The United Nation's Security Council: Extensive policies, inward focus

Decision-making processes during Norway's membership of the UNSC 2001-2002 are the empirical focus of this article. Based on anthropological fieldwork in the period, I discuss why it was necessary for practice and informal processes to be included when international organizations were being studied, but also how Norwegian UN policy was determined during the period. Furthermore, I show how formal structures are a marginalization of practical realities and how informal processes overlap formal structures on the way to consensus being achieved between member states in the UNSC. I investigate how this overlap has implications for policy-making in small states such as Norway when represented in international organizations like the UNSC. It is important to examine how formal instructions are being interpreted, adapted and reformulated through practice and informal action, and, when studying these effects, to illuminate the power relations in international politics.