International Political Alignment During the Trump Presidency: Voting at the UN General Assembly

Abstract

We examine voting behavior of Western allied countries in line with the United States over the period 1949 until 2019. Descriptive statistics show that voting in line with the United States on resolutions in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) was on average 7.2 percentage points lower under Donald Trump than under the preceding United States presidents. The policy shift is especially pronounced for resolutions dealing with the Middle East. The decline in common UNGA voting behavior is statistically significant for the resolution agreement rate and the absolute difference of ideal points. The results do not suggest that the alienation of Western allies is not driven by ideological distance based on a classical leftwing-rightwing government ideology scale.

Political Leaders and Macroeconomic Expectations: Evidence from a Global Survey Experiment

“…juice and motorcycles. The worsening trade relations between the United States and the European Union were accompanied by deteriorating political ties that are reflected also in voting behavior in the UNGA (Mosler and Potrafke, 2020).…”

The differences in us foreign policy towards the UN and ICC in Trump and Biden administrations

“…However, voting in line with the United States by the G7 countries, NATO members, and other Westernblock countries (primarily the UN WEOG member countries) had declined since Donald Trump took power. According to Mosler and Potrafke, econometric evidence suggests that the UNGA agreement rate of Western countries under Donald Trump "decreased by 4.4 percentage points and that absolute ideal point differences increased by a quarter of a standard deviation" (Mosler, Potrafke, 2020). Surprisingly, this alienation was not influenced by the ideological stance of governments within this group.…”

“…It might seem that some governments, particularly ones within Western-allied countries from the left political spectrum will vote more often against the United States with Donald Trump at their helm. However, Mosler and Potrafke concluded in their research that there is no evidence of declining political alignment between the United States and Western allies, which was motivated by the ideological distance based on a classical leftwing/rightwing government ideology scale (Mosler, Potrafke, 2020).…”