| In the post-Cold War era, when much has been asked of the United Nations, the failures of the organization to address many of the most difficult problems in the world have often been laid at the feet of its Secretary-General. This leads to the question of whether the Secretary-General has power in world politics to make a difference and what determines it, which is the subject of this dissertation.;To this end, this study looks at two cases---Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar's involvement in ending the civil war in El Salvador and Secretary-General Kofi Annan's mission to Iraq to avert the outbreak of armed conflict in 1998---to see if the Secretaries-General did exert power, which is defined as action resulting in an intended outcome. In analyzing this power, this inquiry looks at whether three particular variables---the willingness of the parties to negotiate, international support, and certain personal qualities of the particular Secretary-General---affected that power.;The resulting findings were not only that all three variables identified were present in the two cases, but they also directly and indirectly positively affected the power of the Secretary-General. These three variables made it possible for the Secretary-General to exert power and do so by creating desired outcomes.;The conclusion is that the Secretary-General does in fact have power and that power has conditions, in other words, the three identified variables must be present. However, that said, the Secretary-General does not have to passively accept the level of power in a given situation. There is much the Secretary-General can do using his personal qualities to increase the willingness of the parties to negotiate, as well as international support. In other words, the power of the Secretary-General, rather than being static, is dynamic. |
