{"id":768,"date":"2026-08-15T16:48:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T16:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/observertimes.in\/?p=768"},"modified":"2026-08-15T16:48:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T16:48:31","slug":"international-vote-buying-an-international-legal-prohibition-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/observertimes.in\/index.php\/2026\/08\/15\/international-vote-buying-an-international-legal-prohibition-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"<span>INTERNATIONAL VOTE BUYING: AN INTERNATIONAL LEGAL PROHIBITION? PART II<\/span>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The domestic analogy cannot offer definitive answers. It can only help sharpen our intuitions about which factors should matter when we ask whether vote buying is a flaw or merely a feature of the international order. Ultimately, vote buying emerges as neither wholly malign nor entirely unproblematic; rather, we are left with a series of contingent generalizations. To summarize, the domestic analogy suggests that vote buying is more objectionable when it takes place within a political community or, even more so, within an agency relationship; when sovereign equality matters, but large wealth or power differences eExist where there is a high likelihood of coordination problems and negative effects on third parties; when the decisions concern matters of judgment, or public deliberation is deemed important to norm formation; or where payoffs are hidden from public scrutiny and legitimation. Conversely, vote buying is less objectionable\u2014perhaps even desirable\u2014when these factors are not present. Of course, how many of these features need be present or absent and to what degree is a value judgment. None of the international voting contexts examined earlier.Domestic voting is simpler in at least one key regard: it takes place in settings that are institutionally well-delineated. If the international community, like the domestic sphere, were populated by private citizens, elected legislators, administrative officials, and judges, the analogies from bribery and election fraud to international vote buying would be fairly straightforward. The difficulty, however, is that on the international stage, states are never purely citizens, lawmakers, executives, or adjudicators; they are all of them at once. Parsing out when and how states perform these respective roles is a complicated endeavour, permeated with legitimate disagreement. For example, is the U.N. Security Council a world executive, a world legislator, or a world judge? The suggestion here is that it acts as all three, depending on the circumstance. This conceptual difficulty may go some distance in explaining why international law has not yet attempted to confront the issue of vote buying.To reconsider the various types of international vote buying in light of citizenship, equality, efficiency, reason-giving, and system integrity inevitably raises hard (but now-familiar) questions: What is the nature of a particular international institution? How does it function? How should it function? The U.N. Security Council can serve as an illustrative example of these difficulties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thomas Franck has noted that the Security Council serves a \u201cjurying function\u201d; its members are entrusted with primary authority to interpret and apply the U.N. Charter regarding disputed questions. Recall, then, Pamela Karlan\u2019s suggestion that, \u201cIf voting is a public function, not solely a private right, then the voter, like the juror, has no right to sell the power entrusted or delegated to her.\u201d On Franck\u2019s view of the Security Council, the citizenship rationale against vote buying has appeal. Yet, on the other side are those who argue that \u201csecurity was set above justice\u201d when the Security Council was conceived and that its primary role is merely to serve the interests of stability. In Hans Kelsen\u2019s words, the purpose of U.N. Security Council enforcement action \u201cis not: to maintain or restore the law, but to maintain, or restore peace, which is not necessarily identical with the law.\u201d These sorts of disagreements\u2014fundamentally different views about the role an institution ought to serve\u2014are beyond the purview of this Article, but we raise them here to illustrate the debates that must precede or accompany application of the Article\u2019s normative framework.The domestic analogy also has internal limitations. Certain important considerations cannot be addressed through the domestic analogy at all, because they stem from features unique to the international system. Indeed, there are at least three crucial features that do not exist domestically, but which are endemic to the international order. Those who find the domestic rationales against vote buying persuasive in the international context (or in particular international contexts) must address these challenges as well.The first difficulty relates to interdependence and conflicts of interest among states. The states perform many different roles at the same time. They are simultaneously legislators, administrators, and adjudicators; it is far-fetched (and probably unwise) to expect them to isolate these roles from one another. Thus, the Security Council may act as a jury, but the jurors sometimes have a stake in the verdict. Up to this point in the Article, vote buying has been treated as if benefits are bias-producing; but what if, instead, they are bias-reducing? For example, in 2010, the United States offered guaranteed oil supplies to China so that China, which is heavily dependent on Iranian crude, would vote for Iran sanctions in the Security Council. Should this offer, which was designed to mitigate a conflict of interest, be prohibited? If we believe it should not be, then