"The similarities and differences of the EU and U.S. foreign policies: Empirical indicators from the UN General Assembly”

Luif, Paul. (2003) "The similarities and differences of the EU and U.S. foreign policies: Empirical indicators from the UN General Assembly”. In: UNSPECIFIED, Nashville, TN. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

This paper tries to illustrate EU-U.S. relations with the help of an empirical-quantitative analysis of the voting behavior of the EU member states and the U.S in the General Assembly of the United Nations. There exists a large amount of data which was analyzed in the 1950s and 1960s, at the height of the behavioralist school in U.S. political science, but has been rarely used since then. A reason for that could be the "stagnation" and finally the "decline" of the UN General Assembly. It has been less and less able to satisfy its members. The Third World countries have become disillusioned. The United States has even become hostile. In addition, one should not forget that the General Assembly can only pass recommendations and not legally binding texts. The "irrelevance" of the General Assembly makes its decision-making processes part of the "low politics." It is the task of the specialists and diplomatic "technicians" in New York to negotiate and find solutions. Rarely the member state capitals are involved in the decision-making. Therefore, the voting in the UN General Assembly can be regarded as a "routine" presentation of the interests of the member states. The results of the present study, thus, cannot be directly exploited for more dramatic and politically sensitive situations.

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