Glasnost in the Security Council: the value of transparency

The article focuses on the question of transparency in Security Council sanctions decision-making. The link between transparency and legitimacy has been established in influential literature. It is only by understanding the ‘why’ of transparency in the Security Council setting (namely the way in which it contributes to the legitimization of the Council’s authority) that we can adequately answer the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘how’ questions. The author proposes three preliminary justifications for Security Council authority: (i) the purposive justification; (ii) the polity justification; and (iii) the princely justification. This value-based analysis recognizes that the Security Council’s legitimate authority is predicated on the availability of public justifications that demonstrate the purposive and representative foundations of Council decision-making, while respecting the fundamental interests of the permanent members. Where constructed with appropriate attention to the ‘why’ of transparency, both disclosure and non-disclosure can be justified in terms of a transparency framework that ultimately supports and enhances the legitimate authority of the UN Security Council.