A Method for Identifying Issues and Factions from Legislative Votes

1965 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 909-926 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan MacRae
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
United Nations General Assembly ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Legislative Decision ◽  
The U.S

Roll-call votes are being used increasingly to throw light on various aspects of the legislative process. As long as these votes are neither simply unanimous nor cast purely on party lines, they contain information that can often be rendered more intelligible by the simplification or condensation of many votes into fewer variables or dimensions. The researcher interested in a particular legislative decision can thus profit by seeing whether it exemplifies a more general and repeated type of occurrence. The techniques of analysis used in studying legislative votes are broadly applicable to collegial bodies of many sorts, including municipal, state, and national legislative bodies; party congresses and conventions; the U.S. Supreme Court; and the United Nations General Assembly.Two major questions have been asked which lead to the search for different kinds of simplifying variables in this analysis. One concerns the issues that divide a given group of legislators at a given time, i.e., what general matters are being argued about? The second concerns the subgroups of legislators within the group selected for study: what are the blocs, factions, cliques, and the like, whose more persistent existence is reflected by the division on a given vote?

The Gatt and Multilateral Treaty Making: The Tokyo Round

1983 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. M. McRae ◽  
J. C. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Intergovernmental Organizations ◽  
Tokyo Round ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
United Nations General Assembly ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Multilateral Treaty

Multilateral treaty making, sometimes called the "international legislative process", occurs in a variety of forms and under the auspices of many international organizations. Concern that insufficient information is available about the way treaties are negotiated in different forums and that the process is haphazard led to a proposal for its review in the Sixth Committee at the 32d session of the United Nations General Assembly. Acting upon.this initiative, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 32/48, which called upon the Secretary- General to report on the techniques and procedures used in the elaboration of multilateral treaties. In order to assist in the preparation of this report, comments were requested from states, specialized agencies and other intergovernmental organizations, and the offices of the United Nations.

Of Gnats and Camels: Is There a Double Standard at the United Nations?

1984 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 811-833 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas M. Franck
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
United Nations ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Double Standard ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
United Nations General Assembly ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The U.S

Does the United Nations, in Saint Matthew’s words, “strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel”? Ambassador John L. Loeb, Jr., a U.S. alternate delegate to the 38th United Nations General Assembly in 1983, spoke for many in and outside the U.S. Government when, after the end of the session, he charged in the New York Times that “[f]or decades, the United Nations has practiced a double standard.” Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick has elaborated the same point, accusing the Organization of being “perverted by politicization.”

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.

Arab League

1953 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-281
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
The Political ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
Arab League ◽  
United Nations General Assembly ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Arab States

The Political Committee of the Arab League met in Cairo beginning December 20, 1952, under the chairmanship of Fathy Radwan (Egypt) to discuss questions relating to Palestine and north Africa. On December 25, the committee issued a statement approving the failure of passage in the United Nations General Assembly of the resolution adopted by the Ad Hoc Political Committee calling for direct negotiations between Israel and the Arab states. The committee condemned “the mere idea of an invitation to Arabs to negotiate with the Israelis” and expressed the hope “that there would be no repetition of these attempts”.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document