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Mechiat, Ryan Malik

University of British Columbia

This thesis examines how individual permanent members of the UN Security Council can influence the rest of the Security Council. Drawing upon a constructivist and institutionalist literature review, it sheds light upon the relationship between legitimacy and the exercise of power politics in the Security Council. It substantiates this argument by conducting a case study analyzing why the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) peacekeeping operation has been repeatedly extended in its first five years, between 1992 and 1996. This case study found that France used two informal mechanisms, the informal veto and influencing the UN Secretary-General, to convince the rest of the Security Council to extend MINURSO to keep Western Sahara under the control of Morocco, for France’s own political and economic benefit. In doing so, this thesis further argues that legitimacy is necessary for the operation of both informal mechanisms. The Security Council’s legitimacy is necessary for the informal veto to incentivise members of the Security Council to agree to certain decisions, while the Secretary-General’s legitimacy is necessary to persuade members of the Security Council to likewise convince the rest of the Security Council to extend MINURSO.

Text

2024-08-15

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88956

Political Science

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/