UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLYS POLITICAL STRUCTURE

RESEARCH QUESTION
Are there Patterns of Political Alignment and Quasi-Party/Coalition Formation in the United
Nations General Assembly, and what are the causes for such alignments if they exist?
Hypothesis: Patterns of political constellations within the UNGA do exist, and are mostly characterized
by shared philosophy, ideology, regional distribution, democracy and economic freedom scores.
The newly-introduced and unique to this study concept of shared philosophy is the socialistcapitalist philosophy adopted by the governing regime of a county and its population at large; the term
philosophy is used since the communist/socialist movement emerged as a consequence of secular
philosophers, namely, The Capital by Marx was a philosophical work with which Lenin was impressed,
so to say, and which eventually became the governing ideology of the Soviet Union. The term
philosophy is also used to differentiate between the economic freedom aspect of a country and its
position on an democratic-authoritarian continuum, the later concepts of which is referred to as the
countrys ideology. There are two ways for testing a countrys governing philosophy. One is to examine
the party or coalition in power and determine whether they belong to the right or left wing. This method
however is time-consuming since it requires looking up every countrys party/coalition in power and, in
addition to this, coming up with a numerical value that would determine the score of the government on a
socialism-liberalism continuum. At the same time, the parties in power tend to rotate, and what really
matters is the legacy they leave behind in terms of economic liberalism or socialism tendencies. The
Heritage Foundation has defined these government economic tendencies in what they define as the
Economic Freedom score. The Economic Freedom score is the method that will be used in this research
for determining the economic liberalism and the philosophy of a countrys government. Democracy
indices such as the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy and Index and the Freedom House Civil
Liberties and Political Freedom Scores will be used. More details on the data used can be found in the
empirical analysis section.
The nature of the research question requires that some background on UNGA resolutions be
presented. A General Assembly resolution is voted by all member states of the United Nations, and it
reflects the accumulated global opinion and disposition towards a particular issue, most commonly an
issue of normative importance; namely, most United Nations General Assembly resolutions are regarded
as substantive nonbinding recommendations upholding idealized international law principles. A simple
majority (50% of all votes plus one) is needed to pass a resolution, but in some cases such as the
admission or expulsion of members, budgetary questions, and the operation of the trusteeship system, a
two-thirds majority is required. The resolutions that deal with substantive international law are nonbinding and non-enforceable upon member states; nevertheless the internal resolutions that deal with the
procedural law of the General Assembly as a UN operative body are binding on the UNGA itself. The
resolutions are not brought forth by sponsoring states, and, despite the fact that they are not binding nor
enforceable, they are statements embodying the aggregated sense, opinions and feelings of the
international community on many different world issues of predominantly political and moral/ethical
character, and thus bear consequential political meaning. UNGA resolutions set the standards of behavior
for future generations; even though resolutions are not immediately enforceable they are perceived to
have subtle and silent influence over the long course of time; for instance, the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights passed in 1948 was not binding and did not get immediately enforced in most countries in
the years immediately after its adoption, nevertheless, six decades later we are witnessing these human
rights principles slowly permeating the borders of every single country in the world and infiltrating the
ideologies of even autocratic regimes, at the same time shaming those regimes and those countries that
refuse to accept or fail to comply with the non-binding principles of this resolution. The shaming effect
of UNGA resolutions can be regarded as an incentive for governments that are neither willing nor able to
accept or implement the statutes contained in or implied by certain resolutions, to vote against the
adoption of such resolutions. Another incentive for voting against a resolution can be rooted in political

