Layered Rationality in the United Nations Security Council: Bridging Neorealism and Neoliberalism through Process Tracing

Résumé fourni par la source

This article compares the explanatory power of neorealism and neoliberalism in accounting for variations in the effectiveness of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in the post-Cold War period. It employs a qualitative comparative design and process tracing across four cases: the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the Syrian conflict 2011–2014, the Ukraine crisis 2014–2022, and the UNSC response to Ebola in 2014 as a negative case. The evidence is drawn from UNSC resolutions, meeting records, veto data, UN fact sheets, and related institutional reports. The findings show that neorealism best explains institutional deadlock when issues involve vital great-power interests, especially intervention, annexation, and regional security alignments. By contrast, neoliberalism better explains sustained coordination on humanitarian, health, and technical matters. The article develops the concept of layered rationality to show that states do not abruptly switch theories; rather, they activate different response layers according to the issue’s sensitivity to existential interests. The main contribution of the study lies in integrating high-politics and low-politics logics within a single analytical framework for explaining variation in UNSC outputs.