As far as popular opinion around the world is concerned, the Secretary General of the United Nations is the leader of the organization. Whenever a massive natural disaster strikes or negotiations are being held to terminate a military conflict, you can always count on seeing the Secretary General hovering about somewhere. But in truth, the role of the Secretary General is largely symbolic and his duties are primarily administrative. The real power in the United Nations lies in the hands of the Security Council. At best, the Secretary General is the CEO of the U.N., with the Security Council playing the role of an unusually active and engaged Board of Directors.
The Secretary General is nominated by the Security Council, whose selection is then approved or rejected by the General Assembly. While there are no official requirements specified in the Charter, tradition dictates that the Secretary-General not be a national of any of the five permanent members of the Security Council and, for some reason, that the Secretary-General speak French as well as English. Every permanent member of the Security Council thus has a veto over the choice of the Secretary-General, which makes for some hefty horse trading among the great powers. The General Assembly has generally gone along with whomever the Security Council has decided upon.
Because the Great Powers that make up the permanent membership of the Security Council benefit greatly from maintaining the status quo, they have always chosen Secretaries-General who are unlikely to rock the boat. The only exception to this rule was Dag Hammarskjold (1953-1961), whose forceful and effective leadership came as an unwelcome surprise to the Security Council. For the most part, the Secretaries-General pretty much fit the mold of a joke told about Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar: they couldn't make a splash if they fell out of a canoe.
The current system of selection the U.N. Secretary-General is ridiculous. The person who eventually ascends to the top slot is simply the product of negotiations between the permanent members of the Security-Council, who are always striving to find the candidate least likely to shake things up. If the United Nations is ever to live up to its full potential, it must have more dynamic and charismatic leadership at the top. Equally, the Secretary-General has to be able to credibly claim to be a representative of the entire world, rather than just the powers-that-be in the world's most powerful nations.
There is an elegant solution to this problem. In the past, we have discussed on this blog the urgent need for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, whose delegates will be directly elected by the people of their nations rather than chosen by the governments. If we truly want to see the leadership of the United Nations be chosen by the people it is supposed to represent, there can be no better way to select the Secretary-General than by having the UNPA make the decision.
In practice, it would probably work in roughly the same manner as the selection of a prime minister the parliamentary Westminster system, which is used by legislative bodies all over the world (the greatest legacy of the British Empire, except perhaps for association football). If a single party controls a majority of the seats in the parliament, their leader becomes the prime minister. If no single party holds a majority, coalitions among two or more parties may be crafted, and the prime minister will be chosen through negotiations among the parties making up the coalition. Something similar might emerge as the manner in which the UNPA selects the Secretary-General, if it is decided that this should be the UNPA's job.
Under the Westminster system, a party or coalition must have a majority in order to form the government. But the UNPA will be a special case, because organized world-spanning political parties are practically nonexistent. The Global Greens and the Socialist International might qualify, but they are more akin to loosely-affiliated associations than genuine political organizations. While this would seem to be a recipe for complete confusion, it actually will create an enormous opportunity to advance the Global Civic vision.
Take, for example, the two major political parties of the United States, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. From the perspective of public policy, the Republican Party has more in common with the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom, the Grand National Party of South Korea, and (its name notwithstanding) the Liberal Party of Australia than it does with the Democratic Party. The Democrats, in turn, have more in common with the Liberal Democrats of the United Kingdom, the Socialist Party of France and Indian National Congress than it does with the Republicans.
In trying to influence the decision as to who the next Secretary-General should be, as the Republicans and Democrats more likely to enter into a coalition with one another, or with political parties from other countries whose policy platforms more closely align with theirs? In the beginning, geographic politics may be the deciding factor (Western nations teaming up to nominate a Westerner, African nations and African, and so on). But as time passes and increasingly policy-driven matters are dealt with by the UNPA, we will almost certainly see the rise of global political organizations pursuing common aims within the assembly. This, in turn, would powerfully strengthen the Global Civic outlook.
Just as important, having the Secretary-General chosen by election from the UNPA would help ensure that the top leadership at the U.N. would be more dynamic and energetic than has been the case up this point. The U.N. has bureaucrats aplenty within the Secretariat. What it needs in its Secretary-General is a popular figure with charisma, who will also be able to stand up when necessary to the great powers on the Security Council. A political leader skillful enough to navigate the coalition-building and electioneering necessary to emerge triumphant from a leadership contest within the UNPA would have an excellent chance of fitting the bill.
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