Ellen Ravndal, Ph.D.
ejravndal@gmail.com
Associate Professor
University of Stavanger
About Me:
Ellen J. Ravndal is an Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Stavanger, Norway. She holds a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford, and has previously taught at Lund University and the Australian National University. Her research broadly focuses on international organisations (IOs), including the UN secretary-general, IO autonomy, and the history of IOs, and has appeared in journals such as Global Governance, the International History Review, and the Review of International Studies.
Research Interests
International Law & Organization
Bureaucracy
UN Secretary-general
International Organisations History
International Relations
Historical International Relations
Global Governance
Publications:
Journal Articles:
Over the past seventy-five years, the UN secretary-general has come to occupy a highly visible position in world politics. While the UN Charter describes the post merely as the “chief administrative officer” of the organization, today it is widely recognized that the secretary-general also plays a central role in political matters. What makes the role of the UN secretary-general special? Where does the office's authority come from? As part of the special issue on “The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward,” this essay looks back at the tenures of previous UN secretaries-general and applies ideas from sociological institutionalism to argue that the UN secretary-general holds the position of a “guardian” of the UN Charter. The UN secretary-general, more than anyone else within the UN system, represents the UN overall. From this flows great responsibilities and challenges, as the UN secretary-general is often expected to step in when other parts of the UN are unable or unwilling to act, and to take the blame when things go wrong. But this special position also endows the office with a substantial degree of authority, which future holders of the office can use to shape policies and mobilize support as the UN seeks to address urgent global challenges.
How did the transition from a world of empire to a global international system organised around the sovereign state play out? This article traces the transition over the past two centuries through an examination of membership debates in two prominent intergovernmental organisations (IGOs). IGOs are sites of contestation that play a role in the constitution of the international system. Discussions within IGOs reflect and shape broader international norms, and are one mechanism through which the international system determines questions of membership and attendant rights and obligations. The article reveals that IGO membership policies during this period reflected different compromises between the three competing principles of great power privilege, the ‘standard of civilisation’, and universal sovereign equality. The article contributes to Global IR as it confirms that non-Western agency was crucial in bringing about this transition. States in Africa, Asia, and Latin America championed the adoption of the sovereignty criterion. In this, paradoxically, one of the core constitutional norms of the ‘European’ international system – the principle of sovereign equality – was realised at the hands of non-European actors.
The UN Charter describes him or her merely as the “chief administrative officer of the organization,” yet today the Secretary-General is widely recognized as the UN's chief political representative. How did this transformation and expansion of the office from administrative to political take place? Existing scholarship tends to emphasize the contribution made by Dag Hammarskjöld. This article challenges that story on two accounts: first, by pointing out the importance of institutional factors and not just the officeholder's personality; and second, by examining the contribution made by Trygve Lie, the UN's first Secretary-General. The article establishes a conceptual framework based on institutional theory to understand the role of the Secretary-General and analyzes Lie's contribution in the period 1946–1953.
The Palestine problem was one of the first conflicts the newly formed United Nations (UN) was obliged to contend with. Secretary-General Trygve Lie played an active part in the proceedings, and his consistent support for the partition plan and Israeli UN membership has led to charges of Zionist sympathies and that his actions were based on this personal political bias. What explains the UN Secretary-General's actions in regard to the Palestine problem? This article argues that Palestine represented a threefold ‘test’ for the new world organisation: a test of its ability to solve regional conflicts; a test of its ability to bring about agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union; and a test of the Secretary-General's ability to protect and promote the UN. Due to the timing of the Palestine problem, as well as the attention it attracted from both the media and the general public, the UN's handling of the matter would have consequences for the organisation's standing in the world. In Secretary-General Lie's opinion, Palestine was ‘the first major test’ for the UN, and his perception of the high stakes inherent to the organisation's approach in Palestine provided the primary motivation for the Secretary-General's actions.
Book Chapters:
‘Secretaries general and crisis management – Trygve Lie and Dag Hammarskjöld at the United Nations,’ in Karen Gram-Skjoldager, Haakon A. Ikonomou, and Torsten Kahlert, eds., Organizing the 20th-Century World: International Organizations and the Emergence of International Public Administration, 1920-1960s (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), pp. 183-197.
with Edward Newman, 'The International Civil Service,' in Diane Stone and Kim Moloney, eds., Oxford Handbook of Global Policy and Transnational Administration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 165-181. The international civil service (ICS) offers—in theory at least—an ideal model of administration within international organizations. This chapter explores the origins and evolution of the ICS from the classical model following WWI to the twenty-first century era. For its early supporters, the ICS was the international community’s hope for the peaceful coexistence of states and functional cooperation. Yet tensions between these normative ideals and the reality facing international secretariats have never been resolved. The ICS operates under tremendous pressure from states, and in the twentyfirst century, increasingly from the global public too. How does an ICS ethos that was developed in the early twentieth century travel to the twenty-first century? Is the concept still relevant today?
‘Trygve Lie (1946-1953),’ in Manuel Fröhlich and Abiodun Williams, eds., The UN Secretary-General and the Security Council: A Dynamic Relationship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 22-41.
‘Acting Like a State: Non-European Membership of International Organisations in the Nineteenth Century,’ in Martin Hall, Jens Bartelson, and Jan Teorell, eds., De-Centering State Making: Comparative and International Perspectives (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2018).