The Role of Diplomatic Influences in International Organizations: A Comparative Analysis of the United Nations and the European Union

 

The Role of Diplomatic Influences in International Organizations: A Comparative Analysis of the United Nations and the European Union

Yahye Ilyas Bashir

 

MA. Student, Department of International Relation at Somali National University in Mogadishu-Somalia, Feb, 26, 2024

Yahye Ilyas Bashir

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine the role of diplomatic influences in international organizations: a comparative analysis of the United Nations and the European Union. Diplomatic influence plays a pivotal role in shaping the dynamics of international organizations, particularly within two of the most prominent and influential entities on the global stage: the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN). As the world continues to grapple with an array of complex challenges ranging from peace and security issues to economic cooperation and environmental concerns, these organizations serve as crucial platforms for international cooperation and governance. Diplomatic influence within the EU and UN reflects the multifaceted interactions of member states, each pursuing its national interests while also striving for collective goals. This introduction will explore the indispensable role of diplomatic influence within these organizations, shedding light on how member states utilize their diplomatic prowess to navigate the intricate web of international politics, promote their interests, and contribute to the pursuit of global stability, peace, and prosperity. The objective of this article is to investigate the role of diplomatic influences in international organizations: a comparative analysis of the United Nations and the European Union. This research is qualitative methods allow you to explore concepts and experiences in more detail, it is secondary data method that uses data that was collected by someone else or internet. In conclusion, according to literature review the role of diplomatic influence in international organization. In conclusion, the Role of Diplomatic Influence in International Organizations: EU and UN" provides a valuable contribution to our understanding of how diplomatic influence can be used to achieve the goals of international organizations. The article argues that the EU has been able to exert significant diplomatic influence in the UN through a number of factors, such as its economic power, its commitment to multilateralism, and its ability to speak with a single voice. However, the article also acknowledges that the EU's diplomatic influence is not unlimited, and that it is often constrained by the diversity of member states and the veto power of the Security Council.

1.0 Introduction

The introduction should present an issue, the role of diplomatic Influences in International organizations: a comparative analysis of the United Nations and the European Union, term a definition. International Organizations have occupied an increasingly important position in the history of the late 19th and 20th century. Their fields of action have covered human rights, humanitarianism, development, cultural cooperation and the arts as well as a myriad of “technical” matters such as social policy, health issues or communication. International Organizations can be seen both as arenas reflecting processes outside their own organizational frame as well as actors of their own right, they can be representative of the international order of states or of transnational civil society as well as any mixture of both (The History of Internationalism and International Organizations, n.d.). To understand what is the diplomatic Influences in International organizations. i will need to conduct a detailed analysis of its shaping, challenges and development. It is significant to understand the context of forming diplomatic Influences in International organizations. International organizations have, as their name suggests, developed their activities at an international level through the conclusion of treaties, ordering of military action and/or participation in financial transactions. The extension of the activities of international organizations and their increased competencies has raised the (seemingly inevitable) question of responsibility for their conduct. In pronouncing the legal position of international organizations, ‘it is useful to start by considering whether such entities possess legal personality and, if so, what the consequences of that legal personality are’.3 To say that an entity (in this case, an international organization) possesses a separate legal personality is to say that the organisation itself is the bearer of rights and duties derived from international law.4 Such responsibility arises in response to a breach of an international organisation’s primary obligation(s).5 In essence, an international organisation which is endowed with separate legal personality is, and should be, capable of being held responsible for the breach of those primary obligations incumbent upon it(Diers, 2018).

2.0 Literature Review

International organizations form when states contract together to create a collective principal and delegate to an external agent the discretion or resources to take actions on their behalf (Hawkins et al. 2006). Some scholars argue they have no independent effects on the incentives states face to comply with their international commitments because they are imposed by dominant states to enforce their interests (Mearsheimer 1994). Others believe international organizations codify an already coercive social environment (Jepperson, Wednt, and Katzenstein 1996) or are locations for norm competition and transmission (Checkel 2005; Risse 2000). This socialization process remains under-theorized if following the “logic of appropriateness” (March and Olsen 1998) still requires officials to choose among a variety of norms that could cover their behavior in a specific political context(Pouliot, 2008).

International organizations can have independent effects if, like other international institutions, they provide mechanisms for decision-making (Keohane 1984; Martin and Simmons 1999). While international institutions can help align interests with compliance by specifying in advance material rewards (Hafner-Burton 2005) or economic sanctions (Drezner 2000), they also help establish reputations for compliance and facilitate enforcement (Abbott and Snidal 2000; Brunnée and Toope 2011). International organizations are a special case, using the autonomy of the collective principal or bureaucracy to overcome the existence of multiple feasible policies or uncertain effects, often by helping to bargain, monitor, or implement policy (Pollack 1997; Koremenos 2008; Brown 2010) or constrain the influence of powerful states (Lake 2009; Rector 2009; Schneider 2011). States benefits from the technocratic supply of goods or services (Mitrany 1948) but participation also offers gains from political signaling (Schultz 1998), access to information (Dai 2002), and influence over outcomes(Barnett & Finnemore, 2005).

