Willing to serve: Empire,status,and Canadian campaigns for the United Nations Security Council (1946–1947)

Abstract

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is a place where states can seek international status by campaigning for its elected seats. I understand status as membership in a club and examine both the nature of the hierarchies of status and the responsibilities associated with that membership. To do this, I examine Canada’s first two campaigns to the Security Council in 1946 and 1947 in the context of the origins of the UN. I make a twofold argument. First, I argue that the hierarchy of the UNSC in the late 1940s was an imperial one, within which states campaigned for seats by articulating their relationships to these imperial formations. Second, I argue that the process of campaigning is also a process of claiming to take on the responsibilities of the UNSC’s mandate.