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UN Security Council Intervention in Humanitarian Crises: A Framework for

Explanation

Chapter · December 2017

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-42354-8_2

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The United Nations and the Politics of Selective
Humanitarian Intervention, Palgrave Macmillan
2017

Martin Binder

Chapter 4

Security Council intervention in humanitarian

crises: A framework for explanation

In 1986, in a widely acknowledged article, Jack Donnelly observed that the activities of the
international human rights regime were limited to the promotion of human rights. What the
regime lacked were any kind of enforcement mechanisms to ensure that states comply with
human rights norms, norms which Donnelly considered to be a “profoundly national—not
international—issue” (Donnelly 1986, 616). “Who can force a government to respect human
rights?”—he asked rhetorically—“The only plausible candidates are the people whose rights
are at stake” (p. 617). While this diagnosis was certainly a correct one for the Cold War, much
has changed since then.
Over the past two decades not only have human rights violations and humanitarian
crises become a frequent international issue, but outside actors, including the UN Security
Council, have also responded increasingly to the human suffering and, in some cases, these
actors have forced governments to end human rights violations. This shift in the way
international institutions—especially the Security Council—have responded to humanitarian

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crises and gross violations of human rights is one of the most profound changes we have
witnessed in international politics in recent times. With the end of the Cold War and the veto
paralysis that had up to that time stymied Security Council action, the Council began to make
increasing use of coercive measures in accordance with Chapter VII of the UN Charter to
respond to situations in which human rights were massively violated. It has deployed so-
called “robust” peacekeeping operations whose mandates now often include civilian
protection and permit the (limited) use of force. The Council has also imposed economic
sanctions against actors and states that violate human rights, and it has conducted or
authorized military interventions to put an end to humanitarian crises and massive human
rights abuse. These measures were imposed in many places, among others, Somalia, Northern
Iraq, Bosnia, Sierra Leone and, most recently, Libya. At the same time, however, the Security
Council’s response has remained highly selective. In many similar crises and conflicts—as is
the case in Syria at present—no such actions have been taken by the Council.
This variation in the Security Council’s response to humanitarian emergencies raises
important questions about what factors motivate intervention decisions in the Council.
Traditionally, the main controversy among international relations scholars has centered on
whether such interventions are best explained by a shift in international norms and by
humanitarian considerations (Wheeler 2000; Finnemore 2003; Sandholtz 2002), or whether
geo-strategic and economic interests provide a more plausible account (Feste 1992; Pearson,
Baumann, and Pickering 1994; see also Morgenthau 1967). Other scholars have argued that
interventions are driven neither by humanitarian sentiment nor by material interests alone, but
instead involve mixed motives. More than thirty years ago, Michael Walzer (2000 [1977],
101) found no clear case of humanitarian intervention, suggesting instead that there were
“only mixed cases where the humanitarian motive is one among several.” Martha Finnemore
(1996a) identifies the need to examine “the way in which normative claims are related to
power capabilities” (p. 185). Alynna Lyon and Chris Dolan (2007) suggest that “there is a
mixture of motives for humanitarian involvement as the certainties of altruistic humanitarian
intervention are often blurred with self-interested power pursuits” (p. 50). Finally, Andrew
Mason and Nicholas Wheeler (1996, 95) argue that neither material nor humanitarian
considerations are individually strong enough to motivate humanitarian intervention, but that
they may be “jointly sufficient to do so.”
What remains unclear, however, is what exactly these motives are, how they combine to
lead to or block Security Council action, and through which mechanisms they operate. In this
chapter, I develop and present a theoretical framework for explaining variation in Security

2
Council intervention after the end of the Cold War. This framework lays out the explanatory
conditions for Security Council intervention and details the logics of actions through which
these conditions operate. For each explanatory condition, I describe the underpinning
theoretical assumptions and derive a set of empirically testable variables. Overall, the purpose
of this chapter is to set the stage for the subsequent empirical chapters of the book, which will
evaluate the explanatory power of the framework through a combination of fuzzy-set analysis
and in-depth case studies. Before I introduce this framework in detail, however, I shall briefly
discuss how decision-making in the Council works. This serves to demonstrate that collective
interventions are different from unilateral ones, and therefore both types require separate
analysis and explanation.
The basic underlying premise of this framework is that intervention decisions in the
Security Council are complex choices that are not determined by a single cause, but involve
various motives and drivers. I argue that intervention decisions are driven by the interplay of
normative concerns, material interests, and institutional effects. More specifically, whether
and how strong the members of the Council respond to a humanitarian crisis depends on the
extent to which (1) the crisis creates moral pressure to come to the rescue of threatened
populations and to defend international norms; (2) the crisis affects the material interests of
the Council members in negative ways; and (3) the members of the Council have invested
material and immaterial resources in the crisis in the past, which they wish to protect through
continued or increased commitment.
Each of these three motivational factors are stressed by different theory in international
relations (IR) research; they operate through distinct but complementary “logics of action”
(March and Olsen 1998): a norm-based logic of appropriateness, according to which actors
conform to (endogenous) normative expectations and obligations resulting from identities,
rules, and institutions; an interest-based logic of expected consequences, according to which
actors are rational and choose those options that are most likely to advance their (exogenously
determined) goals; and a time-based logic of path dependence, according to which historic
events—often small in size—matter for the current and future behavior of actors.
Humanitarian sentiment and the moral obligation to come to the rescue of victims in a
humanitarian crisis is the first factor to explain why the Security Council intervenes in such
crises. People suffer and die, and international norms, including the most fundamental human
rights, are usually fragrantly violated. The resulting morally motivated pressure to act and to
come to rescue of threatened populations and to uphold international norms and principles is
felt by the members of the Security Council. Decision makers in the Council may also be

