Equitable representation in councils: theory and an application to the United Nations Security Council

Abstract

We analyze democratic equity in council voting games (CVGs). In a CVG, a voting body containing all members delegates decision-making to a (time-varying) subset of its members, as describes, e.g., the relationship between the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). We develop a theoretical framework for analyzing democratic equitability in CVGs at both the country and region levels, and for different assumptions regarding preference correlation. We apply the framework to evaluate the equitability of the UNSC, and the claims of those who seek to reform it. We find that the individual permanent members are overrepresented by between 21.3 times (United Kingdom) and 3.8 times (China) from a country-level perspective, while from a region perspective Eastern Europe is the most heavily overrepresented region with more than twice its equitable representation, and Africa the most heavily underrepresented. Our equity measures do not preclude some UNSC members from exercising veto rights, however.

Reform of the United Nations Security Council: equity and efficiency

“…The UNSC in its current form (and under the structural reforms we consider) may be represented as a Council Voting Game (CVG), as proposed by Gould and Rablen (2016). In a CVG, an "assembly" assigns (by election or otherwise) a time-varying subset of its members to a "council".…”

“…We model democratic equity according to the approach developed in Gould and Rablen (2016). We therefore only sketch the approach here, and refer the interested reader to Gould and Rablen (2016) for further details.…”

“…Critics (e.g., Russett et al 1996;Hammer 2002;Schwartzberg 2003;Annan 2005;Blum 2005) raise two distinct sets of issues, one relating to equity at the country level, and the other relating to equity at the level of regions. Assessing these claims, the study of Gould and Rablen (2016) finds that, at the level of countries, the conjunction of preferential voting power when a member of the UNSC and the right to be ever-present gives the PMs substantially too much representation. There is thus a need to dilute the representation of the PMs.…”

“…This point is of particular relevance as several of the reforms we shall consider vary only the probabilities of UN membership, leaving voting rights unchanged. In capturing both of these dimensions, the theoretical framework of Gould and Rablen (2016) permits, for the first time, a formal quantitative assessment of the equitability of UNSC reforms for both individual countries and regions, and of how equity interacts with efficiency.…”

“…As in Gould and Rablen (2016), we allow for countries to abstain in UNSC voting. In contrast, the studies cited above, and many precursors in the literature (e.g., Shapley and Shubik 1954;Straffin 1983Straffin , 1993, model the UNSC's decision rule as permitting members to vote for or against a resolution only.…”