Regime Type and Co-Authorship in the UN General Assembly

Since the end of the cold war, world politics have been in continuous change. In the early 90s, some scholars were optimistic for a stable and peaceful liberal world order guaranteed by the USA as only remaining superpower (e.g. Krauthammer 1991) or even the end of universalization of western liberal democracy (Fukuyama 1992). Meanwhile, it has become apparent that history did not end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Conflicting interests between the western democracies, led by the USA as only remaining superpower, and the rest of the world became increasingly visible (e.g. Walt 2000; Nye 2002; Voeten 2004, Tunsjø 2018). Yet, over the same period, we saw little change of the fundamental rules and institutions that govern world politics, such as the United Nations. While there is little doubt that the emerging international conflicts show in the UN Security Council, it is questionable in how far these developments are also revealed at the working level collaborations inside the UN General Assembly. To answer that question, the present article analyses and maps the co-authorships of all UN draft resolutions since 1991. Specifically, our analysis is guided by two arguments. First, we discuss in how far those individuals, who draft UN resolutions are loyal agents of their governments or, as hoped for by many liberalists, are beings socialized into a common set of liberal, supranational norms. Since the existing literature finds limited evidence for socialization in international organizations, we expect that the authors of UN draft resolutions represent the positions of their governments. Second, we discuss in how far the increasing tensions between the west and the rest should affect all resolutions equally. Specifically, we argue that many UN resolutions are dealing with positive sum issues, on which a solution is in the common interest of all states such as the fight against international crime or the protection of the environment. Discussing the existing literature, we conclude that the increasing importance of regime type should be more visible for resolutions on national security, disarmament and regional conflicts, i.e. resolutions that lay at the heart of geopolitical power politics. Overall, we find strong support for both arguments.