@article{Doerfler2023, author = {D{\"o}rfler, Thomas}, title = {Why rules matter: shaping security council sanctions policy in counterterrorism and beyond}, series = {Journal of global security studies}, volume = {8}, journal = {Journal of global security studies}, number = {1}, publisher = {Oxford University Press}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {2057-3170}, doi = {10.1093/jogss/ogac041}, pages = {19}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Sanctions are critical to the Security Council's efforts to fight terrorism. What is striking is that the Council's sanctions regimes are subject to detailed sets of rules and decision criteria. The scholarship on human rights in counterterrorism assumes that rights advocacy and court litigation have prompted this development. The article complements this literature by highlighting an unexplored internal driver of legal-regulatory decision-making and explores how mixed-motive interest constellations among Security Council members have affected the extent of committee regulations and the content of decisions taken by sanctions committees. Based on internal documents and diplomatic cables, a comparative analysis of the Iraq sanctions regime and the counterterrorism sanctions regime demonstrates that mixed-motive interest constellations among Security Council members provide incentives to elaborate rules to guide decision-making resulting in legal-regulatory sanctions governance, even if the human rights of targeted individuals are not at stake. For comparative leverage and to assess the limits of the proposed mechanism, the analysis is briefly extended to other sanctions regimes targeting individuals (Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan). The findings have implications for this essential tool of the Security Council to react to threats to peace as diverse as counterterrorism, nonproliferation, and internal armed conflict.}, language = {en} } @article{Doerfler2022, author = {D{\"o}rfler, Thomas}, title = {The effect of expert recommendations on intergovernmental decision-making}, series = {International relations : the journal of the David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies}, volume = {36}, journal = {International relations : the journal of the David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies}, number = {2}, publisher = {Sage}, address = {London}, issn = {0047-1178}, doi = {10.1177/00471178211033941}, pages = {237 -- 261}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The article explores whether and to what extent expert recommendations affect decision-making within the Security Council and its North Korea and Iran sanctions regimes. The article first develops a rationalist theoretical argument to show why making many second-stage decisions, such as determining lists of items under export restrictions, subjects Security Council members to repeating coordination situations. Expert recommendations may provide focal point solutions to coordination problems, even when interests diverge and preferences remain stable. Empirically, the article first explores whether expert recommendations affected decision-making on commodity sanctions imposed on North Korea. Council members heavily relied on recommended export trigger lists as focal points, solving a divisive conflict among great powers. Second, the article explores whether expert recommendations affected the designation of sanctions violators in the Iran sanctions regime. Council members designated individuals and entities following expert recommendations as focal points, despite conflicting interests among great powers. The article concludes that expert recommendations are an additional means of influence in Security Council decision-making and seem relevant for second-stage decision-making among great powers in other international organisations.}, language = {en} } @article{GehringDorschDoerfler2019, author = {Gehring, Thomas and Dorsch, Christian and D{\"o}rfler, Thomas}, title = {Precedent and doctrine in organisational decision-making}, series = {Journal of international relations and development}, volume = {22}, journal = {Journal of international relations and development}, number = {1}, publisher = {Palgrave Macmillan}, address = {Basingstoke}, issn = {1581-1980}, doi = {10.1057/s41268-017-0101-5}, pages = {107 -- 135}, year = {2019}, abstract = {We examine how and under what conditions informal institutional constraints, such as precedent and doctrine, are likely to affect collective choice within international organisations even in the absence of powerful bureaucratic agents. With a particular focus on the United Nations Security Council, we first develop a theoretical account of why such informal constraints might affect collective decisions even of powerful and strategically behaving actors. We show that precedents provide focal points that allow adopting collective decisions in coordination situations despite diverging preferences. Reliance on previous cases creates tacitly evolving doctrine that may develop incrementally. Council decision-making is also likely to be facilitated by an institutional logic of escalation driven by institutional constraints following from the typically staged response to crisis situations. We explore the usefulness of our theoretical argument with evidence from the Council doctrine on terrorism that has evolved since 1985. The key decisions studied include the 1992 sanctions resolution against Libya and the 2001 Council response to the 9/11 attacks. We conclude that, even within intergovernmentally structured international organisations, member states do not operate on a clean slate, but in a highly institutionalised environment that shapes their opportunities for action.}, language = {en} } @incollection{HosliDoerfler2015, author = {Hosli, Madeleine O. and D{\"o}rfler, Thomas}, title = {The United Nations Security Council}, series = {Rising powers and multilateral institutions (International Political Economy Series)}, booktitle = {Rising powers and multilateral institutions (International Political Economy Series)}, editor = {Lesage, Dries and Van de Graaf, Thijs}, publisher = {Palgrave Macmillan}, address = {London}, isbn = {978-1-349-48504-8}, doi = {10.1057/9781137397607_8}, pages = {135 -- 152}, year = {2015}, abstract = {The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the most important multilateral institutions having the ambition to shape global governance and the only organ of the global community that can adopt legally binding resolutions for the maintenance of international peace and security and, if necessary, authorize the use of force. Created in the aftermath of World War II by its victors, the UNSC's constellation looks increasingly anachronistic, however, in light of the changing global distribution of power. Adapting the institutional structure and decision-making procedures of the UNSC has proven to be one of the most difficult challenges of the last decades, while it is the institution that has probably been faced with the most vociferous calls for reform. Although there have been changes to the informal ways in which outside actors are drawn into the UNSC's work and activities, many of the major players in the current international system seem to be deprived from equal treatment in its core patterns of decision-making. Countries such as Brazil, Germany, India and Japan, alongside emerging African nations such as Nigeria and South Africa, are among the states eager to secure permanent representation on the Council. By comparison, selected BRICS countries, China and Russia - in contrast to their role in other multilateral institutions - are permanent members of the UNSC and with this, have been "insiders" for a long time. This renders the situation of the UNSC different from global institutions, in which traditionally, Western powers have dominated the agenda.}, language = {en} } @article{GehringDoerfler2019, author = {Gehring, Thomas and D{\"o}rfler, Thomas}, title = {Constitutive mechanisms of UN Security Council practices}, series = {Review of International Studies}, volume = {45}, journal = {Review of International Studies}, number = {1}, publisher = {Univ.}, address = {Cambridge}, issn = {0260-2105}, doi = {10.1017/S0260210518000268}, pages = {120 -- 140}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Based upon the current debate on international practices with its focus on taken-for-granted everyday practices, we examine how Security Council practices may affect member state action and collective decisions on intrastate conflicts. We outline a concept that integrates the structuring effect of practices and their emergence from interaction among reflective actors. It promises to overcome the unresolved tension between understanding practices as a social regularity and as a fluid entity. We analyse the constitutive mechanisms of two Council practices that affect collective decisions on intrastate conflicts and elucidate how even reflective Council members become enmeshed with the constraining implications of evolving practices and their normative implications. (1) Previous Council decisions create precedent pressure and give rise to a virtually uncontested permissive Council practice that defines the purview for intervention into such conflicts. (2) A ratcheting practice forces opponents to choose between accepting steadily reinforced Council action, as occurred regarding Sudan/Darfur, and outright blockade, as in the case of Syria. We conclude that practices constitute a source of influence that is not captured by the traditional perspectives on Council activities as the consequence of geopolitical interests or of externally evolving international norms like the 'responsibility to protect' (R2P).}, language = {en} }