Expertise in Security Council Decision-Making on Sanctions: The Non-Proliferation Sanctions on North Korea and Iran

The paper explores how expertise affects political decision-making on sanctions in the UN Security Council. The paper first develops a theoretical model to show how the task of taking many technical decisions to implement a sanctions regime, such as determining a list of chemical precursors subject to export restrictions, subjects Council members to coordination situations. The paper argues that expertise, provided by the Council’s frequently employed expert bodies, could provide solutions to such coordination problems, even when interests diverge. In a second step, the paper examines how expertise affected decision-making on implementing North Korea sanctions. The Security Council decided on trade restrictions on ‘dual-use’ items based on external Nuclear Suppliers Group and Missile Technology Control Regime export trigger lists, bridging a conflict among members. The Council then delegated contentious follow-up decisions to a sanctions committee, where Australia Group precursor lists solved a coordination problem on chemical and biological weapons precursors. In a third step, the paper examines how investigative evidence affected decision-making on Iran sanctions. The Council first decided in grand package deals about which individuals and entities supporting the Iranian nuclear program should face travel bans and assets freezes without reference to expert information. Later, the Council delegated follow-up decisions to a committee, where information generated by an expert panel served as focal points for selecting additional sanctions targets. The paper finds that expertise may solve great power conflict as focal points for compromise under certain conditions. The paper concludes that decision-making in a ‘high politics’ organization such as the Security Council can produce decisions based on epistemic expert authority without excluding the member states.