paper presents an opportunity structure-incentives model and puts its observable implication to a comprehensive empirical test. This reveals that states operating in favourable conditions, most notably in small IOs, and states pursuing a broad scope of interests, being powerful and having strong international identities are most active in international negotiations. By contrast, smaller states that can neither rely on support of regional groups, nor on a government apparatus that effectively develops national positions are least likely to benefit from an equalizing institutional design of an international negotiation arena. Hence, there are limits to the extent to which an equalizing institutional design of IOs and regimes is able to mitigate real world structural differences between states.
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Notes
Exceptions with weighted voting systems are rare and include the European Union, the Council of Europe, the International Energy Agency, the IMF, the World Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
Due to changes in or irregular meeting frequencies and due to specific characteristics of some IOs and regimes (e.g., issue orientation), it was not feasible to map four negotiations per year in 24 out of 135 instances. In such cases, we included as many negotiations as possible (most often three per year).
For example, the IAEA has 164 members and its General Conference Rules of Procedure Rule 57 states: “The General Conference may limit the time to be allowed to each speaker and the number of times each delegate may speak on any question.” Similar for the ILO (185 member states), “No delegate shall speak more than once upon the same motion, resolution or amendment, without the special permission of the Conference, provided that the mover of a motion, resolution or amendment shall have the right to speak twice unless the closure has been adopted in accordance with article 16” (International Labor Conference Rules of Procedure, Rule 14.3). The UNGA (193 member states) can limit the number of speeches made concerning procedural issues: “The General Assembly may limit the time to be allowed to each speaker and the number of times each representative may speak on any question. Before a decision is taken, two representatives may speak in favor of, and two against, a proposal to set such limits” (UNGA Rules of Procedure, Rule 72).
For example, while all states in equalizing IOs and regimes have the same formal rights, the activity pattern illustrates that the usage of speaking rights in international negotiations varies.
Rationalist approaches assume that states are strategic actors seeking to maximize own interests in a cost-effective manner (Shepsle 1989; Tsebelis 1990; Martin 1993; Levy 1997; Miller 2000; Snidal 2002) and allow for insights into strategic incentives for states to make speeches in international negotiations.
Constructivist approaches are based on the notion of a mutual constitutive relationship between actors and a structure that is able to capture the role of ideational factors and identities as motivating forces behind state action (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Searle 1995; Wendt 1995; Adler 1997; Ruggie 1998; Fierke and Joergensen 2001; Adler 2002; Risse 2002; Checkel 2004; Deitelhoff 2009).
This paper examines hypotheses based on rationalist as well as hypotheses based on constructivist assumptions. While the former treat actor preferences as exogenously given, the latter assumes identities and preferences can be subject to endogenous change. However, for the purpose of this paper, these differences are not problematic since we focus on differences of identity-based, interest scope-based and power-based incentives between states, not on varying identities or preferences of one state over time (on gap bridging approaches, c.f. Checkel 1997; Panke 2006).
Country fixed effects are not reported in Table 3 due to limited in-group variation.
For UN member states that have legal predecessors (such as Russia with respect to the USSR), the number of ratifications of the current state automatically includes the treaties ratified by the predecessor.
The data has been collected based on the information provided by the website https://treaties.un.org/Pages/DB.aspx?path=DB/MTDSG/page1_en.xml. Alternatively, the international orientation of states can be measured by the proxy ‘duration of IO membership’ in years (based on information from IO homepages). States that have been member of an IO for a longer period of time can be expected to be more strongly socialized into this specific negotiation context than states that joined more recently. The stronger socialization effects are, the more likely it is that states take an interest in the norms negotiated in the respective IO and the more likely it is that they place emphasis on actively participating in the shaping of these norms. For the HRC and the UNEP, membership is elected out of the body of UNGA members and rotates. To capture this specificity, all UNGA members are coded as potential members since 2008 for the HRC and since 1972 for UNEP. The empirical findings remain robust, regardless which operationalization is used.
Another interviewee explained, “there are some states where if you go to them and say, can you support us on this resolution, then they will have to go through the whole process of recommending it to the headquarters, headquarters will consult the relevant ministries on the issue. There’s an organized process (..) And then there’re others where they may really not have a position because the bureaucracy is such that it’s one of those issues where they never really had to concern themselves about (..) obviously, if the government is ineffective, they’re really not going to care about some little resolution that in the UN and taking a position on it, quite frankly” (interview #7, 22-10-10). In contrast, a member from a country with limited government effectiveness reported “you can imagine the minister has so many issues to look at and it would take days until they decide so we are sometimes left with this situation where we have sent a note seeking instructions and the discussion is happening at the UN and we don’t receive instructions in time” (interview #2, 03-06-10). Similar “at the UN, things move at a different pace than at any MFA, (..) so, instructions are often time delayed” (interview#96, 12-04-11).
