Cleavages in World Politics

2019 ◽  
pp. 345-367
Author(s):  
Martin Binder ◽  
Autumn Lockwood Payton
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Spatial Model ◽  
International System ◽  
World Politics ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Potential Conflict ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
United Nations General Assembly ◽  
Spatial Model Of Voting

This chapter systematically examines the potential cleavages that run between the rising and the established powers in international politics. To that end, it analyses and compares the voting behaviour of the BRICS, IBSA, and G7 states in the United Nations General Assembly (GA). GA voting is particularly suited to identify the potential conflict lines between ‘new’ and ‘old’ powers as it runs the gambit of issues confronted in the international system and provides a forum where states can express their preferences relatively freely. Using a spatial model of voting (W-NOMINATE), this chapter analyses more than 500 roll-call votes in the GA over the period 2002–11.

Forty Years of United Nations General Assembly Voting

1990 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Holloway
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Multidimensional Scaling ◽  
World Politics ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
United Nations General Assembly ◽  
Un Voting

AbstractStudies of bloc voting in the United Nations have appeared periodically since the early 1960s. This article examines the evolution of UN voting in its first four decades using multidimensional scaling, which is compared to factor analysis and found to be superior for representation and interpretation. UN voting is important for showing how world politics is reflected in that body, hence the frequent use of UN votes as a dependent variable in the analysis of foreign policy behaviour.

The shifting salience of democratic governance: Evidence from the United Nations General Assembly General Debates

2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (5) ◽  
pp. 915-938 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Hecht
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
World Politics ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Group Status ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
United Nations General Assembly ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractHow has the salience of democratic governance varied as an issue and as a basis of social status in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over time? International Relations (IR) scholars typically assume a high salience of democratic governance in international society after the Cold War, yet evidence suggests important fluctuations and that these assumptions should be qualified. This article presents quantitative and qualitative results of a manually-coded content analysis of the UNGA General Debates between 1992 and 2014, with comparison to 1982, illustrating variation in the frequency and content of state representatives’ references to democracy and the use of democratic governance as a symbol of status. What factors influence the salience of a given dimension of social status in an international organisation? Explanations supplement IR approaches with insights from social psychology, including the relevance of high and low identifiers, accessibility, fit, current and anticipated group status, and regional status concerns. The article analyses trends in states’ support for principles underpinning international order, which have broader implications for literature on global governance and status in world politics as well as for international democracy support.

scholarly journals A quantitative approach to studying hierarchies of primary institutions in international society: The case of United Nations General Assembly disarmament resolutions, 1989–1998

2020 ◽  
pp. 001083672096599
Author(s):  
Laust Schouenborg ◽  
Simon F Taeuber
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
New Approach ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
United Nations General Assembly ◽  
Primary Institutions ◽  
Hedley Bull ◽  
Insight Into

In this article, we aim to contribute to two contemporary debates within the English School. The debate about how to observe primary institutions and the debate concerning hierarchy between primary institutions. Specifically, we analyse references to primary institutions in United Nations General Assembly disarmament resolutions in the decade 1989–1998 and their distribution using descriptive statistics. In this way, the article offers a novel approach to identifying primary institutions empirically, and provides some insight into the hierarchy-question in the sense of documenting the relative numerical presence of references to different primary institutions in a specific issue area and temporal context. With respect to the latter, the key finding is that great power management, diplomacy and international law are by far the most prominent primary institutions in the analysed material. This is an intriguing finding, not least given the importance attached to them by Hedley Bull in his classic work The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. The main contribution of the article is thus to spell out a new approach to how the aforementioned debates might proceed empirically.

African Voting in the United Nations General Assembly

1966 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin D. Meyers
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
The United States ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
United States Congress ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
Assembly Drawing ◽  
United Nations General Assembly ◽  
The United Nations

This article is an attempt to use some of the quantitative techniques of political science to provide a factual description of the voting behaviour of the African members in a selected session of the United Nations General Assembly. Drawing primarily upon methodology that has been used in studies of the United States Congress, 67 roll-call votes of the eighteenth session have been used to answer three questions which would seem primary to this description: (i) On what types of issues are the African states united and on what are they divided? (2) On divisive issues, into what groups are they divided? (3) How do the groupings vote, combine, and divide on these divisive issues?

scholarly journals Delegating diplomacy: rhetoric across agents in the United Nations General Assembly

2021 ◽  
pp. 002085232199756
Author(s):  
Julia Gray ◽  
Alex Baturo
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Single Voice ◽  
United Nations General Assembly ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Career Incentives

When political principals send agents to international organizations, those agents are often assumed to speak in a single voice. Yet, various types of country representatives appear on the international stage, including permanent representatives as well as more overtly “political” government officials. We argue that permanent delegates at the United Nations face career incentives that align them with the bureaucracy, setting them apart from political delegates. To that end, they tend to speak more homogeneously than do other types of speakers, while also using relatively more technical, diplomatic rhetoric. In addition, career incentives will make them more reluctant to criticize the United Nations. In other words, permanent representatives speak more like bureaucratic agents than like political principals. We apply text analytics to study differences across agents’ rhetoric at the United Nations General Assembly. We demonstrate marked distinctions between the speech of different types of agents, contradictory to conventional assumptions, with implications for our understandings of the interplay between public administration and agency at international organizations. Points for practitioners Delegations to international organizations do not “speak with one voice.” This article illustrates that permanent representatives to the United Nations display more characteristics of bureaucratic culture than do other delegates from the same country. For practitioners, it is important to realize that the manner in which certain classes of international actors “conduct business” can differ markedly. These differences in tone—even among delegates from the same principal—can impact the process of negotiation and debate.

What constitutes the sovereign state?

1996 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ross Fowler ◽  
Julie Marie Bunck
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
Limited Resources ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
General Assembly Resolution ◽  
United Nations General Assembly

One might try to determine just what constitutes a sovereign state empirically, by examining the characteristics of states whose sovereignty is indisputable. All sovereign states, it might be observed, have territory, people, and a government. Curiously, however, cogent standards do not seem to exist either in law or in practice for the dimensions, number of people, or form of government that might be required of a sovereign state. Indeed, a United Nations General Assembly Resolution declared that neither small size, nor remote geographical location, nor limited resources constitutes a valid objection to sovereign statehood.

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