3
affected personally by the plight of crisis victims. But normative expectations and the
pressure “to do something” on behalf of the victims can also exist on the level of domestic or
transnational audiences—often fueled by journalists or human rights activists—to which
decisions makers in the Council feel compelled to respond.
Material interests are the second explanatory factor for Security Council intervention.
More specifically, whether the Council takes strong action to respond to a humanitarian crisis
depends on whether the crisis affects the material interests of Security Council members in
negative ways, and on whether Security Council action has realistic chances of success.
Council members (or their allies) may be affected in various ways by spillover emanating
from a crisis: for example, through conflict diffusion, refugee flows, international terrorism,
or economic downturn. Spillover effects generate costs in that they produce negative
externalities for neighboring countries, including Security Council member states. At the
same time, whether or not the Council intervenes also depends on the perceived costs of the
intervention and its chances of success. These are largely determined by the extent to which a
target state is able to generate countervailing power against outside intervention either
through its own military capabilities or by having strong allies in the Council, who can use
their influence to limit or block Council action.
The third and final explanatory factor of Security Council intervention is an institutional
dynamic of path dependence. Security Council intervention decisions are taken in a specific
historical context. To the extent that the United Nations—or regional organizations acting on
its behalf—have been institutionally involved in a crisis in the past, and have invested time,
money, and diplomatic prestige (credibility) in its resolution, there is an interest on the part of
Security Council members to protect these investments, or sunk costs, through continued or
escalated involvement in that crisis.
These explanatory factors operate through distinct but complementary logics of action.
Neither humanitarian considerations nor material interest nor institutional effects are
individually necessary or sufficient to trigger or block Security Council intervention in a
humanitarian crisis. Only in combination do they explain why the Council responds more
strongly to some humanitarian crises than to others.
By integrating diverse motivations and behavioral logics that are anchored in different
IR theories into the same explanatory framework, my study departs from the more traditional
approaches of competitive theory testing in which one theory outperforms all others. Rather, I
start from the assumption that we can better understand complex social phenomena, such as
intervention decisions in the Security Council, if we conceive of theories as complementary.

4
This reasoning is in line with recent efforts to build theoretically integrative analytic
frameworks (e.g., Aspinwall and Schneider 2000; Jupille, Caporaso, and Checkel 2003; Zürn
and Checkel 2005) in order to perform combinational theorizing (George and Bennett 2005,
233–62), thus allowing us to conceive of cases as configurations of diverse variables and
mechanisms (Ragin 2000), so as to better account for “the complexity and messiness of
particular real-world situations” (Sil and Katzenstein 2010, 412). Notably, Jon Elster (1989,
106) has argued that normative and material motivations “need not generate a distinction
among different kinds of action. Both types of motivation may enter into a single action.
Often, norms and self-interest coexist in a parallelogram of forces that jointly determine
behavior.” In a similar vein, James March and Johan Olsen maintain that a norm-based “logic
of appropriateness” and an interest-based “logic of expected consequences” are not
necessarily mutually exclusive, but can be complementary and may be connected to each
other in various ways (March and Olsen 1998, 952; 2006, 702).
Integrating different logics of action in one framework does not mean that “anything goes” in
research (Sil and Katzenstein 2010).
If we believe that different logics of action are complementary and combine to produce
a specific effect, it is not only important to carefully conceptualize these logics and to
examine how they combine to generate a certain outcome, but also to show how we can
discriminate among different logics and isolate their individual effects. With respect to how
the logics that drive Security Council intervention decisions are connected, I argue that, in
situation of mass atrocities and large-scale humanitarian suffering, the initial trigger for
Security Council action is typically a perceived moral pressure or felt obligation to rescue
threatened populations and stop suffering. As soon as a humanitarian crisis begins to spill
over into neighboring countries and regions, this creates an overriding interest on the part of
Security Council members to contain the crisis; normative logic is joined and reinforced by an
instrumental logic of action. Finally, to the extent that the UN or regional organizations acting
on its behalf begin to commit resources to the resolution of a crisis, over time; the logic of
sunk costs and path dependence becomes operative, such that the desire to protect these prior
investments leads Council members to escalate their involvement in the crisis. Together, these
three logics can outweigh considerations of the costs and risks involved in interventions.
That all three logics need to combine in order to overcome the obstacles to intervention
also explains why the Council responds to relatively few cases and why it is often rather slow
to take decisive action. Empirically, it is of course difficult to disentangle these logics. This is
because motivations are not directly observable and because the effects of all three logics are

5
observationally equivalent—they all lead to intervention. My analytical strategy for dealing
with these challenges is twofold. First, I identify and test conditions that plausibly affect these
logics. This is done in chapter 2, using fuzzy-set analysis. Second, I formulate observable
implications that help us to discriminate among the three logics. This part of the analysis is
carried out in chapters 3 through 5 using in-depth case studies. The aim of this approach is not
to evaluate the individual explanatory power of each of the three logics, but rather to show
that they are indeed operative in Security Council decision making and that they can combine
to lead to, or block, crisis intervention. I will come back to this in more detail in the respective
chapters.

Decision making in the Security Council

Before I lay out the explanatory framework for Security Council intervention in more detail, it
is important to understand how decision making in the Council works. Decisions in the
Council are different from unilateral ones, and therefore require separate analysis and
explanation. This is because decisions in the Council do not simply reflect the interests of a
single (powerful) member. For the Council to take a decision, an agreement among the
majority of its members is required, including the consent of the five veto-holding permanent
members (e.g., Voeten 2001, 846; Beardsley and Schmidt 2012, 35).
The UN Charter confers on the Security Council the “primary responsibility for the
maintenance of international peace and security” (Article 24). To fulfill this task it can resort
to peaceful means (Chapter VI), including good offices, mediation, or other methods of
peaceful dispute resolution. However, the Council can also make use of coercive measures
(Chapter VII of the Charter) if its members determine that a given situation constitutes a
“threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression” according to Article 39. The
Charter gives the Council members wide latitude to determine security threats and, as we saw
in the introduction to this book, the Council has made use of its competences not only to
determine that some particular conflicts between states or acts of aggression are threats to
international security, but also that some civil conflicts, humanitarian crises, coup d’Etats, or
even the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction constitute international security threats.
The Council acts on behalf of all members of the UN (Article 24). Its resolutions are binding
for all member states and prevail over other conflicting treaties or agreements of any of its
member states (Article 25 and 103).

