South–South cohesiveness versus South–South rhetoric: Brazil and Africa at the UN General Assembly

Seabra, Pedro; Sanches, Edalina Rodrigues

doi:10.1057/s41311-018-0170-0

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Empirical IR scholarship has turned to voting affinity as a leading proxy for shared substantive preferences between states, believing changes in voting patterns can be ascribed to changes in the underlying relationship between country dyads (e.g., Potrafke 2009;Carter and Stone 2015;Brazys and Dukalskis 2017;Adhikari 2019;Seabra and Sanches 2019). The challenge to infer preferences from such interactions is that preferences are distinct from the means deployed to achieve them.…”

Section: Roll-call Voting and Selection Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating ideal points from UN General Assembly sponsorship data

Mesquita

Martins

Seabra³

2022

International Interactions

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The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) represents a microcosm of global politics that offers a valuable snapshot of interstate relations and state preferences. In this context, roll-call votes and measures of voting affinity often receive the bulk of scholarly attention. However, even though techniques such as ideal point estimation have grown more sophisticated over time when applied to voting data, they remain grounded by an original selection bias that discards 2/3 of the UNGA yield. This share of disregarded output can prove highly informative if drafting and sponsorship procedures receive a closer look instead. This research note applies ideal point estimation to UNGA sponsorship data for the first time for every member from 2009 to 2019. It advances a cutting-edge approach to better estimate state preferences over a contested policy space, while correcting for the narrow focus of previous UNGA analyses on voting data. The results detect an underlying issue space that bears external validity with the inclination of states towards multilateralism.

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Section: Roll-call Voting and Selection Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating ideal points from UN General Assembly sponsorship data

Mesquita

Martins

Seabra³

2022

International Interactions

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“…Scholarship on regionalism, regional powers and the UN has focused on varied aspects of this interplay, such as regional cohesion (Montenegro and Mesquita 2017), representation (Lai and Lefler 2017) and actorness (Seabra and Sanches 2019). Few studies, however, have paid close attention to the salience of regional themes on UN output, and even less resorted to metrics apart from roll-call votes.…”

Section: Engaging With Regional Themesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, previous work on Brazil and South Africa's profile at the UNGA has relied solely on data from voting records. Recent studies have focused on Brazil-US relations (Amorim Neto 2012), on Brazil-Africa connections as tokens of South-South solidarity (Seabra and Sanches 2019), the consistency of South Africa's track-record at the UNGA with its major foreign policy tenets (Graham 2016), or the performance of both states in contrast to other 20 BRICS countries in fostering regional cohesion (Montenegro and Mesquita 2017). No effort has been made so far towards exploring the possibilities that co-sponsorship of drafts at the UNGA entail.…”

Section: Analysis: Going Global Without the Region?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Go Global or Go Home: Comparing the Regional vs. Global Engagement of Brazil and South Africa at the UN General Assembly

Mesquita

Seabra²

2020

Politikon

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Brazil and South Africa have long been regarded archetypical regional powers, commanding more resources than their neighbours, spearheading regional projects and pursuing highprofile global status. Yet, recent years have also evidenced how the engagement with their regions and acceptance as leading players is often ambiguous and incomplete. How does one ascertain that a regional power privileges either the regional or the global stage? Through an original dataset of Brazilian and South African output at the UN General Assembly between 1994 and 2013, we monitor sponsorship patterns and thematic preferences in order to verify whether these countries indulged their regional partners and topics. Our findings suggest that Brazil and South Africa favoured their immediate neighbourhoods, but have gradually engaged their regions in different ways: while Brazilian emphasis on regional peers and themes declined over the years, South Africa developed an increasingly more regionalised UNGA agenda. Table 1: Brazil's most frequent co-sponsors, per session/year Session (Year) Brazil's top 5 most frequent co-sponsors S.49 (1994)

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“…The third thread holds that Brazil's involvement in Africa was part of a long-term diplomatic commitment to the continent, one that is driven by its aim of balancing Western influence by forging cooperation and partnerships with African governments in the name of South-South solidarity (e.g. Barbosa et al 2009;Seabra & Sanches 2019;Seibert & Visentini 2019). Coalitions formed with the purpose of reforming the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), congregating votes at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) or in advancing innovative trade frameworks that were brought forward as a way to not only ensure Africa's support for Brazilian initiatives but also to guarantee that their interests would be accounted for, thus breaking the restrictions of most post-World War II institutions.…”

Section: Book Outlinementioning

confidence: 99%