motivations or simply political stubbornness, namely, countries that have over and over again proven to
be either openly or tacitly hostile towards the United States, Western Democracies or the principles
upheld by these countries, will vote against the resolutions that are of particular importance to those
countries that they consider enemies even though they themselves would not have had any losses nor
benefits by voting for or against casting an opposite vote from the U.S. is simply a restatement of their
hostility: even though they cannot have an open armed confrontation they can still fret and fuss via
diplomatic means. Yet a third incentive for voting opposite of the U.S. on certain resolutions is the
attempt of focusing global attention on certain issues in order to divert and distract the attention of both
international as well as domestic audiences from the morally deviating events in their own countries or
regions and direct attention somewhere else. This can be assumed to be true for authoritarian and hybrid
regimes (a hybrid regime is one that has both authoritarian and hybrid regimes (some examples of hybrid
regimes are Nepal, Mozambique and Lebanon; the definition is based on the Economist Intelligence Unit
Democracy Index).
We argue that these motivations for casting votes opposite to that of the U.S. account for most of
the opposition the U.S. faces at the United Nations General Assembly. In this paper, the U.S. is taken as
the ideal morally upright and righteous state-unit, even though other countries (for instance, Norway)
might have higher Democracy and Economic Freedom Indices. For practical purposes and for the reason
that the U.S. stands out from among all of the other Western democracies such as Norway and the UK, as
an economic, military and political superpower that has the most far-reaching global relevance and the
greatest number of friends and enemies alike that are intrinsic to its power. There are several reasons why
UNGA opposition to the U.S. is important. First of all, the visionary theorizing in the UNGA today is
likely to become the politics of world governments tomorrow. If resolutions of low moral relevance are
being passed today, we can expect that in several decades many world governments will be making
political decisions of low moral relevance as well. If the U.S. faces and ever-increasing opposition at the
Assembly today, it is hard to assume that it can expect for this voting behavior to improve in the future if
regimes across the globe are decreasing their moral relevance. This research argues that there is but one
way to reverse this negative trend of anti-U.S. bias, namely, working towards spreading democracy and
economic freedom. The second reason why UNGA voting opposition to the U.S. matters is the effect on
American constituencies such voting has. The UN is perceived to be an authoritative body and a global
diplomatic forum where the top representatives of all world governments meet to discuss idealized
criteria, standards, norms, and substantive international law. The ordinary American citizen is not
familiarized with the politics of the General Assembly and thus the news of the U.S. being opposed on a
particular resolution by the majority of countries in the world creates the illusion of the U.S. government
having had stood up for a cause that is simply - wrong. This happened in the case of the Iraq War (albeit
the vote on the Iraq War happened at the Security Council and not the Assembly), the Durban
Conference, and the Kyoto Treaty (also known as the Kyoto Protocol). In all of these public cases widely
contested and debated among he American public, UN opinion had a major impact on the opinion of the
American public and thus affected U.S. politics and elections.
LITERATURE REVIEW
United Nations Voting Patterns, Hanna Newcombe, Michael Ross, and Alan G. Newcombe
Newcombe et al. (1970) discovered a trend toward bipolarization in the changes of nation blocs
over time. Their study was conducted during the Cold War, and thus they note that the bipolarization
trend is characterized by Latin American nations joining the West and Afro-Asian states joining the
Soviet bloc, as well as elusive attempts at forming Scandinavian and imperial blocs and the presence of a
small and fluid in membership pro-West neutral bloc. The study carries out a Q-mode factor analysis over
eighteen regular General Assembly Sessions between 1946-1963 to discover nation blocs over four time
periods: 1946-1950, 1951-1955, 1956-1960, and 1961-1963.

The first period ended with the boycott of Security Council sessions by the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics and the outbreak of the Korean War (June 190). The second period ended with the
admission of sixteen nations from East and West, thus ending a standstill in UN membership
expansion. The third period ended with the admission of many newly independent African nations and a
second great expansion in UN membership. The fourth period was one in which some of the great powers
called for reinstating the primary purpose of the Security Council, namely, maintaining collective peace
and security.
The Western bloc was present since the founding with a membership of Western Europe, North
America, the old Commonwealth, and a few Latin American countries. The Afro-Asian bloc was mostly
made of Arab countries in the first two periods and of South Asian Countries in the second two periods. A
partial consolidation between the Afro-Asian and the Soviet blocs happened in the fourth period, with the
newly admitted Eastern European countries joining the Soviet bloc in period 3, and Cuba joining it in
period 4. The Sino-Soviet rift was not observed in the analysis. The prominence of the Scandinavian bloc
in period 3 could be seen from the fact that this bloc accounted from more variance than either the Soviet
or the imperial bloc, and, together with the leadership role in UN peacekeeping the Scandinavian bloc has
traditionally taken, gave a rise in UN supranationalism which lasted all throughout period 3. This pattern
dropped and did not re-emerge in period 4. The most notable trend observed is the rapprochement of the
Soviet and Afro-Asian blocs and the simultaneous rapprochement between the Latin American and
Western blocs, which also implied the alienation between the West and Afro-Asian blocs.
Forty Years of United Nations General Assembly Voting, Steven Holloway
Holloway (1990) used multidimensional scaling (MDS), a powerful tool for mapping the location
of voting nations based on similarities or differences among them, to trace the voting behavior in the UN
General Assembly over an overall period of forty years and five specific General Assembly sessions: the
first (1946), tenth (1955), thirtieth (1975) and fortieth (1985). The study found that the East/West blocs
continue to be an important aspect of UN voting. A meaningful East-West bloc aggregation was present
even at the first session in 1946, with the USSR, Poland, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia on the east side
of the voting map; the US on the far right hand-side surrounded by the Commonwealth, New Zealand,
Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada; Western Europe on the right-west side, ad some of the
middle-eastern countries such as Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia on the left-east side. The research was
conducted on 50 countries for the sake of keeping the project manageable, and due to the fact that in 1946
the UN had only 51 voting members (by the fortieth session that number has tripled); among the 50
countries included in the research were the 50 most populous states (including the US, USSR and China)
as well as four smaller but politically important states (Israel, Cuba, Finland and Sweden). The findings
from the 1946 Assembly show no formation of a third voting bloc yet, with Third World countries from
Lain America aligning with the West and countries from the Arab group being somewhere in the top
middle of the graph but more aligned towards the Eastern bloc.
Why States Act Through Formal International Organizations, Abbott-Snidal
Abbott and Snidal examine the reasons why states use formal organizations by investigating the
functions IOs perform and the properties that enable them to perform these functions, addressing the role
IOs play in creating norms and understanding through a rational-institutionalist perspective which sees
IOs as enabling states to achieve their ends. The centralization and independence organizational
structural features of IOs enable them to act as a stable, neutral, depoliticized and specialized negotiation
forum, also allowing for a fast response to emergent developments, and reinforcement of accepted norms.
Managing a variety of substantive operational activities, norm elaboration and coordination, support for
direct state interaction and proactive intergovernmental cooperation, are among some of the other
significant functions IOs perform. Perhaps the most important trait that adds impartiality to IO
independence, enabling it to mediate among states in contested interactions and disputes is the trait of