any hypothetical norm against vote buying would need to account for such situations. Inducements that bear a substantial nexus to the decision at issue might fall outside the bounds of the prohibition, leaving only unrelated or \u201cextraneous\u201d payments to qualify as impermissible vote buying. Drawing the line between these two spheres would be a challenging and necessarily subjective exercise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second difficulty concerns the withholding of benefits. After Yemen voted against the United States\u2019 Gulf War resolution in the Security Council in 1991, then-Secretary of State James Baker allegedly told the Yemeni ambassador it was \u201cthe most expensive \u2018no\u2019 vote [he\u2019d] ever cast\u201d and, nearly overnight, the United States cut its entire aid budget for Yemen. This is not vote buying in the strict sense, but the distinction is purely formal. Realistically, a donor country\u2019s threat to cease delivering benefits unless the recipient votes in a certain manner is likely to be as effective\u2014if not more so\u2014than offering the same benefits in exchange for the same vote. Indeed, all relevant aid disbursements would be prospective at the time of the voting agreement (a donor presumably cannot take back what has already been disbursed), so the threat and the promise are practically equivalent. This would imply that any norm against vote buying should prohibit both. Nevertheless, the idea that a donor could be required to continue providing assistance to an unfriendly recipient would understandably face strong resistance. Moreover, such a norm might deter donors from pledging aid in the first place\u2014an obviously undesirable outcome. This is a problem that merits further attention by anyone advocating a vote-buying prohibition.Third and finally, there is the question of international democracy itself: What if we are afraid of what an un-manipulated process might produce? What if we cannot trust the international community to make good decisions? The peril embedded in a democratic international order is that not all states are themselves democracies; Kim Jong-un\u2019s North Korea holds an equal vote with Sweden. It may be the case presently that most international vote buying is \u201cbenevolent\u201d\u2014that vote-buying states are in fact purchasing good outcomes for the international community. Indeed, this is what Ofer Eldar suggests is happening and why he disfavours a prohibition against vote buying. This concern, for those who hold it, renders all five of the domestic rationales against vote buying irrelevant. Yet, it also suggests that the entire Charter-era system of international decision making is misguided. To permit vote buying on this basis is to advocate a charade: a \u201cmanaged democracy\u201d where citizens vote, but the elections are rigged. The intellectually honest response to such skepticism is not to tolerate vote buying, but to eliminate (or drastically alter) the voting system altogether.This Article is meant to encourage an informed legal debate over international vote buying, not to take a conclusive position. It has sought to highlight a serious and underappreciated feature of the international system, and to demonstrate that the normative quandaries which accompany international vote buying are more complicated than they might seem on first reflection. To this end, this Article has provided a new normative framework for analysis\u2014one that draws on the insights of domestic voting systems, but which also cautions that such insights are sometimes inapplicable or misleading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet the scope of this Article is necessarily limited. Many crucial questions\u2014most fundamentally, those concerning what, if anything, ought to be done about international vote buying\u2014remain for future scholarship to address. Indeed, there are many possible alternatives to the present situation. The question of reform is not a binary one (\u201cto ban or not to ban\u201d), but rather presents a continuum between outright prohibition and institutionalized facilitation. Between these two poles, there is a range of options, including regulation, soft norms, and monitoring. Initially, it should be acknowledged that various features of international voting currently enable or incentivize vote buying. Public balloting, where it exists, allows vote buying states to verify easily that their agreements were honoured. Sovereign equality pushes populous, wealthy, and powerful states to seek influence more commensurate with their factual status. One approach toward reform might therefore seek to refashion some of the structures that make vote buying so attractive\u2014or even seemingly necessary\u2014to those states that now engage in the practice. Assuming, however, that we are committed to the current architecture of international governance, there are still a number of possible strategies for change. One option would be to completely ban vote buying (or particular forms of vote buying) among states, whether by multilateral treaty, International Court Of Justice (ICJ)decision, or articulation of a jus cogens norm. To be sure, there are many who would oppose such a move. Strong and wealthy states stand to lose a means of influence, while poor states stand to lose a source of income. Yet even from a systems perspective, there are reasons to question whether a vote-buying prohibition would be counterproductive. If the norm were wholly unenforceable, the market for votes might persist, merely exacerbating perceptions of illegitimacy and fueling exploitation by undermining poor states\u2019 ability to bargain. Conversely, if it were wholly successful, vote buying might simply be replaced by more pernicious forms of coercion, rather than persuasion. These concerns do not necessarily suggest that a prohibition is