The autonomy to deny these benefits may enable international agents to impose costs on states flouting their obligations under international law (Barkin 2004). International organizations can also affect compliance if their officials’ expertise can be deployed to signal what they perceived to be the true state of the world. This may shame states into compliance (Alter 2008) or persuade others to act (Abbott and Snidal 2000; Fang and Stone 2012; Gould 2006). International agents can acquire agenda setting power if institutional rules grant them the autonomy to structure the order, timing, or content of decision making: the autonomy to judge compliance or place proposals for enforcement before another actor (Brown 2010). The signaling and agenda setting powers of international organizations are more pronounced when they have the autonomy and incentives to invest in policy expertise and impersonally deploy it toward particular goals (Brown 2015).

Diplomatic competence is a shared understanding of what it means to be a realistic player in international politics. Competent actors can attempt to use diplomacy to reframe conceptions of competency, standards of lawfulness, and characterizations of compliant and noncompliant behavior. Competence is enabled partly by international law: “sovereignty” empowers “states” with many rights, including the right to be represented and to select their own representatives in interactions with external actors (Sending, Pouliot, and Neumann 2011, 535). International law now also provides legal competency to practice diplomacy to some officials of international organizations, though the specific rules and processes constrain these officials to a menu of diplomatic practices

Legal competency can be challenged when there are multiple competing anchoring criteria. It was apparently in the international interest to see Russia succeed the Soviet Union in 1991 but states disagreed who had legal competence to represent “China” and “Korea” during much of the Cold War or Libya in 2011. Legal competence is insufficient to practice diplomacy without also possessing skill in performing diplomatic practices (Adler-Nissen and Pouliot 2014, 895). An accord on climate change offered by a group of major polluters to the 2009 IO Diplomatic Power Copenhagen Conference, for example, was ignored by many because the negotiators broke with procedural practices by not drawing on texts at the full Conference, their negotiations were not specifically authorized by the Conference, and their final text was reported to the media before the Conference(Barnett & Finnemore, 2005).

3.0 The role of diplomatic influences of the United Nation

The influence of the United Nations on International politics and International relations cannot be ignored. The primary goal of the United Nations is the maintenance of international peace and security and to help achieve international co-operation in social, economic, cultural, educational, Scientific and humanitarian fields. The role of the United Nations in many fields is not very satisfactory. Apparently, the United Nations has failed to live up to the principles and purposes of the Charter or fulfil its obligations in the vital field of world peace and security and related fields like disarmament, decolonization, human rights and the establishment of a new world economic order. Yet, in many ways, it has helped to cool tensions and promote dialogue and international agreements(The Role Of United Nations Department of Political Science, 2020).

UN regional offices serve as forward platforms for preventive diplomacy. Their networks and proximity to the countries in their region help to defuse tensions and support national actors, UN Country Teams, and regional organizations to address crises. Regional offices are also well placed to address cross-boundary issues such as transnational organized crime and water sharing. The UN’s preventive work throughout the crisis in Kyrgyzstan took several forms. Following the protests in April, the Secretary-General dispatched a fact-finding mission headed by Jan Kubiš, the then-head of the UN Economic Commission for Europe, to determine conditions on the ground, work with the actors and urge restraint. After President Bakiyev’s resignation and exile, the UN continued to provide on-the-ground good offices support and advice through SRSG Miroslav Jenča, then-head of the UN Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia (UNRCCA), who travelled frequently to Kyrgyzstan to support the interim government on political stabilization and re-establishment of legitimate authority.(UNDPA, 2017).

The United Nations officially succeeded in existence on 24 October 1945, when the UN Charter had been ratified by a majority of the original 51 Member States. The day is now celebrated each year around the world as United Nations Day. The purpose of the United Nations is to bring all nations of the world together to work for peace and development, based on the principles of justice, human dignity and the well-being of all people. It allows countries to balance global interdependence and national interests when addressing international problems. There are currently 192 members of the United Nations. They meet in the General Assembly, which is the closest thing to a world parliament. Each country, large or small, rich or poor, has a single vote, however, none of the decisions taken by the Assembly is binding. Nevertheless, the Assembly's decisions become resolutions that carry the weight of world governmental opinion(Tanveer, 2021).