neutrality. Abbott and Snidal observes, Neutrality demands that institutions be buffered from direct
pressures of states. Lack of neutrality undermines the very basis upon which IOs were built in the first
place.
Previous research looks at country voting blocs within the UN General Assembly. This research
paper contributes to the debate in three ways:
1. It focuses on voting patterns and blocs relative to the United States
2. Gives explanations for certain country blocs' voting behaviors based on several indicators such as
Democracy and Civil Liberties Indices and Economic Freedom Scores
3. Creates models that predict future bloc and individual country voting.
The voting data used is from the 2010 UN General Assembly 65th sessions vote on thirteen
resolutions: Resolution 6 Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed
by the United States of America against Cuba (resolution adopted by the General Assembly), Resolution
13 Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (adopted), Resolution
14 Division for Palestinian Rights of the Secretariat (adopted), Resolution 72 United Action towards
the total elimination of nuclear weapons (adopted), Resolution 73 The Hague Code of Conduct against
Ballistic Missile Proliferation (adopted), Resolution 91 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
(adopted), Resolution 102 Work of the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the
Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories (adopted),
Resolution 206 Moratorium on the use of the death penalty (adopted), Resolution 224 Combating
defamation of religion (adopted), Resolution 225 Situation of human rights in the Democratic Peoples
Republic of Korea (adopted), Resolution 226 Situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran
(adopted), Resolution 240 Global efforts for the total elimination of racism, racial discrimination,
xenophobia and related intolerance and the comprehensive implementation of and follow-up to the
Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (adopted), and Resolution 241 Situation of human rights
in Myanmar (adopted).
Holloway (1990) found that a meaningful East-West bloc clustering was present even at the first
UN General Assembly session in 1946; based on this founding, pre-existing political alignments will be
included in the study, not just coalitions resulting from UNGA voting coalition forming, namely, alliances
and confederation such as the NATO and the European Union, regional and ethnic groups such as the
Nordic, Asian, African and Arab countries. May of the groups examined in this study overlap, for
example, some of the Nordic Group and Western European countries are also NATO members, and most
of the Western Europe and Eastern Europe countries are in the European Union. However, as this study
finds, those countries that are in the EU but are of Eastern Europe have 50% lower voting coincidence
with the U.S. than the Western Europe EU countries. Western European countries also tend to be
Protestant (or Catholic in some cases), whereas Eastern European countries are more likely to be
Orthodox Christian, with all the cultural differences that may be implied by these religious factors.
Furthermore, the Eastern European bloc was found to be closer in voting patterns to the USSR during the
Cold War (Newcombe 1970).
EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS
Research Design and Results
A dataset was constructed of 193 countries that, with the exception of Taiwan and Hong Kong,
are all UN members. The dependent variable for each country was the UN General Assembly percent
voting coincidence with the U.S. on the thirteen resolutions mentioned above, or, in other words, the
number of times every country voted in the same manner as the U.S. The voting records for each
individual country are available on the United Nations official website, and the voting coincidence with
the U.S. on the resolutions of interest can be found on the U.S. State Department website.

The Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Indices were available for 165 countries. The score
ranged from 0 to 10 where 10 is most democratic, and is an average aggregate of scores for several
democracy indicators: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation,
political culture and civil liberties. Of these, the overall Democracy Index and the Civil Liberties score
were used. The 26 countries (15.6% of all 165 countries) that received an overall democracy index above
8.00 were classified as full democracies and were populated by 12.3% of world population; the 53 states
(31.7%) that received a score between 6.00 and 8.00 are flawed democracies and contain 37.2% of
worlds population; the 33 states (19.8%) that had a democracy index between 4.00 and 6.00 are
considered hybrid regimes (14% of world population); and the remaining 55 countries (32.9%) which had
an index below 4.00 are authoritarian regimes (36.5% of world population). A graphical representation of
these percentages as well as a histogram of the democracy index can be found in Figure 1 of the
Appendix.
The EIU Democracy and Civil Liberties Index covered only 165 countries. The countries not
accounted for were typically small pacific islands; nevertheless, this research revolves around an
Assembly in which every vote matters and where the principle of one-country-one-vote applies. Every
countrys vote can make a difference and therefore we had to create an independent variable of the
democratic scores of every country in the Assembly. Using the Freedom House Civil Liberties and
Political Freedoms score we create a dataset with democracy scores for 187 countries. The Freedom
House score ranges from 1 to 7 where one is most free and 7 is least free. A scores for the civil liberties
and the political freedoms of a country are given separately and are then summed up to determine whether
a country is free, partly free, or not free. If a country receives a cumulative score ranging 2-5 then it is
considered free, if the score ranges 6-10 then it is partly free, and a score ranging 11-14 means that the
country is not free. Figure 2 shows that 44% of all countries are free, 30% are partly free and 26% are not
free; 29% of countries received a Civil Liberties score of 1, 14% go a score 2, 12% - 3, 11% - 4, 9% - 5,
15% - 6 and 10% - 7; which points to a rather disturbing trend of 45% or nearly half of worlds countries
getting a score ranging between 4 and 7 an indicator of severe lack of civil liberties.
After entering the Freedom House scores, Heritage Foundation Economic Freedom scores for 172
countries were added to the dataset. The economic freedom scores are measured on a scale 0-100, where
100 is most free; 80-100 = free, 70-79.9 = mostly free, 60-69.9 = moderately free, 50-59.9 = mostly
unfree, and 0-49.9 = repressed. The Economic Freedom Index distribution can be seen in Figure 3. Only a
very small number of the countries had scores above 80, with the greatest number being in the range 5070, being mostly free, moderately free or mostly unfree.
Countries were classified in the following groups: Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid
Regime, Authoritarian Regime, Region Africa, Arab Group, Asian Group, ASEAN, Eastern Europe (EE),
European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), Non-Aligned Movement, Nordic Group,
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Organization of the Islamic Conference, Western Europe &
Others, and G77. The first four groups were already explained along with the EIU Democracy and Civil
Liberties Index. Region Africa contains all the countries that are geographically located on continent
Africa; presently there are 53 independent countries in Africa. The Arab group contains all the countries
that have Arab ethnic majorities (20 members). The Asian group contains 53 countries geographically in
Asia and very ethnically/religiously diverse (Chinese, South Asian, Persian, Arab, Turkish, Mongol, etc.).
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a regional political and economic organization
of ten countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Laos
and Thailand), with a population of about 600 million people or 8.8% of world population; it aims to
facilitate the economic growth and social progress of its members, and at the same time protect regional
peace and stability by providing a forum for discussing differences. Eastern Europe is a regional
geographical group containing 23 countries some of which member the European Union and some of
which do not. The European Union contains 27 independent member states primarily geographically
located on the European continent. The EU is an economic and political union operating through a
supranational hybrid system of independent institutions and intergovernmentally negotiated policies. The
intergovernmental political cohesion would predict similar voting tendencies between every member

