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With Frenemies Like These: Rising Power Voting Behavior in the UN General Assembly

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2021

Martin Binder Open the ORCID record for Martin Binder [Opens in a new window]  and
Autumn Lockwood Payton Open the ORCID record for Autumn Lockwood Payton [Opens in a new window]
Martin Binder
Affiliation:
University of Reading, Reading, UK
Autumn Lockwood Payton*
Affiliation:
University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: apayton1@udayton.edu
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Abstract

The rise of non-Western powers has led to competing claims about how these states act among 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. This article challenges 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. The authors 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. They maintain that the formation of a rising powers bloc is driven by the countries’ economic growth and international dynamics, fostering their institutionalization as IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). To support this argument, the study combines spatial modeling techniques to analyze rising power voting behavior in the UN General Assembly over the period 1992–2011.

Keywords

United Nations General AssemblyBRICSrising powersG7spatial voting modelspower transition
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 381 - 398
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Binder and Lockwood Payton Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/6TNALY
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