Abstract
Democracy has become a concept readily identifiable with the United Nations (UN) in relatively recent times. As in the case of other international organizations, it was only at the end of the Cold War that democracy-promotion became part of the UN-driven global activities and distinctive agenda. The UN institutional and legal framework remained, instead, fundamentally unaffected by the post 1989 events, creating a problematic discrepancy between the unchanged organization’s founding values, membership requirements, and general structures, and its progressively more intense pro-democratic global projection. This chapter argues that the UN adopted an essentially instrumental view of democracy in order to remedy this discrepancy. This undisclosed choice aimed to present democracy mostly as a tool for pursuing the organization’s fundamental values and institutional goals of promoting peace, human rights and development. These contemporary dimensions of the UN action raise nonetheless a number of questions: to what extent should the instrumental approach be considered legitimate and effective? Are its underlying assumptions, particularly the existence of causal relationships linking democracy to the UN Charter’s goals so uncontroversial, both in the academic literature and in the global actors’ general experience? The chapter firstly analyzes the approach of the UN towards democracy before and after 1989. It then focuses on the view of democracy both as an autonomous and “universal value” to be promoted in itself (democracy as an ‘end’) and on the view of democracy as an instrument for pursuing UN institutional goals (democracy as a ‘means’). The three basic axioms supporting this perspective—democracy for peace, democracy for human rights, and democracy for development—will be analyzed from both a theoretical and empirical point of view. In the conclusion attention will be payed to the “importance of being earnest” for the UN, drawing on comparative law experiences and lessons learned.
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Notes
- 1.
Article 21 (UDHR): “(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. (2) Everyone has the right to equal access to public service in his country. (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures”.
- 2.
Article 25 (ICCPR): “Every citizen shall have the right and the opportunity, without any of the distinctions mentioned in article 2 and without unreasonable restrictions: (a) To take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives; (b) To vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot, guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors; (c) To have access, on general terms of equality, to public service in his country”.
- 3.
Article 29 (UDHR): “(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations”.
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Volpe, V. (2020). The Importance of Being Earnest. The United Nations and Democracy-Promotion. In: Fiorentini, F., Infantino, M. (eds) Mentoring Comparative Lawyers: Methods, Times, and Places . Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 77. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34754-3_12
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