6
 The Security Council consists of 15 members. These are the five permanent members—
China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the US—and ten non-permanent members
that are elected to serve on the Council for a non-renewable period of two years. The election
of the non-permanent members is further based on a formula that makes sure that
geographical regions are equally represented in the Council.1 Council decisions, or
resolutions, are adopted by majority vote. Each of the 15 members has one vote; a majority of
9 positive votes is required in order for a resolution to pass. However, the UN Charter grants
the permanent members of the Security Council a right to veto (Article 29), such that each
permanent member can block any unwanted (non-procedural) resolution. The ability to cast a
veto gives the permanent members substantially more power than the non-permanent Council
members, resulting in disproportionate influence on the outcomes of Council decisions. Most
of the time, resolutions are adopted unanimously. This is not least because the wording of
resolutions is often negotiated informally and/or in closed sessions prior to voting.
Sometimes, a resolution is passed by a majority vote and the permanent members acquiesce
by abstaining. An abstention does not necessarily signal indifference, however: by
withholding their vote, a permanent member can indicate their discontent with a particular
decision, without having to resort to a full veto (Voeten 2001, 851). On rare occasions,
however, a draft resolution is brought to a vote, knowing that one or more permanent
members will find it unacceptable. In this case it is usually vetoed, blocking any Security
Council action. This occurred recently, when the proponents of sanctions against the Syrian
government brought three draft resolutions to the Security Council floor, knowing that Russia
and China would veto them (which indeed they did). In chapter 5, I will take a closer look at
the Council’s response to the crisis in Syria.
Given that the permanent members have veto power, Council decisions are therefore
widely believed to be determined by permanent members’ interests, which leaves the elected
members, ultimately, with little or no influence over final outcomes. In fact, various studies
analyzing formal voting power and voting behavior in the Council find that elected members
do indeed have less impact on Council decision-making than do its permanent members
(O'Neill 1996; Winter 1996; Hosli et al. 2011). Barry O’Neill (1996, 235) has even have gone
so far as to argue that, in terms of voting power, the Council consists in essence of only five

1 The composition of the ten non-permanent seats is three from Africa, two from Asia, two from
Latin America and the Caribbean, one from Eastern Europe and two Western states (Western
European and other).

7
members.2 However, formal voting power is not the only source of influence on the Council.
Side payments (“horse trading”), deliberation and persuasion, as well as threats to act outside
the Council are also important strategies for gaining Council support for specific actions and
decisions.
Recent studies have examined vote buying on the Security Council and find that elected
members receive significantly more bilateral and multilateral aid from powerful states on the
Council than do those countries which are not represented on it (Kuziemko and Werker
2006). Likewise, other studies have shown that elected members in the Security Council also
receive favorable treatment from the International Monetary Fund (Dreher, Sturm, and
Vreeland 2009b) and the World Bank (Dreher, Sturm, and Vreeland 2009a), suggesting that
the great powers which control these institutions use them to win favor with elected members
in the Council in exchange for side payments. This is inconsistent with the view that the
elected members do not matter for the Council’s decisions; for why else would its permanent
members devote such substantial resources to obtaining non-permanent members’ support?
Another group of scholars argues that the processes of legal discourse, deliberation, and
persuasion can influence the outcome of Security Council decisions. Conceiving of the
Council as a discursive forum, it is argued that legal discourse and “concerns about precedent
and reputation” put constraints on the behavior of powerful states (Johnstone 2003, 437; see
also Johnstone 2011). On this view, the need for justification and the reputational costs
associated with putting forward implausible legal arguments may force Council members,
including the permanent members, to alter their respective positions on some matter.
Similarly, it has been claimed that precedents are an important factor for influencing Council
decision making. Arguments based on analogy, where precedents have been set, can influence
Council practice by making it difficult for actors—including the powerful permanent
members—to justify behavior that deviates from action taken by the Council in comparable
situations in the past (Sandholtz and Stone Sweet 2004, 259).
A growing body of literature has pointed to the moral and informational legitimation
function of the Security Council (Voeten 2005; Thompson 2006; Hurd 2007). It is argued that
the US and other powerful Council members prefer to act through it—rather than to act
unilaterally—in order to increase domestic and international support for their decisions and
actions. The Security Council’s “stamp of approval” confers decisions and actions with

2 O’Neill applies the Shapley-Shubik index to the Security Council. The index measures the
percentage of total power attributed to a member, based on voting rules. The author finds that
the cumulative voting power of the ten elected members is less than two percent.

8
legitimacy, and signals important information about political intentions and possible policy
outcomes to domestic and foreign audiences and leaders. In keeping with this logic, states
therefore strive for unanimous decisions because these send unambiguous signals about the
desirability and legitimacy of Security Council action. The Council’s legitimation function
thus gives its elected members leverage that goes beyond their formal voting power.
There is indeed evidence contrary to claims that the non-permanent members of the
Security Council have no significant influence on it. A recent study finds, for instance, that
African states serving on the Council have had substantial impact on its response to civil
conflicts on that continent (Mikulaschek 2014). On a more general level, Erik Voeten (2001,
846) has argued that even though the non-permanent members have less voting strength,
“[these] less powerful states may be able to gain considerable concessions” from a more
powerful state, and that that powerful state will “need to make compromises in order to
achieve multilateral authorization of interventions.”
Finally, threats to act outside the Security Council may affect the way in which
permanent members exercise their veto right, ultimately influencing, therefore, the outcome
of Council decisions. Again, as Voeten (2001) shows, decisions by the Security Council
cannot be blocked easily by a permanent member who may be opposed to Security Council
action. This is because powerful members of the Council can credibly threaten to make use of
“outside options,” that is, bypassing the Council and initiating a unilateral or multilateral
action without it. In this case, permanent members opposed to a decision prefer to signal their
dissent by abstaining rather than casting a veto, because blocking a decision or an action
would mean that they would lose any control over action taken outside the Council. Thus, “a
credible outside option creates a bargaining range that otherwise would not exist” (Voeten
2001, 849). This logic of “outside options” is one of the reasons why the number of vetoes
has been lower but the number of abstentions much higher in Council voting since the end of
the Cold War (Voeten, 2001, 846).
All this is neither to deny the key influence of the permanent members on Security
Council decisions nor to argue that the veto power is unimportant. To the contrary, empirical
evidence shows that the permanent Council members can and do exercise their right to veto:
consider, for example, the current crisis in Syria, whereby Russia and China have successfully
blocked coercive Security Council measures. However, the institutional bargaining dynamics
and voting rules in the Council warrant our not attempting to draw “a direct line … between
the salience of a conflict to the national interests of P-5 members and the probability and
extent of UN involvement” (Beardsley and Schmidt 2012, 37). As Gilligan and Stedman

