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Article Excerpt
Through his last few years in office, Kofi Annan found himself weathering an almost constant storm of controversy. Following his "annus horribilis" (1) of 2004, things scarcely improved, with the reputation of the Secretariat being severely damaged by the investigations into the Oil-for-Food scandal, continuing contestation over organizational reform, and the appointment of the notoriously anti-UN John R. Bolton as the US ambassador to the UN. Of course, this was not the first time that the holder of the office has become embattled, and indeed Annan's secretary-generalship came about as a direct result of his predecessor Boutros Boutros-Ghali's reelection being blocked by the United States. Boutros-Ghali himself attributes this to the fact that his "activism, once encouraged and praised, had become an annoyance to the [Clinton] administration." (2)
Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali's time in office (1992-1996) neatly encapsulates one of the tensions with which all secretaries-general have had to contend: balancing the desire to actively pursue the purposes and principles of the UN as set out in its Charter with the need to maintain the confidence and support of the member states. The early days of Boutros-Ghali's time in office followed the ending of the Cold War and coincided with a new optimism that the organization might be able to break free from the constraints of interbloc rivalry and that it might at last be possible to move toward the realization of the UN's founding objectives. It was also a period in which a new wave of democratization was sweeping the world, not least in those states that had either directly or indirectly come under the influence of the Soviet Union prior to its collapse. Boutros-Ghali himself noted, "The key theme of my term as secretary-general was democratization." (3) This reflects not only the events that were taking place in eastern Europe and Latin America, particularly during the early 1990s, but also his own desire to use his office to drive forward a democratization agenda.
This article examines the potential of the UN secretary-general to act as a "norm entrepreneur," and, in particular, the ways in which Boutros-Ghali sought to promote a norm of democratic governance during his time at the head of the organization. It argues that the secretary-general's role places him (and to date it has always been a him) in a strong position to engage in norm entrepreneurship but that his chances of success are contingent, first, on his ability to frame his ideas effectively and, second, his willingness to balance the desire to advance particular principles with the need to maintain the support of the most influential member states, a challenge that can only be met through skillful political maneuvering. Boutros-Ghali was relatively successful in meeting the first requirement, presenting democracy as both a fundamental UN principle and as a contributor to other key concerns of the organization, especially international peace and security, development, and human rights. However, his attempts to retain the confidence of the membership (and one member in particular) were notably less successful.
The Secretary-General as a Norm Entrepreneur
Since the early days of the United Nations, the secretary-general has exhibited a significant degree of independence vis-a-vis the member states. It is, of course, the case that the membership--and especially the permanent members of the Security Council--are the most powerful actors within the organization, but this is not the whole story. The UN can be seen as significantly more than the sum of its parts (or, rather, the sum of its members). Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore, drawing on Weber, attribute this in part to the fact that the Secretariat, as a bureaucracy, embodies a rational-legal authority that enables it to exercise a significant degree of independent power while presenting itself as a politically neutral technocratic organ. (4) As the head of the UN Secretariat, this goes some way toward explaining the ability of the secretary-general to act in an independent fashion on some issues and to wield a degree of authority that belies his relative lack of material resources. The claim being made by the secretary-general and his staff in many instances is that they are not acting in a "political" fashion, but rather that they are applying the rules and principles of the organization.
The UN Charter is the most obvious and authoritative source of such rules and principles, and it is primarily for this reason that the secretary-general's justifications of his actions so often rest on that document. Yet the Charter provisions relating to the secretary-general's role are vague in the extreme. No doubt this is due not only to the fact that there was relatively little controversy surrounding the nature and functions of the Secretariat during the drafting of the Charter, but also to the fact that a certain amount of flexibility was deemed desirable to enable him to engage in whatever tasks were entrusted to him once the organization was up and running. (5) In practice, the secretary-general's job has never been limited to being merely the "chief administrative officer of the Organization," as he is described in Article 97. In some cases, the expansion of the role has been the result of secretaries-general consciously pushing the boundaries of their rights and duties under the Charter. Elsewhere it has been a pragmatic response to new tasks and challenges facing the organization. Thus, over time, the Charter has become more of a guide than a straitjacket. Although still circumscribed by the need to retain the confidence of the member states, and to be seen to be acting according to a mandate, the political content of the role has increased dramatically since the first secretary-general, Trygve Lie, cautiously set about increasing his range of powers, setting a precedent that was built upon enthusiastically by his successor, Dag Hammarskjold. (6)
In part, this move away from being merely an administrator can be justified in terms of the organization's rules and procedures. It is from Articles 98 and 99 of the Charter that the political role of the secretary-general is most commonly said to originate. (7) Under Article 98, he is required to make an "Annual Report of the Work of the Organization." To varying degrees, successive secretaries-general have used the Annual Report as an occasion on which they can "act as an initiator and can galvanize the efforts of the other parts of the UN," (8) and it has often been in these reports that secretaries-general have reflected on the principles and purposes of the Charter and called for greater emphasis to be put on them in states' international dealings. Indeed, it has not been unknown for secretaries-general to use the opportunity to be openly critical of member states, either explicitly or by implication. Article 99 confers an important agenda-setting function in relation to the Security Council. From...
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