With “frenemies” like these: rising power voting behavior in the UN General Assembly

The rise of non-Western powers has led to competing claims about how these states act amongst 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. We challenge 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. We 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. We maintain that the formation of a rising powers bloc is driven by their economic growth and international dynamics, fostering their institutionalization as IBSA and BRICS. To support our argument, we combine spatial modeling techniques to analyze rising power voting behavior in the UN General Assembly over the period 1992-2011

Consensus Procedures in International Organizations

The author is grateful to Adrienne Héritier and Julia Sievers for their detailed comments on earlier drafts. This paper also benefited from the thoughtful suggestions of Laurie Anderson, Armen Hakhverdian, Alexia Katsanidou, and Quinton Mayne. All errors are the author’s.Why do states occasionally select two di_erent mechanisms to govern decision-making in international organizations (IOs), one that provides for formal voting and another in which decisions are taken through consensus? Almost all IOs have official voting rules described in their charter, but many times these organizations take decisions and generate outcomes in the absence of a vote. In this paper, I investigate the origins of consensus-based voting and how consensus procedures may be viewed in the presence of the official, de jure, voting rule, especially when states know that a particular policy will not come to an official vote. I argue that because the outcomes of organizational decisions have distributional implications for states, that state-actors will bargain in “the shadow of the vote” and that the official voting rule plays an important role in the decision to include consensus procedures. I test these claims empirically using an original data set of voting rules for international organizations

Dynamics of Influence in International Politics: The ICC, Bias, and Economic Sanctions

In 2002, the USA asked all countries to sign agreements exempting US citizens from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and threatened economic sanctions if they refused. Some countries yielded to this pressure even after ratifying the ICC Statute, while others chose to honor their original commitments. Why were some countries more responsive to US influence than others? This article provides an explanation of state vulnerability to attempts of influence through the lens of economic sanctions. Assessing the success of sanctions is difficult because of the selection bias in the instances of the use of such strategies observed by the researcher. Since all countries were asked to sign such agreements, one can observe exactly which signed, whether sanctions were enforced, and how quickly countries responded to such pressure. Arguments about sources of influence - shared interests, economic and security dependence, and domestic politics - are tested using an original dataset collected on country decisions to sign bilateral immunity agreements (BIAs). The authors find support for some existing explanations, including relative power and the relationship of dependency, while previously held beliefs about alliance and security relationships appear to be less influential on decisions to ratify BIAs. These findings have implications for existing research programs on economic sanctions, international organizations, and power politics

Attracting Investment: Governments' Strategic Role in Labor Rights Protection

What is the relationship between respect for labor rights and foreign direct investment (FDI)? This study explores this connection with an emphasis on the strategic role of governments in attracting FDI. We present a formal model demonstrating that governments can do so by setting the level of labor rights protection and, as a consequence, investors will choose to invest in the face of tough labor regulations or cease investing, anticipating that the costs of abiding by these regulations will be too high. The model also suggests that governments will have an incentive to implement labor regulations when enforcement costs are sufficiently low or the profits from investment are sufficiently high. Using data from developing countries across time, error correction models test the dynamic nature of these hypotheses and find support for them: strict labor laws tend to decrease inflow of FDI, but more FDI tends to encourage better labor practices

Dynamics of influence in international politics: The ICC, BIAs, and economic sanctions

In 2002, the USA asked all countries to sign agreements exempting US citizens from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and threatened economic sanctions if they refused. Some countries yielded to this pressure even after ratifying the ICC Statute, while others chose to honor their original commitments. Why were some countries more responsive to US influence than others? This article provides an explanation of state vulnerability to attempts of influence through the lens of economic sanctions. Assessing the success of sanctions is difficult because of the selection bias in the instances of the use of such strategies observed by the researcher. Since all countries were asked to sign such agreements, one can observe exactly which signed, whether sanctions were enforced, and how quickly countries responded to such pressure. Arguments about sources of influence - shared interests, economic and security dependence, and domestic politics - are tested using an original dataset collected on country decisions to sign bilateral immunity agreements (BIAs). The authors find support for some existing explanations, including relative power and the relationship of dependency, while previously held beliefs about alliance and security relationships appear to be less influential on decisions to ratify BIAs. These findings have implications for existing research programs on economic sanctions, international organizations, and power politics

Dealing With Human Rights in International Organizations

Over time human rights have gained prominence in international organizations. At the same time, dealing with them has proved difficult and contentious. The present paper focuses on the way in which the United Nations have addressed human rights issues, especially through the Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) and its successor the Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Drawing on data on resolutions debated and (largely) adopted in these two bodies in the last 17 years I offer a comparison of the voting record in these two periods. By analyzing in detail in a comparative fashion the votes in these two bodies, the paper shows that despite the high hopes the UNHRC faces some of the same challenges as its predecessor. More specifcally, I find that the conflict lines have largely remained the same in these two bodies, and the degree of polarization has slightly increased in the new UNHRC