Country or leader? Political change and UN general assembly voting

Axel Dreher and Nathan Jensen

No 09-217, KOF Working papers from KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: United Nations General Assembly voting; key votes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2009-02
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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http://dx.doi.org/10.3929/ethz-a-005778381 (application/pdf)

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Journal Article: Country or leader? Political change and UN General Assembly voting (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kof:wpskof:09-217

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