The effect of expert recommendations on intergovernmental decision-making: North Korea, Iran, and non-proliferation sanctions in the Security Council
| Author | Thomas Dörfler |
| DOI | 10.1177/00471178211033941 |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178211033941
International Relations
2022, Vol. 36(2) 237 –261
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00471178211033941
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The effect of expert
recommendations on
intergovernmental decision-
making: North Korea, Iran,
and non-proliferation sanctions
in the Security Council
Thomas Dörfler
Universität Potsdam
Abstract
The article explores whether and to what extent expert recommendations affect decision-
making within the Security Council and its North Korea and Iran sanctions regimes. The
article first develops a rationalist theoretical argument to show why making many second-
stage decisions, such as determining lists of items under export restrictions, subjects Security
Council members to repeating coordination situations. Expert recommendations may provide
focal point solutions to coordination problems, even when interests diverge and preferences
remain stable. Empirically, the article first explores whether expert recommendations affected
decision-making on commodity sanctions imposed on North Korea. Council members heavily
relied on recommended export trigger lists as focal points, solving a divisive conflict among great
powers. Second, the article explores whether expert recommendations affected the designation
of sanctions violators in the Iran sanctions regime. Council members designated individuals and
entities following expert recommendations as focal points, despite conflicting interests among
great powers. The article concludes that expert recommendations are an additional means of
influence in Security Council decision-making and seem relevant for second-stage decision-
making among great powers in other international organisations.
Keywords
decision-making, expert recommendations, international organisation, rationalism, sanctions,
Security Council
Corresponding author:
Thomas Dörfler, Universität Potsdam, August-Bebel-Str. 89, Potsdam 14482, Germany.
Email: tdoerfler@uni-potsdam.de
1033941IRE0010.1177/00471178211033941International RelationsDörfler
research-article2021
Article
238 International Relations 36(2)
Introduction
Members of the United Nations Security Council face great challenges when implement-
ing a sanctions regime, as any sanctions regime rests on a plethora of decisions made in
a second stage after the Council imposes sanctions on a target country. These second-
stage decisions are crucial and not a mere technical nuisance. Asset freezes, travel bans
or commodity sanctions, which are among the most frequently imposed sanctions meas-
ures, require the Council to determine a list of affected individuals, entities or goods,
without which the sanctions will simply have no effect. Though sanctions measures may
be different, the decision problem remains the same. The fate of a sanctions regime, like
many cooperation projects in other international organisations (IOs), in fact, vitally
depend on these second-stage decisions.
Sanctions decisions in the Security Council, however, are deeply contested among its
permanent members with veto power. Even though the Security Council currently main-
tains 14 sanctions regimes, its members often chiefly disagree. In cases such as Syria,
Zimbabwe or Myanmar, the Council failed to impose sanctions because Russia and
China resisted intervention. In other cases where permanent members share some com-
mon interests, the adopted sanctions resolutions follow protracted negotiations even over
seemingly minor details. Negotiations over imposing sanctions in reaction to the nuclear
programmes in North Korea (DPRK) and Iran have been particularly controversial. The
political rift is often between France, the UK and the US on one side, which prefer
imposing sanctions more frequently and more forcefully, and Russia and China on the
other, which prefer less frequent and more gradual sanctions. In the crucial second stage,
for instance, when Council members designate individuals to implement an asset freeze,
a task often delegated to a sanctions committee, members have similarly diverging politi-
cal positions and ample opportunity to obstruct decisions. As a Council diplomat point-
edly noted, considering that sanctions committees decide by consensus, ‘arithmetic
teaches us that a sanctions committee must be about three times as inflexible and irreso-
lute as the Security Council itself’.1
What is surprising, though, is that Council members often agree on second-stage deci-
sions despite having different preferences and, importantly, rely on expert recommenda-
tions in the process. When the Council imposed an embargo on non-proliferation,
ballistic-missile and chemical and biological weapons precursors on North Korea, Russia
and China agreed to follow an expert recommendation of the Australia Group (AG) in
the second stage to adopt a commodity list to which the ban was applicable. The decision
is difficult to understand from standard rationalist expectations, considering that Russia
and China vehemently opposed the decision and were in a prime position to veto it.
What explains why Council members can often agree despite strongly diverging
interests and all members having a de facto veto on crucial second-stage decisions? Why
do Council members rely on expert recommendations in this process? This article exam-
ines whether and to what extent expert recommendations affect key second-stage deci-
sions made within the Security Council and provides an explanation for why they do so.
Rational institutionalism and the concept of focal points in coordination situations pro-
vide a fruitful starting point. First, I argue that intergovernmental decision-making cre-
ates decisional constraints when the group of states separates major components of a
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