state. Nevertheless, slight differences in voting patterns between eastern and western states are still
observed. Latin America and the Caribbean is a 33-member regional bloc. The Non-Aligned Movement
(NAM) is a group of 120 states as of 2011, but at the time of 45th session of the Assembly it had 118
members (two-thirds of UN membership and 55% of world population); the NAM are not formally
aligned with or against any major power bloc. Founded by Josip Broz Tito in Belgrade in 1961 and with
the collaboration of Indias first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Egypts second President Gamal Abdel
Nasser, Ghanas first president Kwame Nkrumah, and Indonesias first President Sukarno, the official
purpose of the organization as stated in the Havana Declaration of 1979 was to ensure the national
independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries in their struggle
against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression,
occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as great power and bloc politics. The main
context of this manifest was the Cold War and seeking middle, non-aligned course for developing and
third world countries under the power politics of the Western and Eastern blocs. The Nordic group
contains only five countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden; the reason for looking at
this group separately even though its members are already part of either the EU, NATO and/or the
Western Europe and Other blocs, is the Scandinavian blocs preeminence in the 1956-1960 and the
leadership this bloc has traditionally taken in UN peacekeeping missions, two factors which combined
gave a short 5-year period of United Nations supranationalism led by the Scandinavian-Nordic group
(Newcombe et al., 1970). NATO is an intergovernmental military alliance formed in 1949 at the outbreak
of the Cold War with headquarters in Brussels, Belgium; constituting a system of collective security and
defense. The de facto main adversary of NATO during the Cold War was the Warsaw Pact; the end of the
Cold War and the dissolution of the Pact triggered an expansion of NATO further east to include unified
Germany and some Eastern European countries in a process of strategic reevaluation of NATOs
purposes. NATO has 28 member states. The Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has 56
member states with a majority of their populations subscribing to the religion Islam. The organization is a
medium through which the collective voice of the Muslim world might be able to safeguard he interests,
progress and well being of Muslims. The Group of 77 (G77) is a loose intergovernmental organization at
the United Nations General Assembly whose aim is enhancing the means for developing countries to
articulate and promote their collective economic interest and to facilitate South-South economic
cooperation. Initially formed by 77 countries, the group now has 131 members. The Western Europe &
Others bloc has 28 members; Western Europe is a loose collection of countries regionally located in
Western Europe and largely perceived as developed democracies; the Others in this bloc are
geographically remote countries that resemble Western European countries in economic and democratic
development, namely, the United States of America, Canada, Australia, Israel, New Zealand, Turkey,
Greece and Malta. Many of these states are also members of NATO and the EU.
The main reason for including overlapping voting bloc was the design of better models that gave
best estimates of voting correlations. At the same time, for the most part already existing political groups
and unions were looked at, which is in contrast to Newcombe (1970) and Holloway (1990) who
performed Q-mode factor analysis and multidimensional scaling for the exact purpose of mapping and
determining group formation along voting patters. This research instead of conducting a similar study
anew, builds upon their findings as well as common knowledge of already existing political alliances
outside the United Nations General Assembly to examine whether these alliances translate into
recognizable patterns of voting behavior relative to the United States. Statistical analysis was used for this
purpose.
After defining the groups of the research, we wanted to find out what are the characteristics
shared among member states of each group, that is, what are the patterns of democratic development,
economic freedom, civil liberties, regime types, and freedom scores. We found that the NATO, EU,
Nordic and Western European and Others blocs have high democracy and civil liberties indices, excellent
freedom house scores, and are mostly composed of Full Democracies. Twenty-seven NATO members are
free according to the Freedom House (FH) (1 is partly free); All 28 members of the EU and all Nordic

countries are FH free. All countries in the Western Europe & Others bloc are free (except fro one which is
partly free).
Table 1 gives the detailed composition and characteristics of each group. For example, sixteen of
the countries in the Arab Group are not free, and six are partly free. Forty-four countries in the NonAligned Movement are not free, 46 are partly free and 28 are free. All countries in EU are free. Fourteen
states in the Asian bloc are free, 16 are partially free, and 24 are not free. Five ASEAN countries are
partly free and 5 are not free. Region Africa has 21 not-free 23 partly free and 9 free countries. G77 has
41 not-free 50 partly free and 37 free members. The Democracy index tends to be higher in the European
Union bloc, and even higher in the Western Europe & Other bloc; for contrast, the democracy index
regression coefficient for Eastern Europe is 0.8114** whereas the same coefficient for Western Europe &
Other is 3.6266**; NAM: -2.8431**, G77: -2.4290**, Nordic Group: 41984**, Arab Group: -2.5241**,
NATO: 2.9645**, Region Africa: -1.9956**, and OIC: -2.4041**. The Economic Freedom Index
regression coefficient regression for Western Europe & Other is 3.6266**, Nordic Group: 117116**, EU:
11.4067**, NATO: 10.8808**, OIC: -3.8789**, Region Africa: -8.2104**, G77: -10.8779** and NAM: 10.9576**.
Having determined the characteristics of each group, we then proceed to examine their voting
behavior relative to the U.S. Table 2 summarizes our findings, which are also graphically presented in the
Appendix. The table is self-explanatory, and its main findings are: The higher the EIU democracy and
civil liberties indices of a country the more likely it is to vote with the U.S. by Beta (or regression line
slopes) of 0.6614** and 0.6279** respectively; The better the Freedom House Civil Liberties and
Political Freedoms of a country the more likely it is to vote with the U.S.; Free countries are most likely,
partly free countries are less likely, and countries that are not free are least likely to vote with the U.S.;
Countries in Region Africa are less likely to vote with the U.S. by a -0.1660** coefficient; OIC countries
are less likely to vote with the U.S. than the rest of UNGA members by a -0.2485** coefficient; NAM
countries are less likely to vote with the U.S. by a -0.3187** coefficient; NATO countries are more likely
to vote with the U.S. by a 0.3179** coefficient; EU countries are more likely to vote with the U.S. by a
0.3113** coefficient, and so on. Note that the Beta values, which are the slopes of the regression lines,
and are a more straightforward representation of the relationship between the variables, are in most cases
twice or several times greater than the value of the coefficient.

