Reform of the United Nations Security Council: equity and efficiency

Abstract

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is critical to global peace and security, yet more than 20 years of negotiations over its reform have proved fruitless. We use recent advances in the theory of a priori voting power to present a formal quantitative appraisal of the implications for democratic equity and efficiency of the “structural reforms” contained within 11 current reform proposals, as well as the separate effect of expansion of the UNSC membership. Only one reform proposal–a weakening of the veto power for Permanent Members by requiring two negative votes for a veto to be effective—robustly dominates the status quo against our measures of equity and efficiency. Several proposed structural reforms may actually worsen the issues they ostensibly claim to resolve.