Country or leader? Political change and UN General Assembly voting

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. In this project we explore the relationship between leader change and relations between states. Voting in the United Nation's General Assembly (UNGA) is often used as a measure of political proximity between countries. We use UN voting coincidence to examine how changes in leadership affect relations. Specifically, we examine how political change affects a country's voting with the United States. In this paper we explore how leadership change affects UNGA voting. Using differences between "key" and "non-key" UN votes to the United States, we explore if political change is driven by preference change or by a changing external position. While political change has little impact on voting on non-key issues (state preferences) we find that after leadership change, countries are more likely to vote in line with the United States on key UN votes. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may

Government ideology in donor and recipient countries: Does ideological proximity matter for the effectiveness of aid?

“…22 Some studies also use governments' ideology in a dyadic setting, as we do (e.g., Allee and Peinhardt 2010, Dreher and Jensen 2013, Carter and Stone 2014 as well as with the Comparative Political Data Set from Armingeon et al (2011), we find them to be significantly correlated at the one percent level. 23 Most importantly, measurement error arising from blurred classifications of governments' ideology would render it less likely that we find significantly positive effects of ideological proximity on aid effectiveness.…”

Leadership Turnover and Foreign Policy Change: Societal Interests, Domestic Institutions, and Voting in the United Nations

“…Potrafke () shows that OECD countries are less likely to vote similarly to the United States when their leaders are from left‐leaning parties, and that this relationship is particularly strong when the US President is a Republican. Dreher and Jensen () demonstrate that when a state's leader is of similar political orientation (that is, left or right) as the US President, the country is more likely to vote similarly to the United States.…”

“…While Hagan (), Potrafke (), and Dreher and Jensen () direct attention to the importance of domestic preferences and government policy orientation, they do not consider the constraining effect of different domestic political structures. Yet, like Voeten, we believe that state policy derives from the interaction between domestic interests and institutions.…”

Why do states change positions in the United Nations General Assembly?

“…Also, such severe changes can lead to domestic reconfiguration across a broad range of policies, which are reflected in the stances the respective state takes on the UN-level. Dreher and Jensen (2013) find evidence that new rulers are more likely to support US positions in the UNGA while Smith (2014) finds just the opposite. Thus we also control for government turnover and end of conflict prompting change in UNGA positions.…”