United Nations Reform: "The More Things Change…".

Recent IR scholarship on international organizations (IOs) has focused on examining conditions under which IOs engage in errant behavior and the mechanisms available to member states to reign in IO autonomy. The principal-agent and constructivist literatures in particular suggest that IO errant behavior occurs when member states do not "mind the shop," and when such behavior diverges from states' interests, IO reform will result. Moreover, these literatures assume that the process of IO reform is rooted in dilemmas of common interests, with collective action problems being particularly difficult to resolve when principals also have to address agency slippage, shirking, and/or autonomy. I argue that dilemmas of common aversions rather than common interests have driven the reform processes in both the UN Commission on Human Rights and the UN Security Council, especially over such contentious issues as membership, election procedures, and accountability. I conclude with a comparative analysis of both reform initiatives and draw insights from the successful reform of the Commission on Human Rights as to which strategies may be applied to Security Council reform so as to move it from debate to vote. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]