Hostname: page-component-669899f699-tzmfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-25T14:27:26.290Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

With Frenemies Like These: Rising Power Voting Behavior in the UN General Assembly

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2021

Martin Binder Open the ORCID record for Martin Binder [Opens in a new window]  and
Autumn Lockwood Payton Open the ORCID record for Autumn Lockwood Payton [Opens in a new window]
Martin Binder
Affiliation:
University of Reading, Reading, UK
Autumn Lockwood Payton*
Affiliation:
University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The rise of non-Western powers has led to competing claims about how these states act among each other and how they behave vis-à-vis established powers. Existing accounts argue that the rising powers are a heterogenous group of competing states and that they are socialized into the existing Western-centered order. This article challenges these claims, arguing that the rising powers are dissatisfied with the international status quo and that they have begun to form a bloc against the established powers. The authors contend that this dissatisfaction arises from their lack of influence on the international stage, their status in the international hierarchy and the norms that sustain the current international order. They maintain that the formation of a rising powers bloc is driven by the countries’ economic growth and international dynamics, fostering their institutionalization as IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). To support this argument, the study combines spatial modeling techniques to analyze rising power voting behavior in the UN General Assembly over the period 1992–2011.

Keywords

United Nations General AssemblyBRICSrising powersG7spatial voting modelspower transition
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 381 - 398
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abbott, KW and Snidal, D (1998) Why states act through formal international organizations. Journal of Conflict Resolution 42(1), 3–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acharya, A (2018) The End of American World Order. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Allan, B, Vucetic, S and Hopf, T (2018) The distribution of identity and the future of international order: china's hegemonic prospects. International Organization 72(4), 839–869.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Antkiewicz, A and Cooper, AF (2011) Beyond geography: BRIC/SAM and the new contours of regionalism. In Shaw, TM, Grant, AJ and Cornelissen, S (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to Regionalisms. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, pp. 295–309.Google Scholar
Armijo, L and Roberts, C (2014) The emerging powers and global governance: why the BRICS matter. In Looney, R (ed.), Handbook of Emerging Economies. New York: Routledge, pp. 503–524.10.4324/9780203108765-33CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, MA, Strezhnev, A and Voeten, E (2017) Estimating dynamic state preferences from United Nations voting data. Journal of Conflict Resolution 61(2), 430–456.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ball, MM (1951) Bloc voting in the General Assembly. International Organization 5(1), 3–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bearce, DH and Bondanella, S (2007) Intergovernmental organizations, socialization, and member-state interest convergence. International Organization 61(4), 703–733.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, D (1958) The Theory of Committees and Elections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blake, DJ and Lockwood Payton, A (2015) Balancing design objectives: analyzing new data on voting rules in intergovernmental organizations. The Review of International Organizations 10(3), 377–402.10.1007/s11558-014-9201-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carter, DB and Stone, RW (2015) Democracy and multilateralism: the case of vote buying in the UN General Assembly. International Organization 69(1), 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deng, Y (2008) China's Struggle for Status: The Realignment of International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desai, R (2013) The Brics are building a challenge to western economic supremacy. The Guardian, 2 April. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/02/brics-challenge-western-supremacy.Google Scholar
