One voice or different choice? Vote defection of European Union member states in the United Nations General Assembly
| Author | Michael Jankowski,Nicolas Burmester |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148118768184 |
| Date | 01 August 2018 |
| Published date | 01 August 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148118768184
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2018, Vol. 20(3) 652 –673
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148118768184
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One voice or different choice?
Vote defection of European
Union member states in
the United Nations
General Assembly
Nicolas Burmester1 and Michael Jankowski2
Abstract
Existing research suggests that European Union member states are increasingly able to act in
concert in the United Nations General Assembly. Based on several hundred co-ordination
meetings per year, the European Union ‘speaks with one voice’ on most of the resolutions voted
upon in the United Nations General Assembly. However, little is known about instances where
the European Union member states do not vote coherently. Three questions remain unanswered.
First, what factors determine deviating voting behaviour of European Union member states?
Second, who are the most frequent defectors from the European Union’s majority position?
Third, which voting blocs within the European Union can be identified? The article answers these
questions in a quantitative design by controlling for domestic factors, issues of resolutions and the
position of the United States. The results suggest that domestic factors determine deviating voting
behaviour far less than agenda-related issues and the position of the United States.
Keywords
Common Foreign and Security Policy, European Union, United Nations General Assembly,
voting behaviour
Introduction
This article seeks to explain vote defection of European Union (EU) member states in the
United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) between 1991 and 2011. Our article provides
a twofold contribution to the existing literature. First, we offer a solution to the methodo-
logical problem of how to assess voting coherence in the UNGA. Being a consensus
parliament, most resolutions are accepted with overwhelming majorities. This high level
1Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
2Department of Social Sciences, University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany
Corresponding author:
Nicolas Burmester, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Bartholins Allé 7 (building 1340,
136), 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
Email: nicolasburmester@ps.au.dk
768184BPI0010.1177/1369148118768184The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsBurmester and Jankowski
research-article2018
Original Article
Burmester and Jankowski 653
of consensus creates the general problem of how to assess whether the merit of co-ordi-
nation within the EU is what led the member states to cast a common vote or whether the
vote was coincidental. By focusing on instances where the member states were not able
to reach a common voice, this problem is circumvented. Second, by studying vote defec-
tions, we can learn about obstacles that hinder EU member states in obtaining actorness
within the UNGA arena. We are able to show that besides the United Kingdom and
France, smaller member states such as Ireland, Cyprus, Greece and Malta are among the
states that break EU consensus. Particularly, we demonstrate that while France and the
United Kingdom tend to deviate in isolation, smaller countries are more likely to deviate
if others do so as well. We also identify policy fields in which national interests collide as
well as the impact of the US position on EU incoherence. By looking at the flipside of the
coin, we provide insights into factors that explain why EU member states speak with one
voice in the UNGA.
Nowadays, it is widely acknowledged that the EU tries ‘to speak with one voice’ in the
international system. While early scholarly debates on the EU’s foreign policy focused on
the question of whether the EU could in fact become a coherent actor (see Bull, 1982:
151; Hill, 1993: 308–309), today, academic debates circle around the question of what the
specific characteristics of such a common foreign policy are (Sjursen, 2006: 169; Thomas,
2011: 11–13). Hence, the question is not so much whether the EU is in principle capable
of acting cohesively in the international system but rather when and under which circum-
stances. The study of cohesion is specifically relevant as it is argued to be one of the key
dimensions of international actorness. Apart from recognition, authority and autonomy,
cohesion among the member states defines the EU’s capability to act in international poli-
tics (Bretherton and Vogler, 2006; Jupille and Caporaso, 1998). Cohesion is hereby
important as it allows others to identify a common EU position on specific policy issues
and enables EU representatives and member states forcefully to claim to speak with one
and not many differing voices.
The cohesion among EU member states has often been studied in the context of inter-
national organisations, particularly in the UNGA. This article contributes to this specific
literature but approaches the issue of EU’s cohesiveness from a different angle. While
many scholars have used EU member states’ voting behaviour in the UNGA to answer the
question of whether the EU is a coherent actor and capable to ‘speak with one voice’ (Jin
and Hosli, 2013; Smith, 2006), we analyse which factors impede a common stance of EU
member states. By taking a closer look at the role of individual EU member states, we
therefore ask how we can explain the EU incoherence in votes on UNGA resolutions.
The existing literature on the voting behaviour of EU member states in the UNGA has
intensively debated the question of whether or not the member states act in unison. Based
on this research, it is relatively uncontroversial to state that the EU is an identifiable actor
in the UNGA, particularly after the introduction of the Common Foreign and Security
Policy (CFSP) in 1993 (Birnberg, 2009; Jin and Hosli, 2013). The common proxy for
measuring cohesion, voting cohesion scores, has increased on average over the last dec-
ades (Young and Rees, 2005) and led to a very high level of cohesion between EU mem-
ber states since the mid-2000s. In this context, Hosli et al. (2010: 24) state that ‘[t]hese
findings lend some support to the assumption that the EU today is likely to be one of the
most cohesive groups and a rather important entity within the UNGA’. This picture of
high voting cohesion did not significantly change with the ‘War on Terror’, the accession
of new member states (particularly the massive enlargement in 2004, see Jakobsson,
2009) or the financial and economic crisis (Burmester and Jankowski, 2014). Research on
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