The Alma Mater effect: Does foreign education of political leaders influence UNGA voting?

Axel Dreher and Shu Yu

Public Choice, 2020, vol. 185, issue 1, No 3, 45-64

Abstract: Abstract We study whether national leaders’ foreign education influences their voting behavior at the United Nations General Assembly. We hypothesize that “affinity”—preexisting or developed while studying abroad—makes leaders with foreign educations more likely to vote with their host country. At the same time, such leaders need to show sufficient distance from their host country and demonstrate “allegiance” to their own, which will reduce voting coincidences. To test that theory we make use of data on the educational backgrounds of 831 leaders and the voting affinities between the countries they govern and those in which they studied. Over the 1975–2011 period, we find that foreign-educated leaders are less likely to vote in line with their host countries, but more likely to vote in line with (other) G7 countries. We identify the causal effect of “allegiance” by investigating the differential effect of foreign education on voting in preelection years compared to other years. The difference-in-differences-like results show that G7-educated leaders vote less frequently in line with their host countries when facing an election. Overall, both “allegiance” and “affinity” affect foreign policy.

Keywords: United Nations General Assembly voting; Foreign education; Leaders (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D78 F51 F53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11127-019-00739-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:185:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s11127-019-00739-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11127-019-00739-8

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().