Should Ban Ki-moon have faced opposition?

With the greatest reluctance, Tony Fleming says that Ban Ki-moon deserved a second term as UN Secretary-General. But he thinks that, at the very least, Ban should have faced a competitive process that involved much more transparency and maybe even some other candidates. It is curious that the passionate calls for a competitive, merit-based selection process for the IMF chief have not ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

With the greatest reluctance, Tony Fleming says that Ban Ki-moon deserved a second term as UN Secretary-General. But he thinks that, at the very least, Ban should have faced a competitive process that involved much more transparency and maybe even some other candidates.

With the greatest reluctance, Tony Fleming says that Ban Ki-moon deserved a second term as UN Secretary-General. But he thinks that, at the very least, Ban should have faced a competitive process that involved much more transparency and maybe even some other candidates.

It is curious that the passionate calls for a competitive, merit-based selection process for the IMF chief have not often been heard regarding the UN Secretary-General, a post which usually goes to non-Western (and always to non-P5) officials. It’s further evidence that when countries call for merit-based selection processes, they really just want a different regional approach.

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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