![\"\"](\"http:\/\/msnbcmedia.msn.com\/j\/MSNBC\/Components\/Photo\/_new\/pb-120204-homs6-cannon.photoblog900.jpg\" "\\"Syria,")
\u00a0 This past Saturday the world saw harrowing media accounts of the massacre perpetrated by the Syrian government\u2019s bombardment of civilians in the city of Homs. The massive artillery barrage, which has continued since then, have\u00a0 left many hundreds of people dead, making it the most deadly attack of the year-long uprising.<\/p>\n
Homs had already suffered from recent violence, but had not previously experienced such a horrific assault on civilians. On the same day, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) failed to adopt a resolution condemning the violence in Syria, even though 13 out of the UNSC\u2019s 15 country members supported the resolution…<\/p>\n
<\/span>Two permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, Russia and China, sided with Syria\u2019s Assad and exercised their veto power. Leaders in the west, as well as the head of the U.N., some Arab States and Syria\u2019s own civilian groups have expressed outrage at the callousness of these vetoes. \u00a0Yet such veto should not surprise observers.<\/p>\n The governments of Russia, China and Syria have common interests and protecting the human rights of their own or each other citizens is not high on their agendas. Instead, they share common economic, security and geopolitical interests, including weapons trade. In Spanish there is a rather telling expression: \u201cDime con quien andas, y te dire quien eres,\u201d whose literary translation is “Tell me with whom you walk and I will tell you who you are,\u201d yet its spirit is best captured by an English idiom, \u201cA man is known by the company he keeps.\u201d<\/p>\n In terms of standards of political governance, with a few differences aside, the three governments make good companions. Their standards of governance are uniformly low and deteriorating. China, Russia and Syria\u2019s common misgovernance is compared to the governance standards of other members of the UNSC below (Figure 1).<\/p>\n Take first Voice & Democratic Accountability (VA), one of the six dimensions we measure in the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI)<\/a><\/em>. This Voice & Accountability indicator from the WGI captures the extent to which political rights and civil liberties are provided, human rights are protected, and the extent to which there are freedoms of association, expression and press.<\/p>\n By sharp contrast, other countries in the U.N. Security Council, which voted in favor of the resolution condemning the violence perpetuated by Syria\u2019s government, perform distinctly better on both Voice & Accountability and Control of Corruption.\u00a0\u00a0 Worse \u2013 and another reason for why there should be no surprise at the stance taken by Russia and China \u2013 the countries\u2019 performance on these important dimensions of governance is not only highly challenged but has deteriorated over the past decade.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thekaufmannpost.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Russia-China-veto-Syria-UN-res-WGI-fig1-300x225.jpg\" "\\"Russia")
<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This figure\u00a0first shows how low, Syria, Russia and China rank globally in Voice & Accountability \u2013towards the bottom of over 200 worldwide. And their governments\u2019 performance on Control of Corruption (another component of the WGI) is similarly subpar.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thekaufmannpost.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Russia-fig2-300x225.jpg\" "\\"Russia")
<\/a>\u00a0 Such sharply contrasting performance on national-level indicators of governance and the disparate priorities across powerful countries provides a sobering perspective on the constraints faced by global governance institutions nowadays, such as the U.N. and G-20.<\/p>\n