9
(2003, 39) point out, precisely because the permanent members’ interests matter and
intervention decisions require their consent, the argument that “permanent member interests
are paramount [for Security Council action] often approaches tautology.” In other words, the
question is not so much whether permanent members interests matter, but what factors
motivate those interests and “which cases get great power support” (p. 40). Along these same
lines, this study seeks to determine under what conditions the members of the Security
Council—including the permanent members—agree to take or authorize strong action or,
conversely, when we can expect them to prevent or block such measures.

When does the Security Council intervene?

I have argued that, for a variety of reasons, intervention decisions of the Security Council are
different from unilateral action, and that these decisions are driven by a combination of
normative factors, material interests, and institutional effects. In the next section, I present
these motivations in greater detail. I also identify the conditions that are associated with these
motivations, whose explanatory power can be empirically assessed.

Normative considerations for intervention: The extent of a humanitarian crisis

Normative or moral concerns—the first explanation for why the Security Council responds to
humanitarian crises—are anchored in constructivist informed studies on third-party
intervention. Constructivists emphasize the importance of norms, rules, and ideas for the
behavior of actors (Wendt 1992, 1999; Finnemore 1996b). Norms are usually defined as
“shared expectations about appropriate behavior held by a community of actors” (Finnemore
1996b, 22); through the processes of socialization and identification, norms shape the interest
perceptions and identities of actors (March and Olsen 1998; Checkel 2001). In other words,
norms not only regulate behavior; they are also constitutive for actor identity (Jepperson,
Wendt, and Katzenstein 1996, 54). While early constructivist research has shown that
international norms emerge and change over time, more recent accounts offer more precise
explanations of how norms are diffused and implemented—for example, the “norm life cycle”
(Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) or, for human rights, the “spiral model” (Risse, Ropp, and
Sikkink 1999; 2013).
Concerning humanitarian interventions, constructivist informed studies maintain that
the increase in economic sanctions, peacekeeping operations, and military action to protect

10
human rights reflect a profound change in international norms. More specifically, it has been
argued that a new norm of “humanitarian intervention” emerged during the 1990s, and that
this norm may supersede the traditional principles of sovereignty in instances of “supreme
humanitarian emergencies” (Wheeler 2000, 50; Finnemore 2003).3 Constructivists are not
claiming that the fundamental principles of “international society” (Vincent 1974; Bull
1977)—non-intervention (Article 2 (7) of the UN Charter) and the non-use of force (Article
2 (4) of the UN Charter)—are becoming obsolete. Nor do they argue that the emerging norms
of “humanitarian intervention” require or prescribe intervention. However, constructivists do
contend that those norms which are found to be in fundamental tension with the principles of
non-intervention and the non-use of force now frequently trump sovereignty norms and
enable forcible action to halt widespread human suffering and large-scale violations of basic
human rights (Sandholtz 2002, 201–2; Finnemore 2004, 104).
The “emerging norm of justified intervention” (Reed and Kaysen 1993), identified by
constructivists, appears to be becoming increasingly institutionalized. Beginning with
Security Council Resolution 688 authorizing intervention in Northern Iraq, and Resolution
749 authorizing intervention in Somalia (both of which were confirmed by several subsequent
Security Council resolutions), there has been an ongoing push to establish a norm allowing
humanitarian intervention in cases of egregious human rights violations and humanitarian
crises. This norm was further strengthened at the UN World Summit in 2005, when all states
agreed to the principle of the “responsibility to protect”, albeit, according to Bellamy (2010)
“in a watered-down form of the original concept developed by the ICISS.”4 At the core of the
R2P is the notion that the responsibility for its citizenry rests essentially with the state.
However, “if a state cannot or will not protect its people from such harm, then coercive
intervention for human protection purposes, including ultimately military intervention, by
others in the international community may be warranted in extreme cases” (ICISS 2001, 69).
In April 2006, the UN Security Council endorsed the R2P principle in Resolution 1674 (and
again in resolution 1894). The Council also referred to the R2P in Resolution 1973, when it
authorized military intervention in Libya. Looking at this from the perspective of
constructivist inspired intervention research, then, one could say that, in conjunction with the