Downs, A (1957) An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Dreher, A, Nunnenkamp, P and Thiele, R (2008) Does US aid buy UN General Assembly votes? A disaggregated analysis. Public Choice 136(1–2), 139–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dreher, A and Sturm, JE (2012) Do the IMF and the World Bank influence voting in the UN General Assembly? Public Choice 151(1–2), 363–397.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferdinand, P (2014) Rising powers at the UN: an analysis of the voting behaviour of BRICS in the General Assembly. Third World Quarterly 35(3), 376–391.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilpin, R (1983) War and Change in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hart, AF and Jones, BD (2010) How do rising powers rise? Survival 52(6), 63–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hooijmaaijers, B and Keukeleire, K (2016) Voting cohesion of the BRICS countries in the UN General Assembly, 2006–2014: a BRICS too far? Global Governance 22(3), 389–407.10.1163/19426720-02203006CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hix, S (2001) Legislative behaviour and party competition in the European Parliament: an application of Nominate to the EU. Journal of Common Market Studies 39(4), 663–688.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopewell, K (2016) Breaking the WTO: How Emerging Powers Disrupted the Neoliberal Project. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Hopewell, K (2017) The BRICS – merely a fable? Emerging power alliances in global trade governance. International Affairs 93(6), 1377–1396.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hug, S and Lukács, R (2014) Preferences or blocs? Voting in the United Nations Human Rights Council. The Review of International Organizations 9(1), 83–106.10.1007/s11558-013-9172-2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huntington, SP (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Hurrell, A (2006) Hegemony, liberalism and global order: what space for would-be great powers? International Affairs 82(1), 1–19.10.1111/j.1468-2346.2006.00512.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ikenberry, JG (2001) After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ikenberry, JG (2011) The future of the liberal world order. Internationalism after America. Foreign Affairs 90(3), 56–68.Google Scholar
Ikenberry, JG and Wright, T (2008) Rising Powers and Global Institutions. New York: Century Foundation.Google Scholar
International Monetary Fund (2019) World Economic Outlook (April 2019). Available from https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/datasets/WEO.Google Scholar
Johnston, AI (2008) Social States: China in International Institutions, 1980–2000. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahler, M (2013) Rising powers and global governance: negotiating change in a resilient status quo. International Affairs 89(3), 711–729.10.1111/1468-2346.12041CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kent, A (2002) China's international socialization: the role of international organizations. Global Governance 8(3), 343–364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knorr, K (1973) Power and Wealth: The Political Economy of International Power. New York: Basic Books.10.1007/978-1-349-01360-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kugler, J and Organski, AF (1989) The power transition: a retrospective and prospective evaluation. In Midlarsky, MI (ed.), Handbook of War Studies. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, pp. 171–194.Google Scholar
Kupchan, CA (2012) No One's World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laïdi, Z (2012) BRICS: sovereignty power and weakness. International Politics 49(5), 614–632.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Layne, C (2012) This time it's real: the end of unipolarity and the Pax Americana. International Studies Quarterly 56(1), 203–213.10.1111/j.1468-2478.2011.00704.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacFarlane, NS (2006) The ‘R’ in BRICs: is Russia an emerging power? International Affairs 82(1), 41–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mastanduno, M (2019) Liberal hegemony, international order, and US foreign policy: a reconsideration. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 21(1), 47–54.10.1177/1369148118791961CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mattes, M, Leeds, BA and Carroll, R (2015) Leadership turnover and foreign policy change: societal interests, domestic institutions, and voting in the United Nations. International Studies Quarterly 59(2), 280–290.10.1111/isqu.12175CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mielniczuk, F (2013) BRICS in the contemporary world: changing identities, converging interests. Third World Quarterly 34(6), 1075–1090.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Narlikar, A (2011) Is India a responsible great power? Third World Quarterly 32(9), 1607–1621.10.1080/01436597.2011.619880CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nayar, BR and Paul, TV (2003) India in the World Order: Searching for Major-Power Status. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
O'Neill, J (2001) Building better global economic BRICs. Global Economics Paper 66. New York: Goldman Sachs.Google Scholar
Organski, AF (1968) World Politics, 2nd Edn. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Pape, RA (2005) Soft balancing against the United States. International Security 30(1), 7–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paul, TV, Larson, DW and Wohlforth, WC (2014) Status in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781107444409CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Payne, T (2014) The Global Governance of Global Crisis: Why the G20 Summit was Created and What We Still Need it to Do. University of Sheffield SPERI Working Paper.Google Scholar
