Institutionalised Summits in International Governance: Promoting and Limiting Change by Daniel Odinius

Author:Daniel Odinius [Odinius, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General, Diplomacy
ISBN: 9781000464443
Google: YmZCEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 58008719
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-10-21T10:12:36+00:00

Conclusion

This chapter shows how building support for sanctions and implementing them is linked to selecting international institutions. States seeking to establish multilateral sanctions involve institutions whose members are likely to agree on sanctions and which contribute to their effective implementation. This strategy can entail different institutions at different stages of the process. States that are reluctant to impose sanctions try to avoid institutionalised pressure to adopt and implement sanctions.

The international response to state-sponsored terrorism in the case of Libya illustrates this general dynamic. When the UN Security Council adopted sanctions against Libya in 1992, this decision was the result of several strategic institutional choices. Before the UN adopted sanctions, state-sponsored terrorism featured prominently on the G7 summit’s agenda. Throughout the 1980s a negative zone of possible agreement for sanctions against Libya persisted within the UN. Facing resistance by other UN members, the US and the UK involved the G7 summit to promote an agreement on sanctions. Pursuing further sanctions, the US, the UK, and France decided to involve the UN Security Council although an agreement in the G7 was realistic and involving the UN required considerable effort. The UN framework was chosen to increase the probability that sanctions were effective. They succeeded as states opposing sanctions had lost their veto position in the UN Security Council.

In line with the theoretical expectations regarding the route to the summit, a negative zone of possible agreement for sanctions within the UN made the US prefer the G7 summit. As the only state sanctioning Libya, the US was dissatisfied with the lack of multilateral action. European states resisted sanctions. UN sanctions were impossible due to an ideological struggle between Western states on the one side and Eastern states as well as developing states on the other. Prioritising terrorism in 1984, the US sought action by the G7 summit. The Reagan administration considered the G7 a suitable institution to impose pressure on its allies to change their assessments of the status quo. After an attack on a British policewoman from the Libyan embassy in London, the UK as host of the summit changed its assessment of the status quo and included the topic on the agenda.

The G7 reached an agreement on policy change, but it was not the G7’s genuine achievement. At its 1986 Tokyo meeting, the summit agreed on measures against state-sponsored terrorism and singled out Libya. The agreement endorsed measures that the US and the European Community were already implementing. In response to decreasing payoffs from the status quo, the European allies had also adopted measures against Libya. These actions marked a departure from the original status quo. In the following years the G7 condemned state-sponsored terrorism, but it refrained from developing distinctive G7 measures.

Although a G7 agreement on sanctions in response to new revelations on Libya’s activities was possible and actively considered, the US, the UK, and France involved the UN Security Council to sanction Libya. This is also consistent with the theoretical expectations regarding the route from the summit. States which

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