3 Sandholtz (2002) makes a similar argument.

4 For an overview of the development of the “responsibility to protect,” see Bellamy (2010).

11
universal jus cogens principles of basic human rights,5 the humanitarian assistance norms,6
the anti-genocide norm,7 and the R2P humanitarian norms make up a powerful “norm bundle”
(Finnemore 1996a, 161).
Whereas constructivist accounts often adopt a strong structuralist perspective,
constructivist inspired scholars have also focused on agency and stressed the importance of
transnationally operating non-state actors (NGOs, networks, advocacy groups) for the
emergence and strengthening of humanitarian norms. On this view, non-state actors who have
become influential players in world politics (Keohane and Nye 1972; Risse-Kappen 1995;
Florini 2000) are able to raise public awareness of certain issues, to act as norm entrepreneurs,
and—by naming and shaming—have also forced states to adopt new policies (Keck and
Sikkink 1998; Price 1998; Liese 2006). In the field of human rights it is argued that NGOs
together with international institutions have successfully pressured states “from above and
from below” to implement human rights norms and adopt human rights policies (Brysk 1993;
Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999; 2013).
Likewise, with respect to humanitarian intervention, several studies have tried to show
how international humanitarian norms matter domestically and how societal actors have
mobilized around these norms, generating momentum for responding to conflicts and
humanitarian crises, without any obvious national security interests or economic
considerations being at stake (McElroy 1992, 43–46). Audie Klotz (1995) focused on the
domestic effects of an emerging global norm of racial equality, which led states like the US,
the United Kingdom, and Zimbabwe to impose economic sanctions on South Africa, despite
those countries’ having strategic and economic interests as well as historic ties to the latter,
which would have suggested otherwise. A similar claim is made by Andreas Hasenclever
(2001) who argues that the interventions in Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia cannot be explained
by strategic interests or power considerations, but were driven, instead, by moral convictions
compelling the international community to come to the rescue of the threatened populations.
Others have stressed the matter of how “liberal humanitarianists” (Western 2002) in the
media, in human rights NGOs, and in transnationally operating civil society associations

5 UN Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Geneva Conventions, International

Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
6 Geneva Conventions + additional Protocols + GA Resolutions 43/131 (1988), 45/100 (1991),
46/182 (1991), 48/57 (1993).
7 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1948.

12
(Kaldor 2006) have mobilized around humanitarian concerns and exerted pressure for the
international community to take action on the crises in Somalia and Sierra Leone.
Critics of these studies have argued that constructivists tend to focus on cases where
norms seemed to have an impact or where norms were followed, while largely ignoring
countervailing trends. Moreover, even when the failure to comply with norms is taken into
account, norm violation is still not examined independently from norm compliance. For
example, if a neat “cultural match” of international norms with national norms and successful
processes of socialization is conducive to compliance (Checkel 2001), then norm violations
tend to be explained, conversely, by a mismatch of international and national norms, or by
insufficient socialization. As a result, norm violation remains the “default outcome” of norm
compliance (Cardenas 2004, 220).
In many cases, however, norms decline, collide with concurring rules or, despite formal
acceptance, are continually and deliberately violated—a situation that Krasner (1999) has
described as “organized hypocrisy.” Indeed, this holds true even for firmly established
international norms like the non-use of force (Franck 1970), state sovereignty (Krasner 1999),
or basic human rights such as the prohibition of torture (Liese 2006). A comparable “gap” has
also been observed with respect to humanitarian intervention: While states have intervened
militarily with increasing frequency, to come to the rescue of threatened populations, this
interventionism has remained highly selective (Kühne 2000; Brown 2003; Boulden 2006). It
is puzzling for constructivist accounts why humanitarian norms have an effect in some cases
but not others.
To account for variation it is important to look at the conditions under which
humanitarian norms are enacted or “activated” (Schwartz 1977). In situations where human
suffering is large-scale and, by extension, where international norms, including the most
fundamental human rights principles, are grossly violated; the felt moral obligation to
intervene on behalf of the victims and to defend international norms is particularly strong
(Hasenclever 2001, 211). Along these same lines, it has been argued that massive human
suffering is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for intervention (e.g., Jakobsen 1996,
212). With respect to Security Council intervention, even skeptics agree that Council
members were affected by a “humanitarian imperative” (Luck 2006, 92) or felt a
“humanitarian impulse” (Weiss 2004, 39) when faced with cases of large-scale human
suffering. Overall, this leads us to expect that—against the backdrop of international
normative change—the level of the Security Council’s response to humanitarian emergencies
depends upon the extent of human suffering in an emergency.

13
Material interests: spillover effects and countervailing power

Whether a humanitarian crisis negatively affects the material interests of Security Council
members is the second explanatory factor for Council intervention. Material interests are
especially emphasized by realist accounts. From a realist perspective, states are rational actors
who struggle for power and interests. Under conditions of international anarchy and the
resulting security dilemma, it is argued that states must adopt strategies of self-help in order to
survive. Thus, depending on the variant of realism, states will strive for either maximizing
security (Waltz 1979; Walt 1987) or maximizing power (Mearsheimer 2003). Realism is first
and foremost a systemic theory. Specific patterns of state behavior such as “balancing”
against or “bandwagoning” with a leading state are encouraged by the distribution of power in
the international system and a state’s position in that system (Waltz 1979).
A number of realist informed studies have addressed the (subsystemic) issue of military
intervention (Morgenthau 1967; Pearson 1974; Bull 1984b; Feste 1992; Pearson, Baumann,
and Pickering 1994; Wight 1995, 138). According to these scholars intervention is first and
foremost a means to advance the material goals of a state. In Karen Feste’s (1992, 1) words,
“military intervention is an instrument of foreign policy used to promote the interests of
individual nations” (see also Haass 2001). These interests may include a state’s desire to
change or maintain the international distribution of power, or to broaden or defend its
respective geopolitical sphere of influence (Pearson 1974, 452–454; Feste 1992, 16–33;
Wight 1995, 138). Yet intervention might also have ideological goals. With a view to US-
Soviet rivalry after the Second World War, Hans Morgenthau (1967, 428) argued that the two
great powers compete not only for advantage. “They also face each other as the fountainheads
of two hostile and incompatible ideologies, systems of government and ways of life, each
trying to expand the reach of its respective political values and institutions and to prevent the
expansion of the other.” Finally, the promotion of (corporate) economic interests, such as
access to resources, has been considered a further motive for intervention ( Cox and Sinclair
1996, 288–96; Lindblom 1977, 170–88; Lipson 1985, 227–57). But military intervention is
only an option where there is a high degree of power asymmetry between the intervener and
the target state (Wight 1995, 194). In Hedley Bull’s (1984a, 184) words, “great inequalities in
power provide the conditions in which intervention is possible.” In short, states are expected
to intervene only if the benefits of intervention appear to outweigh its costs and if the chances
of success are high (Regan 2000). Otherwise states will refrain from intervening.

