IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/intorg/v69y2015i01p1-33_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Democracy and Multilateralism: The Case of Vote Buying in the UN General Assembly

Author

Listed:
  • Carter, David B.
  • Stone, Randall W.

Abstract

Democracies are more supportive of US positions on important votes in the UN General Assembly than of nondemocracies. Is this because democracies share common perspectives, or does this pattern reflect coercion? Since 1985, US law has stipulated that the US State Department identify important votes and that aid disbursements reflect voting decisions. To unravel these alternative explanations, we introduce a strategic statistical model that allows us to estimate voting preferences, vulnerability to influence, and credibility of linkage, which are theoretical quantities of interest that are not directly observable. The results reject the hypothesis of shared democratic values: poor democracies have voting preferences that are more oppositional to US positions than autocracies, and they are more willing than autocracies to take symbolic stands that may cost them foreign aid. Democracies support US positions, however, because US aid linkages are more credible when directed toward democratic countries. Splitting the sample into Cold War and post–Cold War segments, we find that the end of the Cold War changed the way US linkage strategies treated allies and left- and right-leaning governments, but the effects of democracy remained constant.

Suggested Citation

  • Carter, David B. & Stone, Randall W., 2015. "Democracy and Multilateralism: The Case of Vote Buying in the UN General Assembly," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 69(1), pages 1-33, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:intorg:v:69:y:2015:i:01:p:1-33_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0020818314000186/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Toke S. Aidt & Facundo Albornoz & Esther Hauk, 2019. "Foreign in influence and domestic policy: A survey," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1928, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    2. Axel Dreher & Valentin F. Lang & B. Peter Rosendorff & James Raymond Vreeland, 2018. "Buying Votes and International Organizations: The Dirty Work-Hypothesis," CESifo Working Paper Series 7329, CESifo.
    3. Tobias Heinrich & Yoshiharu Kobayashi, 2022. "Evaluating explanations for poverty selectivity in foreign aid," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 75(1), pages 30-47, February.
    4. Lutmar Carmela & Mandler Leah, 2019. "Israel’s Foreign Aid to Africa & UN Voting: An Empirical Examination," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 25(4), pages 1-7, December.
    5. Qi Haixia, 2023. "China’s partners or US allies: the dual status of major European states and their voting behaviour in the UNGA," Asia Europe Journal, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 225-250, June.
    6. Ambrocio, Gene & Gu, Xian & Hasan, Iftekhar & Politsidis, Panagiotis N., 2022. "The diplomacy discount in global syndicated loans," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    7. Toke S. Aidt & Facundo Albornoz & Esther Hauk, 2021. "Foreign Influence and Domestic Policy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(2), pages 426-487, June.
    8. Thomas Stubbs & Bernhard Reinsberg & Alexander Kentikelenis & Lawrence King, 2020. "How to evaluate the effects of IMF conditionality," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 29-73, January.
    9. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2019_013 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Ambrocio, Gene & Gu, Xian & Hasan, Iftekhar, 2022. "Political ties and raising capital in global markets: Evidence from Yankee bonds," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    11. Dreher, Axel & Minasyan, Anna & Nunnenkamp, Peter, 2015. "Government ideology in donor and recipient countries: Does ideological proximity matter for the effectiveness of aid?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 80-92.
    12. Ambrocio, Gene & Hasan, Iftekhar, 2019. "Friends for the benefits: The effects of political ties on sovereign borrowing conditions," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 13/2019, Bank of Finland.
    13. Elena V. McLean, 2017. "The politics of contract allocation in the World Bank," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 255-279, June.
    14. Osman Sabri Kiratli, 2021. "Politicization of Aiding Others: The Impact of Migration on European Public Opinion of Development Aid," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(1), pages 53-71, January.
    15. Stephen C. Nelson & Geoffrey P. R. Wallace, 2017. "Are IMF lending programs good or bad for democracy?," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 523-558, December.
    16. Osman S Kiratli, 2019. "Aiding together? Europeans’ attitudes on common aid policy," European Union Politics, , vol. 20(2), pages 261-281, June.
    17. A. Burcu Bayram & Erin R. Graham, 2017. "Financing the United Nations: Explaining variation in how donors provide funding to the UN," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 421-459, September.
    18. Ambrocio, Gene & Hasan, Iftekhar, 2021. "Quid pro quo? Political ties and sovereign borrowing," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    19. Brian Lai & Vanessa A. Lefler, 2017. "Examining the role of region and elections on representation in the UN Security Council," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 585-611, December.
    20. Ambrocio, Gene & Hasan, Iftekhar, 2019. "Friends for the benefits: The effects of political ties on sovereign borrowing conditions," Research Discussion Papers 13/2019, Bank of Finland.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:intorg:v:69:y:2015:i:01:p:1-33_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/ino .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.