Peterson, MJ (2006) The UN General Assembly. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203087831CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pevehouse, JC, Nordstrom, T and Warnke, K (2004) The COW-2 International Organizations Dataset version 2.0. Conflict Management and Peace Science 21(2), 101–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poole, KT (2005) Spatial Models of Parliamentary Voting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poole, KT and Rosenthal, H (1991) Patterns of congressional voting. American Journal of Political Science 35(1), 228–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poole, KT et al. (2011) Scaling roll call votes with nominate in R. Journal of Statistical Software 42(14), 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reed, W et al. (2008) War, power, and bargaining. The Journal of Politics 70(4), 1203–1216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renshon, J (2017) Fighting for Status: Hierarchy and Conflict in World Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Schoeman, M (2015) South Africa as an emerging power: from label to ‘status consistency’? South African Journal of International Affairs 22(4), 429–445.10.1080/10220461.2015.1119719CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schweller, RL and Pu, X (2011) After unipolarity: China's visions of international order in an era of U.S. decline. International Security 36(1), 41–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soares de Lima, MR and Hirst, M (2006) Brazil as an intermediate state and regional power: action, choice and responsibilities. International Affairs 82(1), 21–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stephen, MD (2012) Rising regional powers and international institutions: the foreign policy orientations of India, Brazil and South Africa. Global Society 26(3), 289–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stephen, MD (2014) Rising powers, global capitalism and liberal global governance: a historical materialist account of the BRICs challenge. European Journal of International Relations 20(4), 912–938.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strezhnev, A and Voeten, E (2012) United Nations General Assembly Voting Data. Version 4. Available from http://hdl.handle.net/1902.1/12379UNF:5:s7mORKL1ZZ6/P3AR5Fokkw==.Google Scholar
Stuenkel, O (2015) The BRICS and the Future of Global Order. Lanham, MD. Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Tammen, RL et al. (2000) Power Transitions: Strategies for the 21st Century. New York: Chatham House.Google Scholar
Vestergaard, J and Wade, RH (2015) Still in the woods: gridlock in the IMF and the World Bank puts multilateralism at risk. Global Policy 6(1), 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vieira, MA and Alden, C (2011) India, Brazil, and South Africa (IBSA): South-South cooperation and the paradox of regional leadership. Global Governance 17(4), 507–528.10.1163/19426720-01704007CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voeten, E (2000) Clashes in the assembly. International Organization 54(2), 185–215.10.1162/002081800551154CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voeten, E (2004) Resisting the lonely superpower: responses of states in the United Nations to U.S. dominance. The Journal of Politics 66(3), 729–754.10.1111/j.1468-2508.2004.00274.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voeten, E (2012) Data and analyses of voting in the UN General Assembly. Available from http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2111149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Volgy, TJ, Derrick, VF and Ingersoll, RJ (2003) Preference similarities and group hegemony: G7 voting cohesion in the UN General Assembly. Journal of International Relations and Development 6(1), 51–70.Google Scholar
Volgy, TJ et al. (2011) Major Powers and the Quest for Status in International Politics: Global and Regional Perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wade, RH (2011) Emerging world order? From multipolarity to multilateralism in the G20, the World Bank, and the IMF. Politics & Society 39(3), 347–378.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walt, SM (2006) Taming American Power: Global Responses to U.S. Primacy. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Ward, S (2017) Status and the Challenge of Rising Powers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, D and Purushothaman, R (2003) Dreaming with BRICs: The Path to 2050. Global Economics Paper 99. New York: Goldman Sachs.Google Scholar
Wohlforth, WC (1999) The stability of a unipolar world. International Security 24(1), 5–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zangl, B et al. (2016) Imperfect adaptation: how the WTO and the IMF adjust to shifting power distributions among their members. Review of International Organizations 11, 171–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Binder and Lockwood Payton Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/6TNALY
Link
Supplementary material: File

Binder and Lockwood Payton supplementary material

Appendices A and B

Download Binder and Lockwood Payton supplementary material(File)
File 29.9 KB