The idea of the United Nations was born during World War II (1939-1945). World leaders who had collaborated to end the war felt a strong need for a mechanism that would help bring peace and stop future wars. They realized that this was possible only if all nations worked together through a global organization. The United Nations was to be that Organization. A similar organization, the League of Nations, was set up in 1919, following World War I. Its main objective was to keep world peace. However, not every country joined the League. The United States, for example, was never a member. Others that had joined later quit, and the League often failed to take action. Though it did not succeed, the League ignited a dream for a universal organization. The result was the United Nations (Tanveer, 2021).

Most research on the UN during the Cold War focused on institutional design and the organization’s cooperation effects at the macro-level, not on the micro-level social practices of the UN’s diplomats and bureaucrats—the fodder of diplomatic studies scholars. These scholars addressed bilateral and multilateral diplomatic norms, rules, and relationships from a procedural perspective, concentrating on ‘[t]he technicalities and minutiae of the day-to-day duties and responsibilities of the diplomat [as] chronicled in numerous manuals, memoirs, and biographies of practitioners’ (Muldoon, 2005: 7). But they tended not to theorize these practices, concentrating more on their normative and practical utility. Recently, practice theory scholars have sought to fill this gap (e.g. Adler-Nissen and Pouliot, 2014)(Wiseman, 2015).

What is striking about the UN is how much it has changed its practices since 1945 via informal processes (or non-Charter-based reform) while finding it difficult, especially in recent years, to make formal changes to its Charter and institutions. This is not the case with the European countries, which, in recent decades, have made many formal institutional reform plans that affect the EU’s diplomatic practices.¹ The informal UN reform that has occurred is noticeable in at least five related areas.

First, the notion that multilateral diplomacy should be restricted to the high politics of peace and security is gone (Wiseman, 2011b). Since 1945, multilateral diplomacy has been practiced with varying effectiveness in three domains: peace and security, international economic development, and socio-cultural issues. Today, the UN system addresses all three simultaneously—although with variations and, especially in the Security Council, considerable privileging of traditional high politics.

Second, scholars of diplomacy widely accept that multilateral diplomacy operates within both global and regional frameworks. Again, the Charter’s framers envisaged regional arrangements but could not foresee the dramatic growth in regional institutions that has occurred since the 1950s, with its commensurate impact on diplomatic practice, including at the UN. Here, the EU has set the standard in formal institutional cooperation, and diplomacy scholars have been quick to discern trends (Hocking, 1999; Hocking and Spence, 2002). But other regions have developed new, often-informal diplomatic practices (Batora and Hardacre, 2013; Johnston, 2008).

Third, multilateral economic, development, and trade diplomacy has grown in recent decades. In the 1970s, the rise of the post-colonial majority in the UN General Assembly produced a shift in UN priorities to economic justice issues. Even if much of this radicalism has dissipated, modern diplomats are performing ever-increasing multilateral economic, development, and trade diplomacy, and diplomacy scholars are following this trend closely. In addition, economic sanctions have become part of the UN’s coercive use of economic power. Moreover, the UN’s traditional role could be seriously challenged by the G20 and other informal, practice-based institutions outside the UN (see article by Cooper and Pouliot in this issue). Put another way, if internal formal reform does not occur, and internal practices cannot keep up with the times, then external informal practices will seize the moment(Wiseman, 2015).

Fourth, UN parliamentary practices have changed over time. Parliamentary-style speechmaking at the General Assembly, speaking directly to publics, and other practices such as media briefings have evolved and are now taken for granted (Peterson, 2008). Another quite common practice is for groups of member states to present a collective stand on a given issue. Such informal practice, cross-regional coalitions of the relatively less powerful countries at the UN were formed in response to the hegemony of the Permanent Five (P5) members of the Security Council in determining the broader UN agenda—and they have made an impact, especially since the 1970s. Here again, the founders likely did not envisage these changes.

Fifth, the UN has experimented with new kinds of less formal ‘ambassadors’ (Cooper, 2008; Peck, 2004). The ‘Goodwill Ambassador’ system, which today numbers some 200 appointees, emerged by incremental practice starting in the 1950s. The ‘Messengers of Peace’ program came about partly to bring organizational coherence to the uncoordinated and not fully formal practice of appointing goodwill ambassadors (Wiseman, 2015).

The United Nations has four purposes: to maintain international peace and security; to develop friendly relations among nations; to cooperate in solving international problems and in promoting respect for human rights; and to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations. Cooperating in this effort are more than 30 affiliated organizations, known together as the UN system. The United Nations is not a world government, and it does not make laws. It does, however, provide the means to help resolve international conflicts and formulate policies on matters affecting all of us. At the UN, all the Member States — large and small, rich and poor, with differing political views and social systems — have a voice and a vote in this process. The United Nations allows countries to balance global interdependence and national interests when addressing international problems. The UN system works to promote respect for human rights, reduce poverty, fight disease and protect the environment. The United Nations leads international campaigns against drug trafficking and terrorism(Tanveer, 2021).

