IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/repsxx/v13y2025i3p243-263.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The public and the assembly: Foreign public opinion and voting in the UNGA

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Plouffe

Abstract

Does the public opinion of foreign countries matter for foreign policy? Scholars examining this question have largely focussed on highly visible foreign-policy issues. I argue that public attitudes towards foreign countries influence foreign policy towards those countries beyond salient issues by shaping the environment within which foreign-policy decisions are made. Government interests in maintaining a coherent foreign-policy agenda and bureaucrats’ career incentives combine to link foreign public opinion to non-salient aspects of foreign policy. I analyse the relationship between mass attitudes towards foreign countries and measures of voting similarity in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) using a cross-national dataset. I find evidence that public opinion towards a foreign country is associated with UNGA voting similarity with that country. Consequently, when it comes to foreign policy, both salient and non-salient actions appear to be influenced by public opinion.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Plouffe, 2025. "The public and the assembly: Foreign public opinion and voting in the UNGA," Economic and Political Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(3), pages 243-263, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:repsxx:v:13:y:2025:i:3:p:243-263
    DOI: 10.1080/20954816.2025.2456736
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/20954816.2025.2456736
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/20954816.2025.2456736?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    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:taf:repsxx:v:13:y:2025:i:3:p:243-263. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/reps .

    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.