TY  - JOUR
A1  - Gehring, Thomas
A1  - Dörfler, Thomas
T1  - Constitutive mechanisms of UN Security Council practices
BT  - precedent pressure, ratchet effect, and council action regarding intrastate conflicts
JF  - Review of International Studies
N2  - 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).
KW  - Security Council
KW  - International Practices
KW  - Constitutive Mechanism
KW  - Responsibility to Protect
KW  - Precedent
KW  - Ratchet Effect
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210518000268
SN  - 0260-2105
SN  - 1469-9044
VL  - 45
IS  - 1
SP  - 120
EP  - 140
PB  - Univ.
CY  - Cambridge
ER  -