Legitimacy by Design and Security Council Reform

Discussion about reforming the United Nations Security Council has for a long time focused on who is at the table, who has the veto, and how the Council might be enlarged. This paper begins from a different assumption: simply carrying out structural reform is necessary yet by itself is not enough to maintain legitimate international authority. It elaborates the concept of ‘Legitimacy by Design’ along four closely related dimensions—constitutional, democratic, procedural and performance legitimacy—and applies these to the Security Council, where exceptional authority, unequal power and wide-ranging consequences come together. Using the Council’s actions in three specific cases, it points out the gaps between participation and having an influence on the evidence, and between the evidence and the taking of authoritative decisions. The paper contends that reform must deal with both the distribution of authority and with the conditions that govern its ongoing use. It suggests the introduction of a Periodic Legitimacy Review, which should be incorporated into the Council’s current annual reporting arrangement with the General Assembly, in order to evaluate how authority is exercised, justified and improved over time.