E.g., “We have a very strong burden sharing practice, which means that the representatives of EU member states can volunteer to join the so-called EU team and because of the diversity of the activities of a committee I mean the EU delegation would not be able to cover all the items or the questions, therefore we have this burden sharing exercise or burden sharing practice whereas the people from member states can also join, you know the EU delegation in negotiating different resolutions, but obviously the burden sharer from a member state has to rely on the mandate given by the 27 as well. So there is no difference in this regard between an EU delegation negotiator or a burden sharer from a member state, it’s all in the, I would say the only difference is the origin that the person comes from a member state and you know we are from the EU delegation but the mandate, the objective, the tactics are exactly the same, identical” (interview #155, 15-02-12).
A diplomat reported “in the late 1990’s (..) it was not unheard of that we would be part of an EU statement on the one hand and perhaps a Nordic statement as well. But that was getting increasingly rare, so today the EU is the most important regional group in the UN” (interview #104, 14-07-11). While EU members tend to almost exclusively work through the EU now, other states tend to work with certain groups on an issue specific basis rather than predominantly through one group: “sometimes we also use, wider grouping, Organization of Islamic Countries for instance and sometimes for specific issues use ASEAN group, critical when we talk about terrorism for instance” (interview #32, 16-12-10). Also “we have our own regional grouping - the ASEAN, the Association of South East Asian Nations (..) anything that impacts on the region itself - political and security matters, of course that would be of vital importance to us because we belong to this region. So, certainly, you know, we need to have a common position (..) in other multilateral issues like broad issues of disarmament, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons…well we have the Non-Aligned Movement” (interview#115, 09-08-11). None of the interviewees reported working through or speaking on behalf of more than one group in a specific negotiation at the same time.
Similarly, another diplomat explained in regard to state activity in IOs, “it’s mostly civil society then that would influence these decisions (..) When we were on the Security Council we would definitely have more requests and demands made by civil groups who are presenting groups in my country as well” (interview #154, 26-01-12). Moreover, since being vocal in international negotiations is costly (deploying staff, preparing instructions, and speaking points; interviews #17, 26-11-10, #129, 29-11-11, #161, 16-03-12), states are selective in which and how many topics they cover. States with high standards of living tend to have citizens, various interest groups, and companies pursuing interests across a broad array of issues to which governments are responsive when party systems are fragmented (many small parties) and electoral turnouts are high. Consequently such governments raise their voices more frequently on the international level. In contrast, states with low levels of living standards often focus on few, selected international norms only (e.g., related to development, eradication of hunger and poverty) and are therefore less active with the broad range of items on the international negotiation agenda. Interviews support this mechanism. A diplomat reported in regard to smaller, poorer states that “on those issues, that are vital to their domestic politics, they are some of the most vocal on those issues, they are very much present and involved in those issues. So, of course, you can say that they are not that involved in some of the other issues that goes on in the General Assembly” (interview #5, 05-10-10, similar interviews #130 29-11-11, #145, 02-12-11).
Another interviewee stated, “you can’t exclude the fact that they’re giving so much aid, especially to African countries, that it might pay dividends in support if they promise handouts for support in some project they have” (interview #159, 15-03-12, c.f. Kegley and Hook 1991; Lundborg 1998; Dreher et al. 2008; Eldar 2008).
Moreover, not only poorer, but also developed and richer states strive to not be outsiders when it comes to taking positions in multilateral negotiations and place emphasis on whether they are close to the majority (e.g., interviews #27, 06-12-10, # 37, 07-03-11, #38,07-03-1, #137, 01-12-11, #142, 01-12-11). “At the end our position was proved to be consistent when or what the international community at large believes on the matter” (interview #164, 19-03-12).
Powerful states should be highly active on a limited number of negotiation items, rather than equally active across the board. E.g., “From 2002 to 2007, that period, China was rising arguably risen economically and trade wise but yet they were super selective on the issues that they even interjected on.” (interview #105, 19-07-11) Case studies support this notion as well (Panke 2013c).
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Acknowledgments
This paper is based on data generated in two research projects: “Unequal Actors in Equalizing Institutions. Negotiations in the United Nations General Assembly” (financially supported by the Irish Research Council) and “Nested Games. Regional Organizations in International Organizations” funded by the German Research Council (PA 1257/3-1). I am are grateful to all diplomats who gave interviews as well as to Marina Ermes, Paulina Grimm, Alena Hahn, Thomas Krebs, Eva Link, Anna Lena Mohrmann, Stephanie Pollhammer, Martin Scharf, Fedor Unterlöhner, and Elliott Bourgeault for research assistance with data coding, data entry, and proofreading. In addition, I would like to thank Stefan Lang and Anke Wiedemann for support in the generation of the data base used in this paper. Finally, I am grateful to the constructive comments of the reviewers and the RIO editorial team.
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Panke, D. Speech is silver, silence is golden? Examining state activity in international negotiations. Rev Int Organ 12, 121–146 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-016-9244-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-016-9244-1