The importance of money and connections: Explaining international status from unga draft sponsorship networks

Can money and connections buy international influence and improve a state’s international status? This paper argues that outward foreign direct investment (FDI) by a state is associated with the improvement of its international status, as demonstrated in its increased probability of being co-sponsored in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) drafts initiated by it. Furthermore, connections among states in co-sponsorship networks, which are endogenous network features, such as sociality, popularity, mutuality, and transitivity, are associated with increased co-sponsorship likelihood. The outward FDI has the potential to increase the soft power of the home state from the bottom up and top down: the potential FDI host states are more likely to provide co-sponsorship out of aspiration for attracting FDI; multinational enterprises also have incentives to facilitate good relationships between home and host states. By taking a relational approach to studying international status from the network perspective, this paper explores how FDI is related to the UNGA drafts co-sponsorship networks worldwide from 2009 to 2018. Using temporal exponential random graph models (TERGM), this study finds that more FDI is associated with a state’s greater influence in the UNGA draft sponsorship network. Besides, from the network perspective, this paper enhances our understanding of the important concept of international status in world politics and it empirically highlights the significance of outward FDI and connections in influencing states’ behaviors.