Self-Legitimation through Justification: The Rituals of Controversy in UN Security Council Meetings

The paper discusses the role of justification for Security Council self-legitimation. Within the growing literature on IO legitimation, a focus on the effects of justification is largely missing so far. This is unfortunate given that justification emphasises the performativity and normativity of controversy and how it affects IO self-legitimation. Referring to Luc Boltanski’s and Laurent Thévenot’s pragmatist sociology, the paper argues that justification is a practice for sorting out contested social orders within organisations. Any justification is a legitimacy claim and much of the everyday legitimation work of IOs is done during controversy by competing legitimacy claims. Paying closer attention to justification and these practices, thus, enriches our understanding of IO self-legitimation. This is especially the case for the UN Security Council, whose importance for global politics is widely acknowledged, yet its legitimacy is a constant source of criticism. The paper adds to the current discussion of Security Council legitimation by its emphasis of the role of official Council meetings for self-legitimation. Analysing justifications of the recent vetoes on Syria and Ukraine during Security Council meetings, the paper reveals the contestedness of social order(s) in the Council as well as the constitutive role of Council rituals. Council meetings provide a still disregarded source of self-legitimation of an IO shaped by practices of diplomacy and the publicity of its meetings. Often understood merely as meaningless formal gatherings for reading out decisions negotiated backdoor, the paper argues to take serious their role as meaningful sites of self-legitimation. In doing so, the paper’s aim is threefold: Stressing the importance of justification for understanding IO self-legitimation; demonstrating the benefits of using French pragmatist sociology for studying legitimacy claims in IOs and finally discussing the rituals of Council meetings as potential source of Security Council self-legitimation.