14
 Realist inspired explanations have also been relied on to account for multilateral
interventions. Focusing on the determinants of UN peacekeeping operations during the Cold
War, realists attach a good deal of importance to the role of great powers’ interests (Ruggie
1974; Durch 1993). Neack (Neack 1995, 194), for instance, analyzes state participation in
several peacekeeping operations during the Cold War and argues that “[i]n terms of who
participates and how they participate, in terms of where peace-keeping operations get
launched, in terms of the impressions of peace-keepers and observers, states participate in
peace-keeping to serve their own interests.” Similar explanations are offered for multilateral
interventions in the post-Cold War period. The argument is that, whether or not the UN
embarks upon major actions in response to violent conflicts and humanitarian crises, largely
depends on the various interests of the permanent members of the Security Council. ( de
Jonge Oudraat 1996; Wallensteen 2002, 242–52; Wallensteen and Johansson 2004, 21–25;
Boulden 2006, 412–15). But what are these interests?
Two factors in particular may explain the degree of Security Council response. For one,
it has been argued that the degree of UN response depends on the level of spillover effects
emanating from a crisis and thus the extent to which “the conflict is believed by the P-5 to
constitute a threat to international peace and security” (de Jonge Oudraat 1996, 519). Many
studies have shown that the volatile mix of internal conflict, state failure, organized
criminality, and human rights violations may result in negative spillover effects with
consequences for national, regional, and international security (Brown 1996; Dowty and
Loescher 1996; Adamson 2006; Salehyan and Gleditsch 2006). Spillover effects may
contribute to conflict diffusion through various mechanisms such as refugee flows (Salehyan
and Gleditsch 2006), transnationally operating rebels (Salehyan 2009), international terrorism,
or economic downturn. Spillover effects can also generate negative externalities in that they
affect the Security Council’s primary task of maintaining international peace and security.
Likewise, spillover effects could directly affect the permanent members’ respective national
security or economic interests. With regard to refugee flows, for instance, Alan Dowty and
Gil Loescher (1996, 44) argued that such events affect security interests, “particularly when
internal conflicts result in wider regional wars and when the spillover of refugees destabilizes
neighboring countries.” By the same token, in cases where a crisis produces substantial
negative externalities and threatens regional or international stability, we can expect a strong
response from the members of the Security Council.
A second causal factor for intervention stressed in the realist inspired literature is
countervailing power or power asymmetries that must exist between a potential intervener and

15
a target state. As regards Security Council action, Peter Wallensteen and Patrik Johansson
(2004, 23) emphasized that “states that are somewhat powerful can prevent Security Council
action by raising the costs and risks of an intervention.” Others scholars have argued and
shown that countries with strong militaries are better able to generate countervailing power to
resist the deployment of UN peacekeeping operations (see Doyle and Sambanis 2006;
Gilligan and Stedman 2003; Fortna 2004; Mullenbach 2005). It is unlikely, for instance, that
countries like Russia, China, or India would ever become the targets of UN interventions.
Apart from military strength, alignment with powerful allies is also a way to raise the costs of
a potential intervention and to resist UN action (Ruggie 1974, 503). In this case,
countervailing power through alliance membership can directly deter UN action, but an ally
can also be expected “to use its political influence to prevent the deployment of third-party
peacekeeping personnel on the territory of a military ally” (Mullenbach 2005, 537). The same
can be expected when a country affected by a violent humanitarian crisis is located within the
sphere of influence of a major power (Luard 1984, 165). This point is illustrated by the 2008
war in Georgia where Russia prevented potential UN involvement in the crisis.
Overall, by focusing on the importance of power and interests, realist inspired accounts
lead to two testable theoretical expectations. The level of Security Council action depends,
first, on the magnitude of spillover effects and, second, on the extent to which a target state is
able to generate countervailing power against Security Council intervention.

Institutional effects: prior commitments and path dependence

The third explanation for third-party intervention is anchored in accounts by institutionalist

inspired theories. From the perspective of historical institutionalism, whether or not the
Security Council decides to intervene in a humanitarian crisis is influenced by path-dependent
processes resulting from prior commitments or “sunk costs” that the UN or some regional
organization acting on its behalf has made in the crisis and the desire to protect those
investments through continued or escalated involvement. The importance of path dependence
is highlighted by historical institutionalism, which stresses the role of temporality,
configuration effects, and unintended consequences in political processes ( Hall and Taylor
1996; Pierson and Skocpol 2002; Fioretos 2011).
In general terms, path dependence means that a chosen path of action in the past matters
in determining current or future outcomes. More specifically, path dependence refers to self-
reinforcing feedback processes that are characterized by the formation and long-term

16
reproduction of a given institutional pattern or behavior (Mahoney 2000, 508). Through the
process of what is called “increasing returns” or “lock in” in economics (Arthur 1994,
chapters 2 and 3) “the probability of further steps along the same path increases with each
move down the path. This is because the relative benefits of the current activity compared
with other possible options increase over time” (Pierson 2000, 252). As a result, path
dependencies make changes in behavior increasingly costly, thus restricting possible choices
of actions. As Paul Pierson and Theda Skocpol (2002, 298) put it “[o]nce actors have
ventured far down a particular path … they are likely to find it very difficult to reverse course.
Political alternatives that were once quite plausible may become irretrievably lost.” In short,
path dependence explains why social actors remain committed to existing institutional
arrangements and political choices rather than turn to hypothetical alternatives. In the social
sciences, the concept of path dependence has been used in particular to account for the
persistence of institutions, even when they have been proven to be inefficient or even
dysfunctional (e.g., Mahoney and Thelen 2010). However, path dependence not only applies
to institutions; it also matters for policies (Pierson 2000, 259).
There are several factors which are thought to induce processes of path dependence. In
addition to learning, coordination effects, or adaptive expectations, sunk costs are considered
to be an important source of path dependence (e.g., Keohane 1989, 389). Sunk costs may
include material resources and investments in skills, as well as immaterial resources such as
prestige, reputation, and credibility. Notably, as Arthur Stinchcombe (1968, 121) explained,
“if … sunk costs make a traditional pattern of action cheaper, and if new patterns are not
enough more profitable to justify throwing away the resource, the sunk costs tend to preserve
a pattern of action from one year to the next.” The crucial point here is that “old activities
have an advantage from sunk costs, even if a new activity would be more profitable than the
old if we were starting from scratch” (Stinchcombe 1968, 122). In other words, even though
sunk costs are non-recoverable and lost, they help explain why actors pursue a specific course
of action which may seem irrational in terms of the actual cost–benefit ratio. In fact, the “sunk
cost trap” is often used to explain seemingly irrational or at least inefficient behavior.
However, sunk costs do not necessarily lead to fallacious policies (e.g., McAfee, Mialon, and
Mialon 2010).
Third-party intervention involves sunk costs in important ways, which may thus lead to
path-dependent processes. The decision to use military force, “multidimensional” UN
peacekeeping missions, sanctions regimes, or humanitarian assistance typically involves
substantial costs. These comprise human costs (casualties) and material costs (set up costs)

