Optimal voting rules for international organizations, with an application to the United Nations

Abstract

I study a self-enforcing mechanism for an international organization that interacts repeatedly over time. A random shock determines which countries would be in favor of or against taking a collective action. Thus, if the organization wants to take the action, incentives must be provided. I show that the optimal stationary equilibrium is equivalent to a mechanism characterized by voting weights. I study how this optimal mechanism depends on the discount factor. In particular, I show that within a class of parameter cases, the optimal mechanism mimics the way voting power is distributed among UN members via Security Council seats.

UN Security Council Elections as an Incentive for Compliance

“…6. See our discussion of Caro-Burnett (2022) in the Theoretical Motivation Section and appendix B. 7.…”

“…Broadly speaking, some authors focus on the costs and benefits of being part of the IO (rationalism), while other authors focus on the institutional aspects (constructivism). A few of the studies that attempt to consolidate these two seemingly opposing ideas are Checkel (2001) and Tallberg (2002) for the EU and Caro-Burnett (2022) for the UNSC. Checkel (2001) focuses on persuasion and social learning to argue that rationalism and constructivism share similar elements.…”

“…On the other hand, instead of finding a common ground, Tallberg (2002) argues that the best way to achieve compliance is a combination of enforcement and institutional design. The mathematical model in Caro-Burnett (2022) follows the same line of reasoning in combining these two elements. In Caro-Burnett (2022), there are costs and benefits to compliance, and the underlying mechanism that decides when the organization wishes to enforce actions is endogenous.…”

“…There are potentially several different configurations to distribute voting power. Caro-Burnett (2022) finds that in certain scenarios the best way to provide incentives to the members of an IO, say the UN, is to elect a subset of countries to a voting council. Rather than representing an aggregate of countries, the council is elected as a reward for engaging in costly demands imposed by the UN.…”

“…5 Theoretically, it is difficult to rationalize cooperation between nations with only sanctions; thus, some reward is needed. Models of this form for international organizations (IOs) have been studied, where the reward is ‘voting power’ in an organization that decides whether to take actions that may favor its members (Caro-Burnett, 2022; Maggi and Morelli, 2006).…”