The Multiple Voices of the United Nations on the Venezuelan and Nicaraguan Crises: A Sociological Approach of International Organizations

Abstract

Various United Nations organizations and representatives have released declarations about the deterioration of the Venezuelan and Nicaraguan situations since 2017. The United Nations Security Council, the General‐Secretary, and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights have been particularly active on these issues. The positions of the selected institutions and their representatives were diverse, and sometimes contradictory, and the polarized contexts in which such declarations have been made emphasized diversity. Based on a sociological approach of international organizations, this article demonstrates that the United Nations as an actor is not a coherent and unique entity. To understand the difficulties the organization faces in dealing with the Venezuelan and Nicaraguan crises, it seems indispensable to go beyond the traditional dichotomy between states and institutions, and power politics. Indeed, institutions are plural—the United Nations through states is conservative and cautious, whereas the United Nations through the individuals and staff is more assertive and critical of the Venezuelan and Nicaraguan governments.

Anchoring International Organizations in Organizational Sociology

“…Organizational sociology conceives IOs as autonomous actors (Reinalda and Verbeek 1998; Barnett and Finnemore 2004;Ellis 2010;Koch and Stetter 2013). On a theoretical level, it allows to go beyond rigid categories such as governmental / non-governmental (Nay 2021), understand how IOs adapt using multiple strategies (Schemeil 2013), conceive IOs as non-unitary actors (Brun and Parthenay 2020), and perceive IOs not only as bureaucracies but "as structures, networks, amalgamations of individuals, and subjects of the environment with a variety of internal and external effects that can be measured and addressed through a wide range of methodologies" (Ellis 2010, 18). In a nutshell, organizational sociology provides a fascinating basis to study IOs not only from within, but also as organizations interacting with their environment.…”