Introduction: The UN's Roles in International Society Since 1945
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In the half century since its foundation in 1945, the United Nations has been a central institution in the conduct of international relations. This book is an assessment of the UN's many roles in a world which has remained obstinately divided: roles which have changed over time, and have been the subject of different interpretations, fears, and hopes. It is a study of how, in the era of the UN, international society has been modified, but not totally transformed. It examines the UN's opportunities and difficulties in the new and confused circumstances of the post-Cold War era. Behind all these issues lurks the fear that the UN has by no means overcome the range of problems which have in the past bedevilled efforts at collective security and global organization. The international system over which the UN in some sense presides is historically unique. For the first time in human history, the world has come to consist of nominally equal sovereign states; almost all of them are members of one world organization and subscribe to a single set of principles—those of the UN Charter; there is a functioning global organization which has the capacity to take important decisions, especially in the sphere of security—as was done in the Gulf crisis of 1990-1. Yet despite these elements of uniqueness which distinguish the UN era from earlier times, international society remains ‘anarchical’ in the sense that, even though there is order of a kind and a wide range of international institutions, there is no central authority having the character of a government. 1 The UN era has also been notable for the continuing—and in many respects burgeoning—role in international society of actors other than states. The UN itself has provided a political space for non-governmental organizations, especially in such fields as human rights and environmental protection, and it provides fora in which all manner of non-state groups can articulate demands and pursue their interests. More generally, some have argued that a transnational civil society is beginning to emerge, constructed upon the growing density and ease of cross-border interactions, and characterized by the diffusion or contagion of multi-party democracy, market liberalism, and related political and social values. In this view, power is shifting from increasingly enmeshed states to cross-state groupings or to international institutions; territoriality is declining as a central principle of organization; and state sovereignty is being recast to accommodate human rights, economic aspirations, and internal and external conceptions of legitimacy. Perceptions of national interest are broadening, and normative convergence at the domestic, transnational, and international levels is gathering pace to the extent that these levels are themselves beginning to merge. The European Community has been a popular model for proponents of the thesis that state sovereignty is gradually being transcended and that international civil society is being established by progressive enlargement from a liberal heartland. International society is indeed changing, as are the issues and forms of its politics. Particular states or societies cannot easily remain outside the core institutions of economic, social, and political interaction. There are changes in the nature, forms, and uses of power, some of which result from interdependence or from the asymmetries which frequently accompany interdependence. There are shared norms and values, which the UN both reflects and projects. Not all states work well, and the state is perhaps not quite sacrosanct as the building block of international society in the way it was thought to be at other times during the twentieth century. Nevertheless the state remains the principal institution for achieving domestic order, and the inter-state system continues to provide the skeletal ordering framework for international society. The UN as an organization created and maintained by states is built upon an inter-governmental framework which some find unrealistic or unsatisfactory. Proposals for reshaping the framework, for instance by establishing a nationally-elected parliamentary assembly alongside the General Assembly, may attract greater interest in the future. But for the time being the structures and activities of the UN, while in some tension with the changing circumstances and needs of international society, necessarily continue to reflect the essential role of states and the difficulties of the contemporary states system.
Source Publication
United Nations, Divided World: The UN's Roles in International Relations
Source Editors/Authors
Adam Roberts, Benedict Kingsbury
Publication Date
1993
Edition
2
Recommended Citation
Roberts, Adam and Kingsbury, Benedict, "Introduction: The UN's Roles in International Society Since 1945" (1993). Faculty Chapters. 1009.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1009