17
including money or equipment. To this one must add the non-material or political investments
that decision makers have already committed to a conflict or crisis. These are most notably
reputation costs vis-à-vis domestic and international audiences (Fearon 1997). Third-party
intervention also generates considerable coordination effects intra-institutionally and with
multiple actors on the ground, and learning effects (Benner, Mergenthaler, and Rotmann
2011) which also play an important role in triggering path-dependent processes.8
Observers of third-party intervention have argued that the wish on the part of decision
makers to protect these investments explains not only why intervention policies persist, but
also why actors are ready to accept increased risks and escalate their commitment to an
intervention, or why they “gamble for resurrection” (Downs and Rocke 1994). A few studies
on third-party intervention have focused on path dependent processes resulting from sunk
costs. Jeffrey Taliaferro (1998) examined Imperial Japan’s decision to escalate the military,
economic, and political costs in World War II, and to launch a preventive strike against the
US as a result of Japan’s desire to recover sunk costs. He concludes that sunk costs explain
why decision makers “persevere in such wars far longer than a standard cost–benefit analysis
would expect” (p. 95). Karin von Hippel (1996) analyzed Morocco’s intervention in the
Western Sahara conflict. She argues that sunk costs explain the monarchy’s inability to retreat
from the chosen, though unsuccessful, policy of continued commitment to fighting the
Polisario Front, for which Morocco had invested heavily in terms of time, money, and human
lives. Regarding the multilateral intervention in the Bosnian conflict in 1995, Steven Burg
(2004) made a similar argument. He maintains that, over time, investments in diplomatic
prestige and in material and military resources in the Bosnian crisis generated an interest
among Western powers to intervene, where no such interest had existed before. The
intervention in Bosnia, according to Burg, “offers a clear example of how even a limited
commitment to containment and humanitarian relief may lead, incrementally, to a major
commitment to direct intervention.” William Boettcher and Michael Cobb (2009) examine
public willingness to commit additional resources to an ongoing war. Focusing on the recent
war in Iraq, they find that sunk costs matter in explaining variations in support for the war
among individuals, depending on their respective attitudes towards military intervention.
Finally, looking at post-conflict peace-building interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, Daniel
Allen (2010) employed the concept of path dependence to identify the conditions underlying
successful nation-building efforts.

8 On these mechanisms, see W. Brian Arthur (1997, 10).

18
 Thus, from the perspective of sunk costs, whether (and how strongly) the Security
Council responds to a violent humanitarian crisis depends on the extent to which it has
previously committed material and non-material resources in a crisis. Given the fact that
regional organizations sometimes act on behalf of the Security Council (in accordance with
Chapter VIII of the UN Charter), sunk costs can arise from prior investments made not only
by the Council but by regional organizations as well.9
Path dependencies alone cannot account for the variance in international intervention
behavior. Rather, they are a secondary explanation. While the concept of sunk costs might
explain why certain established policies and institutional arrangements persist over time, the
concept does not account for why these particular policies were adopted in the first place. As
Brian Arthur (1994, 14) put it, path dependence may arise from “historical small events” to
create lock-in effects. For others, contingency—or even randomness—in the initiation of
path-dependent processes seems to be a defining feature of such processes (e.g. Mahoney
2000, 513).

The “CNN effect”: International media attention

The impact of mass media reporting on Security Council intervention decisions is the fourth
and final explanation. This impact is usually labeled the “CNN effect” but it includes print,
televised, and other electronic news. The CNN effect literature encompasses ideational and
material elements that are central to constructivist and realist–rationalist theories. According
to this literature, news media are “an important and influential element of foreign policy
formulation and world politics” (Robinson 2011, 3). More specifically, it is argued that media
reporting can force governments to intervene in humanitarian crises or violent conflicts even
if doing so goes against their will (Jakobsen 2000; see also Shaw 1996; Strobel 1997;
Livingston 2000; Robinson 2000). What matters, on this view, is not so much the “real”
extent of crises, but rather their perceived dimensions resulting from mass media reporting.
Prototypical cases of media-driven interventions are the crises in Northern Iraq, Somalia, and
Kosovo. Several studies have argued that media coverage of the Kurdish crisis in the
Northern Iraq war were instrumental in compelling Western powers to intervene (Shaw
1996). Likewise, scholars have pointed to daily reports on starving children in Somalia to
claim that the media pushed the United States “into [adopting] a policy of intervention for