Dependent Variable:
RegionAfrica AsianGr.
NATO
EU
Nordic
NAM
WestEur.
Indices and Scores
OIC
ASEAN
LAC
EastEurope
G77
ArabGr.
&Other
EIU[1] Democracy Index -1.9956**
-1.4838**[X] 2.9645**
3.1342**
4.1984**
-2.8431**
3.6266**
-2.4041**
-0.7260[X]
1.0663*[X]
0.8114[X]
-2.4290**
-2.5241**
EIU[1] Civil Lib. Index
-2.3075**
-1.9316**[X] 3.2275**
3.5384**
3.651**[X]
-3.2383**
3.3386**
-2.9449**
-1.2905[X]
1.8082**[X]
1.5677*[X]
-2.6397**
-2.9376**
Civil Liberties Index
1.6444**[-]
1.3305**[-X]
-2.5858**[-]
-2.7272**[-]
-2.5000**[-]
2.3442**[-]
-2.7272**[-]
[-]
[-X]
[-X]
[-]
[-]
Freedom House (FH)
2.7794**
2.1796**
-1.2504**
-0.7412
1.8801**
2.6148**
Free, Partially Free or
9-23-21
14-16-24
27-1-0
28-0-0
5-0-0
28-46-44
27-1-0
Not Free (FH)
5-20-30
0-5-5
20-10-1
14-6-3
37-50-41
0-6-15
FullDem-FlawedDem1-8-10-31
2-10-9-21
14-13-2-0
15-13-0-0
5-0-0-0
1-27-23-52
20-4-1-0
HybridReg-AuthReg
0-7-10-34
0-4-2-3
2-15-6-1
1-15-5-2
3-31-24-49
0-0-3-16
Economic Freedom
-8.2104**
-2.2104
10.8808**
11.4067**
11.7116**[X] -10.9576**
14.2354**
Index, Heritage Found.
-3.8789*[X]
-1.2845
0.6575
3.7308[X]
-10.8779**
0.1209
**p<0.010, *p<0.050, [X]=R-square less than 5% (in most cases the amount of variance explained is small because all models are
bivariate; thus the R-square statistic is not given much weight for the small group models such as the Nordic bloc), [-]=even though the
coefficient is positive, the relationship between the variables is negative (for e.g., being a OIC member is characterized of having poor
Civil Liberties Freedom House scores); for the other two tables this sign is not included since familiarity with the FH scores is assumed.
Note: when the numbers to not sum up to the full membership of a bloc, there are missing values.
Table 1

Coefficient/
# of Obs. Pearson chi2 (X2)
2
Beta
Robust SE
Constant
R
EIU[1] Democracy Index
0.0689**
0.0769**
0.0832**
0.4375
161
0.6614**
0.1255**
EIU[1] Civil Lib. Index
0.0536**
0.0637**
0.1125**
0.3943
161
0.6279**
Civil Liberties Index
-0.0719**
-0.0809**
0.7632**
0.4225
186
X2 (264) =369
Freedom House (FH)
-0.6500**
Pr=0.000
Political Rights Index (FH)
-0.0851**
-0.0957**
0.7924**
0.4383
186
X2 (264) =432.54
-0.6621**
Pr=0.000
Free, Partially Free or Not -0.1775**
-0.9568**
0.6597**
0.3711
186
X2 (88) =169.54
Free (FH)
-0.6092**
Pr=0.000
Region Africa
-0.1660**
-0.1719**
0.5629**
0.0927
187
X2 (45)=58
-0.3124**
Pr=0.091
Organization
of
Islamic -0.2485**
-0.2612**
0.5884**
0.2236
187
X2 (45)=91
Conference (OIC)
-0.4729**
0.6006**
Pr=0.091
Non-Aligned Movement
-0.3187**
-0.3543**
0.7161**
0.4194
187
X2 (45) =125
-0.6478**
Pr=0.000
Asian Group
-0.1032**
-0.1169**
0.5454**
0.0377
187
X2 (45)=63
-0.1941**
Pr=0.037
ASEAN
-0.1689*
-0.1849*
0.5217*
0.0253
187
X2 (45)=56
-0.1589*
Pr=0.125
NATO
0.3179**
0.3269**
0.4674**
0.2335
187
X2 (45) =111.7
0.4832**
Pr=0.000
Latin America and the -0.0640
0.5273**
0.0100
187
X2 (45) =65.9
Caribbean
Pr=0.023
European Union
0.3113**
0.3198**
0.4701**
0.2176
187
X2 (45) =112.3
0.4664**
Pr=0.000
Western European and
0.3153**
0.3232**
0.4695**
0.2232
187
X2 (45)=96
[2]
Other
0.4725**
Pr=0.000
Nordic Group
0.2775**
0.2776*
0.5093**
0.0354
187
X2 (45)=22
0.1880**
Pr=0.999
G77
-0.2661**
-0.3291**
0.6974**
0.2722
187
X2 (45) =122
-0.5218**
0.7466**
Pr=0.000
Eastern Europe
0.1931**
0.2270**
0.4929**
0.0709
187
X2 (45) =53
0.2664**
Pr=0.186
Arab Group
-0.2311**
-0.2342**
0.5414**
0.0900
187
X2 (45)=50
-0.2999**
Pr=0.284
Full Democracy
0.3172**
0.3327**
0.4502**
0.2475
161
X2 (43)=87
0.4974**
Pr=0.000
Flawed Democracy
0.1320**
0.1423**
0.4588**
0.0692
161
X2 (43)=56
0.2631**
Pr=0.086
Hybrid Regime
-0.1116*
-1157*
0.5216**
0.0334
161
X2 (43)=47
-0.1827*
Pr=0.295
Authoritarian Regime
-0.2482**
-0.2553**
0.5847**
0.2495
161
X2 (43)=72
-0.4995**
Pr=0.003
Economic Freedom Index, 0.0084**
0.0118**
0.0057
0.1691
172
Heritage Found.
0.4112**
*p<0.05, **p<0.01 [1]The Economist Intelligence Unit [2]Other=U.S.A., Israel, Canada, Australia, etc.
Vote Coincidence w/ U.S.

