The establishment of UNTAC. Power or persuasion?
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2016-06-28
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en
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Abstract
The agreements on the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC)
were signed in October 1991 in Paris. UNTAC’s establishment was initiated by the UN
Security Council’s Permanent Five (P-5) member states with Resolution 668 in
September 1990, making it the first UN transitional authority. There were conflicting
interests regarding intervention in Cambodia in the years after Vietnam’s invasion –
however, none of the P-5 vetoed the resolutions leading up to UNTAC. The Soviet
Union seemed to be the obstructing factor in the early 1980s; its changing position is
surprising. It is also puzzling why the P-5 came up with a large-scale mandate, when theconflicting parties in Cambodia were already seeking reconciliation. The question that this thesis tries to answer is the following: ‘Why did the P-5 of the UN Security Council decide upon the establishment of the far-reaching United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), despite their initial conflicting interests and the improving situation in Cambodia?’. A neorealist and constructivist approach are applied to this case in order to find out if either provides an adequate explanation of the change in international outcomes. Waltzian neorealism’s expectation of system change as the
cause is refuted: empirically, the transformation of a bipolar into a unipolar balance of
power cannot be confirmed. A constructivist framing analysis does provide some
insight: the P-5 were able to use a ‘comprehensive political settlement frame’ in the
discourse on the Cambodian situation from the late 1980s.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen