Design - Exploring the Rules of Discourse in the Security Council

Abstract: Depending on cooperation in our global environment, international institutions facilitate a mean for mutual gains and cooperation. But the legitimacy crisis in global governance has made the features of institutional design essential to study. Drawing on a theory of variables employed by a rational design project the aim of this thesis is to explore why states create new institutions instead of improving already existing ones and to what the notion of design refers. The essay engages Michel Foucault in the attempt to investigate the underlying structures that form the basic context for institutional design. A second attempt is to explore how the rational features of institutional design function with discursive practices. The thesis departs in a case study of the re-design proposals of the UN Security Council. The material is mainly based on the proposals for re-design for the expansion of the Council and comments from within the UN as well as comments from an academic framework. Analysing the material in form of a discourse analysis, the essay concludes that design is in itself discursive and that states create new organisations due to a system of exclusion.