The role of the Security Council and its authorisation to use force to create normative markers in democratic governance discourses

Abstract

This article investigates how international law scholars construct their argument when they argue for the emergence of a new customary norm. It focuses on scholarly writings discussing whether there is an emerging customary norm which requires states to legitimise their governance through democratic rule. By conceptualising international law as a set of narratives, the article concentrates on democratic governance discourses to analyse how scholars resort to the involvement of the Security Council as a narrative technique that provides persuasiveness to their argument. The article argues that international lawyers keep reproducing the same interpretation regarding the involvement of the Security Council in Haiti, Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire, to the extent that these cases have become the normative markers of this narrative. The accretion of several writings upholding the same interpretation of these cases transforms them into normative markers of democratic governance discourses that help to prove an emerging customary norm.