Table 2

Blocs and Individual Countries Voting Predictions

Different models give different scores. The objective is to determine which model is most accurate in
producing fitted values closest to the actual voting behavior of specific countries. Based on that
observation, the countries that were best explained by a certain model are likely to be politically closest to
the bloc of that model, or in a continuous variable model are likely to be most politically influenced by
that aspect of society (for example, Chinas political disposition towards the U.S. at the UNGA is mostly
influenced by its level of democracy, civil liberties, political rights and its lack of freedom according to
Freedom House). In order to predict voting behavior we produced the yhat fitted values for each
regression model. Some of the results produced for several countries are:
Model DemIndx
Norway: 80.1%*** (actual 77.8%)
Iran: 24.1%* (actual 09.1%)
Afghanistan: 29.7%* (actual 46.2%)
Model EconFreeIndx:
Norway: 59.8%* (actual 77.8%)
North Korea: 1.4%*** (actual 08.3%)
Model AuthReg:
Norway: 58.5%* (actual 77.8%)
Iran: 33.6% (actual 09.1%)
Afghanistan: 33.6%** (actual 46.2%)
Saudi Arabia: 33.6%*** (actual 33.3%)
Where * means close to actual voting, ** means very close to actual voting, and *** means
extremely close to actual voting.
There are also stark exceptions to voting behavior, such as South Africa (80% vote coincidence with the
U.S.); located in Region Africa, South Africa is a free country and a full democracy with higher economic
freedom scores than both Greece and Italy.
Conclusion and Implications
The hypothesis of the research was proved correct. There is country UNGA voting clustering
relative to U.S. voting; the constellations form predominantly along regional and ideological lines, and
are also defined by democratic scores and economic freedom indices.
The country blocs that tend to vote with the U.S. on key resolutions are the European Union,
Western Europe &Other, NATO, The Nordic Group, and Eastern Europe. These blocs also tend to have
higher democratic scores and economic freedom indices, and they are predominantly made of Full
Democracies and some Flawed Democracies. The largest (most numerous) voting constellations,
however, tend to vote against the U.S. These groups are the Non-Aligned Movement, G77, the
Organization of Islamic Conference, and Region Africa; all of which tend to have low democracy scores
and economic freedom indices; they are also predominantly made of Hybrid Regimes, Authoritarian
Regimes and some Flawed Democracies.
Based on the postulate that the democratic score, the type of regime of a country, and its
economic freedom score reflects that country's governing ideology, ethical soundness and moral
relevance, there are two implications from this study:
1. The number of seats that oppose a resolution in the UNGA is not an indicator of the moral
rectitude ethical latitude of the resolution itself.
2. The most obvious way to get countries to permanently ally themselves with the U.S.A. at the
UNGA is working towards helping them become more democratic and more free in terms of their civil
liberties, political rights and economy. Other means such as IMF loaning, World Bank 'bribery', and
bilateral diplomacy/aid may only align voting behavior for a very brief period of time, without effectively
resolving the core issues, namely, the moral relevance of the ideologies governing the countries and their
regimes.

Vote Coincidence w/ U.S.

