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White, Nigel D --- "Decision-making" [2011] ELECD 525; in Klabbers, Jan; Wallendahl, Åsa (eds), "Research Handbook on the Law of International Organizations" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Research Handbook on the Law of International Organizations

Editor(s): Klabbers, Jan; Wallendahl, Åsa

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847201355

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: Decision-making

Author(s): White, Nigel D

Number of pages: 26

Extract:

9 Decision-making
Nigel D. White



FUNCTIONALISM IN DECISION-MAKING
A significant development in the post-1945 institutional order has been the
move away from unanimity as a basis of decision-making in favour of major-
ity voting. Prior to this the international order was characterized by confer-
ences at which states met as equals, and decisions could not be adopted that
would place obligations on dissenting states. In the United Nations (UN) era
lip service is paid to sovereign equality. It is significant that the first principle
on which the UN is based is `the principle of sovereign equality of all its
members' (Art. 2(1) of the UN Charter). Sovereign equality also seems to be
respected in international organizations by the dominance of the principle of
`one-state-one-vote', but the era of majority voting combined with structural
and political hierarchies signify that formally at least states are only equal at
the point of casting their votes. The nineteenth-century consensual approach
to decision-making, whereby all parties have to agree, was replaced by a func-
tional approach, enabling organizations to achieve decisions and to take action
despite a minority of dissenting states.
There has been further pressure since the 1980s to move away from the
principle of `one-state-one-vote', to a system in which votes are weighted in
accordance with the contributions each member state makes normally to the
finances of the organization, what could crudely be labelled a `one-dollar-one-
vote' system. ...