4.0 The role of diplomatic influences of the European Union

An international organization comprised of independent nations that share their sovereignty to be stronger and have a greater global influence, the European Union (EU) was created by the Maastricht Treaty (1992), and put into operation by 12 countries (Belgium, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom) on November 1, 1993. The purpose was to form a continent united by common institutions, progressively harmonize national economies, establish a greater common market, and gradually coordinate social policy. Since its emergence, Austria, Finland, and Sweden (1995); Cyprus, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, and the Czech Republic (2004); and Bulgaria and Romania (2007) have been incorporated into the EU. The 27 members have a total population of 495 million people and a land extension of 4.2 million sq. km(Lindner & Nordemann, 2018).

After World War I (1914–18), Count R.Couden hove-Kalergi (1894–1972) pushed the idea of a federation of the people of Europe (1924). Even before World War I, others had found commonalities among European countries and proposed systems designed to maintain peace and establish institutions that assured cooperation between them. But the most spectacular initiative was that of French minister Aristides Briand (1862–1932), who presented in 1929 a project for the League of Nations to create “a common market to maximally raise human well-being throughout the entire territory of the European Community.” However, the economic crisis, Briand’s death, and the victory of national socialism in Germany ended the project. At the conclusion of World War II (1939–45), the end of European hegemony was visible. The Yalta Conference (1945) had divided the continent into two blocs under the direction of the United States and the Soviet Union, which led to a new conflict: the Cold War. It was necessary to recover lost ground and impede future confrontations. That is why Europeans looked again to the ideas proposed by Winston Churchill (1874–1965) at the University of Zurich to advance the construction of “a type of United States of Europe” (1946) (Lindner & Nordemann, 2018).

One of the fundamental strengths of the transatlantic alliance is that the EU and the USA not only share a common set of basic values – universal values - but also broadly similar foreign policy objectives. However, the diplomatic and other resources we respectively deploy, and the methods we use, can be very different and this is reflected in our approaches to public diplomacy. Public diplomacy as a concept is not new, as many commentators constantly remind us. What is new is that despite residual scepticism by many 'classical' diplomats, public diplomacy is now broadly accepted as an essential arm of external relations. It is evolving rapidly in a world where the communication technology revolution has completely transformed how information is transmitted and who has access to it. The real technological leap is that one individual today can do mass communication. Just think of the importance of blogs. And the use “You tube” in your Presidential elections. Diplomacy can no longer afford to be a question of 'sending good men and women abroad to lie for their country' as the old joke had it. In managing our external relations abroad we of course still concentrate heavily on identifying and working with key decision makers who can influence our bilateral relations. As I see it communication is one of the important tools for building and sustaining democracy. Increasingly diplomacy can only be effective if it reaches out much more widely. The concept of 'key decision makers,' especially on some of the most urgent global issues like climate change, democracy and human rights, and economic development, is no longer a question of an elite in smoke filled rooms; we need to know and understand a much wider and widely dispersed network of individual and groups, who, in turn, need to know and understand more about us(Wallström, 2008).

The EU famously believes in multilateralism and 'soft' power, and this is strongly reflected in the nature and conduct of many of its public diplomacy dialogues on such issues as the environment, energy efficiency, global warming, development cooperation, free trade, democratization and human rights. All of these are directly linked to defined EU policy objectives, and all require a broad measure of global support - official and popular - to succeed. But the EU model is not a soft option because it always involves patience, difficult compromises, and often generous offers of EU funding as well; nor can it be the only option. The EU can be surprisingly robust on certain issues even in its use of public diplomacy – and our strong and pro-active condemnation of the death penalty is a case in point. But slowly and surely, the EU is building up the capacity, through the Foreign Security Policy, to play a greater role in pursuing external policy objectives through “hard” power when all other options fail. (Wallström, 2008).

5.0 Finding

The article's findings suggest that diplomatic influence is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. It is not simply a matter of power or resources, but also of relationships, trust, and persuasion. The article also highlights the importance of international organizations as a forum for exercising diplomatic influence. By providing a space for dialogue and cooperation, international organizations can help to build consensus and resolve conflict.

6.0 Conclusion

In conclusion, the role of diplomatic influence within international organizations is indispensable for fostering cooperation, peace, and progress on the global stage. It is a reflection of the intricate web of interactions between nations as they navigate the complexities of a rapidly changing world. The EU and UN exemplify the power of diplomacy in promoting collective interests while respecting national sovereignty. As these organizations continue to adapt to the evolving needs of the international community, diplomatic influence will remain a cornerstone of their effectiveness in addressing the world's most complex challenges. In an era where global interconnectedness is both an opportunity and a challenge, the role of diplomacy in international organizations remains as crucial as ever, serving as a beacon of hope for a more peaceful and prosperous future.

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