China's Diplomatic Behavior in the United Nations: Voting Behavior in the UNSC

Dong-Ryul  Lee

doi:10.17331/kwp.2007.23.3.004

Predicting Voting Patterns in the General Assembly

American Political Science Review ◽

10.2307/1954462 ◽

1971 ◽

Vol 65 (2) ◽

pp. 471-498 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Jack E. Vincent

Keyword(s):

Economic Development ◽

United Nations ◽

Voting Behavior ◽

Predictive Power ◽

Correlation Technique ◽

Factor Scores ◽

Theoretical Level ◽

Independent Variables ◽

Attribute Data ◽

The United Nations

This project attempts to relate a large number of potential predictors to voting data generated at the United Nations. Numerous associations were found when the predictors, 77 in all, were related to 13 different kinds of voting scores. Because of considerable redundancy in both sets of data, national attribute and voting, the results were factor analyzed and the original variables were reduced to 14 sets of factor scores representing the national attribute data, and 4 representing the voting data. Several significant associations emerged from the intercorrelation of these two sets of factor scores, with the independent variables “Economic Development,” “Democracy,” and “U.S. Relations” exhibiting considerable predictive power. When the overall relationships between the two sets of data were assessed by use of the canonical correlation technique, “Economic Development” received the greatest weight on the national attribute side, and “Eastern Voting” on the voting (dependent variable) side. These findings accord well with previous research, in that “Economic Development” seems to predict negativism as revealed by voting. Thus “Economic Development” appears to be fundamentally related to certain schisms at the United Nations, with the representatives from the most developed states appearing the most “negative” as evidenced by questionnaire responses and voting behavior. Such orientations are likely to have a significant impact on the evolution of the organization.At a theoretical level, the present findings may have considerable relevance for both Social Field theory and Attribute theory.

Download Full-text

International Constraints, Political Turnover, and Voting Consistency in the United Nations General Assembly

Foreign Policy Analysis ◽

10.1093/fpa/oraa017 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Matthew DiLorenzo ◽

Bryan Rooney

Keyword(s):

Foreign Policy ◽

United Nations ◽

Voting Behavior ◽

Political Factors ◽

International Context ◽

Security Environment ◽

United Nations General ◽

Foreign Policies ◽

The United Nations

Abstract Recent studies demonstrate that turnover in domestic political leadership is associated with change in states’ foreign policies. While domestic changes matter even after controlling for international factors, many argue that international factors should overwhelm the effects of domestic turnover on foreign policy change. Yet existing studies tend to focus on other domestic-level variables (e.g., regime type) as constraints on domestic turnover. We consider how three sets of international factors that scholars have argued might outweigh the influence of domestic changes—security environment, socialization, and economic dependence—moderate the effects of domestic coalition changes on variance in voting patterns in the United Nations. To do this, we interact a measure of domestic coalition turnover with various proxies for international context in a statistical model of voting consistency. We find that many international factors are associated with greater consistency in voting behavior. Yet the effects of domestic change on foreign policy are remarkably resilient. We find only limited evidence that the effect of domestic change attenuates as states face more international constraints. The results reinforce the importance of understanding the role of both domestic political factors and international context in shaping foreign policy.

Download Full-text