The United Nations Security Council Reform: A Critical Approach

Abstract: Utilizing Critical Theory, through its neo-Gramscian and Frankfurt School dimensions, as the theoretical framework, this study aims to explain how the institutions, such as the United Nations, of an international system transform together with the structure – the international system. More specifically our aim is to explain the lack of transformation of only one body, the Security Council, of that specific institution, the United Nations. Analyzing the press releases of the United Nations General Assembly in 1996, 1997, 2000, and 2006 and examining 337 statements from the Member States through Critical Theory to be able understand and explain how and why it hasn’t been possible to reform, or transform, the United Nations Security Council in the last 14 years since the establishment of the Open-Ended Working Group as a group to particularly deal with the question of reform. The analysis suggests that the current debates in the United Nations concerning the reform of the Security Council is unable to produce a successful transformation of that body because it is not possible for an institution to finalize its own transformation independent from that of the structure as a whole.