Mediator's Flexibility and the U.N. Security Council

Abstract

This article explores how the U.N. Security Council's quality of being an intergovernmental entity affects its flexibility and its effectiveness in mediating international conflicts. These effects are traced through a discussion of mediator's functions: helping disputants to communicate, providing ideas, inducing the disputants to change their positions, and providing guarantees that the agreed terms of a settlement will be respected. The analysis leads to the conclusion that flexibility may have contributory effects on the council's ability to influence the disputants' behavior. Depending on the specific circumstances and the functions that the mediator is trying to perform, flexibility or the lack of it may encourage disputants to become more flexible but may also have the opposite effect of encouraging rigidity. The council's difficulties in performing its mediating functions stem from its cumbersome and uncertain decision-making process and its lack of resources.