Norway 77.8 Afghanistan 46.2 Indonesia 27.3 India 14.3
Egypt 25
Canada 84.6
(%)
Israel 91.7
SaudiArabia 33.3
China 18.2
Iran 9.1
Russia 30
SouthAfrica 80
EIU[1] Democracy Index
81.4***
28.0
57.5
63.0
32.3**
76.1**
Fitted1
64.5
23.3*
32.8***
24.1*
41.0*
66.7
EIU[1] Civil Lib. Index
71.2**
35.8**
54.3
67.8
34.1**
71.2*
Fitted2
44.2
22.2*
20.6***
23.9
40.9*
62.8
FH Civil Liberties Index
69.5***
31.9*
62.0
62.0
31.9**
69.5*
Fitted3
69.4
24.4*
24.4***
31.9
32.0***
62.0
FH Political Rights Index
71.3**
26.6
53.4
53.4
35.5*
71.3*
Fitted4
71.3
26.6*
26.6***
26.6*
35.5**
62.4
FH Free, Partly or Not Free 66.1*
29.2
66.1
66.2
29.2***
66.1
Fitted5
66.2
29.2***
29.2***
29.2
29.2***
66.2
Region Africa
55.7
55.7**
55.7
55.7
39.7
55.7
Fited6
55.7
55.7
55.7
55.7
55.7
39.7
OIC
58.3
34.0*
34.0**
58.3
34.0**
58.3
Fitted7
58.3
34.0***
58.3
34.0
58.3
58.3
Non-Aligned Movement
71.6**
39.1**
39.1
39.1
39.1*
71.6**
Fitted8
71.6
39.1**
71.6
39.1
71.6
39.1
Asian Group
54.5
42.8***
42.8
42.8
54.5
54.5
Fitted9
54.5
42.8
42.8
42.8
54.5
54.5
ASEAN
52.1
52.2**
52.2
52.2
52.2
52.2
Fitted10
52.1
52.2
52.2
52.2
52.2
52.2
NATO
78.5
46.3***
46.3
46.3
46.3
78.5***
Fitted11
46.2
46.3
46.3
46.3
46.3*
46.3
LAC
52.2
52.2**
52.2
52.2
52.2
52.2
Fitted12
52.2
52.2
52.2
52.2
52.2
52.3
European Union
46.5
46.5***
46.5
46.5
46.5
46.5
Fitted13
46.5
46.5
46.5
46.5
46.5*
46.5
Western European & Other 78.5***
46.5***
46.5
46.5
46.5
78.5***
Fitted14
78.5**
46.5
46.5
46.5
46.5*
46.4
Nordic Group
78.7***
50.5***
50.5
50.5
50.5
50.5
Fitted15
50.5
50.5
50.5
50.5
50.5
50.5
G77
69.7*
42.5***
42.5
42.5
42.5
69.7*
Fitted16
69.7
42.5
42.5
42.5
69.7
42.5
Eastern Europe
48.8
48.8***
48.8
48.8
48.8
48.8
Fitted17
48.8
48.8
48.8
48.8
68.6
48.8
Arab Group
53.7
53.7*
53.7
53.7
31.0**
53.7
Fitted18
53.7
31.0***
53.7
53.7
53.7
53.7
Full Democracy
76.7***
44.5***
44.5
44.5
44.5
76.7***
Fitted19
44.5
44.5
44.5
44.5
44.5*
44.5
Flawed Democracy
45.2
45.2***
59.1
59.1
45.2
45.2
Fitted20
59.1
45.2
45.2
45.2
45.2*
59.1
Hybrid Regime
51.6
51.6**
51.6
51.6
51.6
51.6
Fitted21
51.6
51.6
51.6
51.6
41.0*
51.6
Authoritarian Regime
58.5
32.3
58.5
58.5
32.2**
58.5
Fitted22
58.5
32.2***
32.2
32.3
58.5
58.5
Full/Flawed Dem.
76.7***
32.3
59.1
59.1
32.3**
76.7***
Hybrid/Auth. Reg., Fitted23 59.1
32.2***
32.2
32.3
41.0*
59.1
Economic Freedom Index
61.4
N/A
46.7
45.2
49.9
72.3**
Fitted24
59.6
57.2
42.6
32.3
41.0*
53.6
*Close to actual voting. **Very close to actual voting. ***Extremely close to actual voting
As we can notice from the table, some countries such as Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia fit well many models, whereas others
such as Iran and India are very unique in their voting and thus hard to predict.
Table 3

10

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11

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POLI 474
Prof. Songying Fang
Student: Anastazija Ristovska
ID: S01131646

APPENDIX

Figure 1

12

Figure 2

Figure 3

13

Figure 4

Figure 5

14

Figure 6

Figure 7

15

Figure 8

16

Figure 9

17

Figure 10

18

Figure 11

19

Figure 12

Figure 13

20

Figure 14

Figure 15

Figure 16

21