inadvisable\u2014only that there are reasons why even opponents of vote buying might oppose the implementation of a norm against it. In any case, it is crucial that such a norm be structured in a way that is incentive-compatible with states\u2019 participation in international law and governance institutions in the first place. This is a key avenue for further study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A related, but more tailored option would be regulation\u2014a limited set of prohibitions that would seek to curtail vote buying only in certain circumstances. For example, we might disallow vote buying between states of vastly asymmetrical wealth or power, or prohibit secret transactions, or set minimum (or maximum) purchase prices for various types of voting decisions. The idea would be to target only those circumstances that are most likely to produce troubling effects such as exploitation or negative externalities. Although a concrete regulatory proposal is likewise a topic for another article, the point is to highlight broadly here the variety of legal possibilities available. An alternative and perhaps more plausible approach for those who oppose vote buying would be to rely on public opprobrium and the formation of soft norms. Many well-known movements that ultimately ripened into multilateral treaties originated at the grassroots level. The campaign to ban landmines is perhaps the most famous of these. After determining which types of conduct are most objectionable, opponents of vote buying might create standards or principles that would serve as guidelines for state behaviour. Such soft norms might, in turn, encourage NGOs to give greater scrutiny to illicit vote buying and to impose reputational costs on offending states. Of course, like the prohibition or regulation options, public shaming would run the risk of merely driving discouraged behaviour underground. But soft norms might nonetheless be a viable step toward broader debate and greater transparency. An even less coercive approach would be a system based on monitoring and transparency. With such a tactic, vote buying would be the object of scrutiny, but not opprobrium. Like campaign finance disclosure rules in the domestic sphere, a monitoring approach could give the international community important information to assess states\u2019 positions on matters of shared importance merely by illuminating the transactions that influence those positions. While some might deem this sort of judgment-free stance an inadequate response to vote buying, it may prove the best and only option in the case of sustained disagreement over vote buying\u2019s normative merits. Future work might therefore consider the development of standards for disclosure and mechanisms to facilitate monitoring. Finally, at the polar opposite of prohibition lies the option of completely legitimating and institutionalizing the market for states\u2019 votes. This approach would naturally draw support from principled defenders of vote buying, but its appeal could conceivably also extend to those who would consider a well-functioning vote market to be the \u201cleast bad option\u201d for reform. For the latter group, the choice to legitimate and institutionalize vote buying would represent a compromise position\u2014a concession to reality, grounded in a view that the ill effects of vote buying would be better remedied through successful efforts at <div>marketization than by (inevitably) unsuccessful attempts to curtail the practice. <\/div><div>Whatever approach international Legal scholars, practitionersStates might <\/div><div>ultimately adopt; the debate over international vote buying is long overdue. The <\/div><div>voting structures that govern international decision-making were established <\/div><div>through painstaking effort, negotiation, and compromise\u2014 and yet the legal <\/div><div>vacuum that surrounds vote buying may well result from inattention, rather than <\/div><div>deliberate choice. Surely this, if not vote buying itself, is an unfortunate reality. <\/div><div>This Article represents a modest attempt to fill the void, and hopes that others <\/div><div>will follow.<\/div><div>Copyrights \u00a9\ufe0f<\/div><div>OBSERVERTIMES GLOBAL NEWSNETWORK PRIVATE LIMITED <\/div><div>reserves the rights to all content contained within its official website <\/div><div>https:\/\/observertimes.in \/Online Magazine\/ Publications<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The domestic analogy cannot offer definitive answers. It can only help sharpen our intuitions about which factors should matter when we ask whether vote buying is a flaw or merely a feature of the international order. Ultimately, vote buying emerges as neither wholly malign nor entirely unproblematic; rather, we are left with a series of contingent generalizations. To summarize, the domestic analogy suggests that vote buying is more objectionable when it takes place within a political community or, even more so, within an agency relationship; when sovereign equality matters, but&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,12,20,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/observertimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/observertimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/observertimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/observertimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/observertimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/observertimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":769,"href":"https:\/\/observertimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768\/revisions\/769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/observertimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/observertimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/observertimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}