Mapping Global Politics through the UN General Assembly

• In Event: UN Voting and the Security Council

Abstract

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) is a well-known platform for international coordination between countries. Empirical research has demonstrated that countries utilize the UNGA to tactically form broader alliances and differ entiate themselves from their adversaries. However, there is limited research that systematically examines how the speeches given during the UN General Debates are employed to signal positions, express concerns, and forge alliances. In this study, we utilize named entity recognition (NER) to map the entity focus of speeches delivered during the UN General Debates. Our findings indicate that there was a strong tendency to promote democratic states in the earlier periods of the Debates. However, we find a marked shift in the 1980s, where democratic member states talk a lot more about autocratic states. We attribute this to a shift from optimism about the fruits of democracy to democratic imposition from the 1980s and onwards.

Authors

• Vilde Lunnan Djuve, University of Oslo

• Martin Søyland, University of Oslo