9 Mark Mullenbach (2005, 538–39) makes a similar argument to explain the deployment of UN
peacekeeping operations.

19
humanitarian reasons” (Mandelbaum 1994, 16; see also Cohen 1994). Similar arguments have
been made for the military intervention in Kosovo (Bahador 2007). Finally, in light of the
more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were also highly mediatized, scholars have
argued that the “media are more than ever major influences upon world politics” (Robinson
2011, 3).
Literature on the CNN effect, usually found among the body of literature that belongs to
communication theory, employs methodologies such as “framing.” With respect to the ways
in which media reporting is believed to affect intervention decisions, two mechanisms are
frequently highlighted: one is consistent with a constructivist perspective; the other conforms
to rationalist accounts. From a constructivist viewpoint, it is argued that, via mass media
coverage, citizens and decision makers can identify with or develop empathy for the victims
of conflicts and humanitarian emergencies. Michael Barnett (1998, 96), for instance, referring
to the CNN factor, stressed this appeal to empathy to argue that “[t]he sense of political
community does not stop at the state’s border, for frequently state officials and citizens
express a strong sense of obligation and responsibility to provide humanitarian assistance to
those in need, regardless of their place on the geopolitical map.” Similar arguments have been
made by “cosmopolitan” authors like David Held (1995, 21–127) who emphasize the role of
global communication for the emergence of transnational solidarity and “overlapping
communities of fate.” Or, as Ulrich Beck and Ciaran Cronin (2006) put it “when civilians and
children in Israel, Palestine, Iraq or Africa suffer and die and this suffering is presented in
compelling images in the mass media this produces cosmopolitan pity which forces us to act”
(p. 6).
Second, seen from a rationalist perspective, a broader public exerts pressure on
decisionmakers who, in turn, fearing reputational damage from inaction, act strategically.
Both elements are nicely captured in the words of Johanna Neuman (1996) according to
which the CNN effect means that policymakers faced with massive media reporting “have no
choice but to redirect their attention to the crisis at hand. It also suggests that crisis coverage
evokes an emotional outcry from the public to ‘do something’ about the latest incident,
forcing political leaders to change course or risk unpopularity” (pp. 15–16).
Many of these studies deriving from communications theory focus on the role of media
attention in explaining specific foreign policy decisions at state level. Other observers claim,
however, that media coverage also operates at the level of the Security Council. David
Malone (2004, 12), for example, refers to media outlets like CNN as the Security Council’s
“sixteenth member,” arguing that “the media plays an important role in the life of the Council,

20
often producing international pressure for action to address man-made disasters.” Similar
observations have been made by policymakers such as former UN Secretary General Boutros-
Ghali (Gilboa 2005, 28). Taken together, what this literature suggests is that the extent to
which the Security Council responds to a humanitarian crisis depends on the level of
international media attention for this crisis.
Although it is widely agreed that the media does play some part in decisions to
intervene, a number of other studies cast doubt on the actual impact of the CNN factor for
those determinations. Some observers have argued that media coverage follows foreign policy
decisions, and not vice versa. For example, with respect to the US intervention in Somalia,
Livingston and Eachus (1995, 413) argued that this “was the result of diplomatic and
bureaucratic operations, with news coverage coming in response to those decisions.”
Likewise, with reference to the Gulf War and to the intervention in Haiti, Viggo Jakobsen
(2000, 134) claims that the “American government used the media to mobilize support for its
preferred policies[;] it was not driven by the media to intervene.” Jakobsen (2000, 132) argues
further that, through the fear of images of dead soldiers, media coverage might prevent rather
than promote intervention. As regards the US decision in the case of Burundi, still other
scholars have argued that the willingness to intervene was present despite a lack of media
coverage (Gowing 2000, 212) and, conversely, that non-intervention prevailed despite strong
media attention (Robinson 1999, 307).
Such controversies notwithstanding, scholars still widely consider media reporting to
affect intervention decisions in important ways. What they argue is, first, that media impact is
less strong than often assumed and, second, that it is more indirect and conditional, depending
on the additional presence of other factors (Jakobsen 2000; Robinson 2001, 954). In
Robinson’s words “the idea that news media representation of humanitarian crises had single-
handedly driven in a new era of humanitarian intervention was a gross simplification” (2011,
6). While the media seems to have a real effect on intervention decisions, it is not “sufficient
on its own to cause intervention and is unlikely to even be a necessary factor in causing policy
makers to act” (Robinson, 2001, 942). Given these limitations, media coverage will be
included into the framework and will subsequently be tested as a “candidate” explanatory
condition.

21
Conclusion

This chapter introduced the theoretical framework for explaining Security Council
intervention in humanitarian crises. It began by discussing Security Council decision making
to argue that, given the bargaining processes and procedures characteristic for the Council,
intervention decisions by it are different from unilateral ones, both thus requiring separate
analysis and explanation. In laying out the theoretical framework for my subsequent analysis,
I have presented such an explanation; it is configurational and integrates three distinct but
complementary logics of action. The first of these reflects normative concerns, and the wish
to rescue threatened populations and uphold international humanitarian norms. The second
logic reflects material motives and concerns about limiting the negative externalities arising
from humanitarian crises, as well as concerns about the costs and risks of intervention. The
third logic reflects the institutional dynamics within the Security Council and its members’
desire to protect the resources that were committed to the resolution of a crisis in the past. For
each of these motivations I have identified testable conditions. These are (1) the extent of a
humanitarian crisis, (2) the extent of spillover effects, (3) the strength of countervailing
power, (4) the level of previous institutional involvement in a crisis, and (5) the level of
international media attention. To be sure these conditions do not “measure” humanitarian
concerns, material interests, or institutional effects directly, but they plausibly affect these
motivations. Moreover, all of these conditions are international-level factors which operate at
the same level of analysis, and which have been underpinned empirically by previous
qualitative and quantitative research on third-party intervention. Conversely, potential
alternative explanatory factors, such as the type of conflict (identity, religious, secessionist,
etc.), the availability of primary commodities (e.g., oil) in the target state, or the existence of a
peace treaty between the warring parties are not included in my analysis, because they have
been rejected repeatedly by other previous research (Gilligan and Stedman 2003; Fortna 2004;
Mullenbach 2005). This being said, whether and to what extent alternative factors are at play
in Security Council decision making will be controlled for in greater detail—in particular, in
the subsequent case study chapters that examine Security Council (non-)intervention
decisions. Case study analysis is open enough to also help identify potential alternative
explanations or conditions “off the board” (Hollis and Smith 1991, 185).

22
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