At the United Nations, the United States May Not Be as Isolated as It Thinks

The ongoing 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has ambitious targets. Member states will assess progress on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and hold high-level meetings on topics like the elimination of nuclear weapons and anti-microbial resistance. A “Summit of the Future” is highlighting the need for urgent action to address climate change, poverty, and ongoing conflicts.

In all these endeavors, the United Nations seeks to position itself as the locus for international cooperation in the 21st century. But to some observers, it’s merely a talk shop. Large-scale internationalized wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, and Yemen inspire little-to-no UN action, even on humanitarian grounds. The crisis of climate change has revealed chasms between those on the precipice of calamity and those with the greatest capacity to effect change. And once-staunchly allied countries are realigning and pulling back from international trade regimes.

But despite the “talk shop” critique, policymakers in Washington are watching. Congress mandates that the State Department report on whether countries vote with or against the United States at each UNGA session. That voting data helps inform foreign policy decisions and even foreign aid allocations.

The problem, however, is that the data over-weights issues where the United States is in the minority, and under-weights areas of consensus. By diving into the data on UNGA voting patterns, our team finds that poor data interpretation may undermine U.S. foreign policy.

How Scholars Study UNGA Voting Patterns

It is easy to conclude that cooperation through formal institutions like the United Nations is on the decline. Across a range of issue areas, formal, treaty-based international organizations are gridlocked, replaced increasingly with alternative institutions and ad hoc global governance. With little prospect for substantive action at the UN, roll-call votes at the General Assembly become acts of political signaling rather than an exercise of substantive global governance.

Indeed, because each session covers such a wide-ranging set of issues, international relations scholars use UNGA votes as political preference measures. While this data is sometimes used to study the politics and processes of the UN, most often, scholars want to understand higher-level trends. Analyzed across time, UNGA’s agenda reveals policy priorities, contentious topics and votes, and alignment on some of the most essential questions of the international order.

What the Data Shows

Our team has just completed a new dataset providing insight into resolution content and voting patterns within this dynamic international body. With it, we can better study the substance of UNGA’s work and discern changes over time. With ours and other new data, we now know which resolutions pass by consensus, each resolution’s subject matter, and have explanations for chronic and strategic absences—another way nations signal preferences without having to be on the record with “yes” or “no” votes. Together, this data can help us understand international dynamics in far greater depth.

Scholars have identified a core trend in UNGA voting data: the United States’ political isolation. This trend is most striking on issues related to the Israel-Palestine conflict. While readers closely following the Israel-Gaza war may have noticed that the U.S. government opposes most UN action on this topic, the Israel-Palestine conflict is not a new subject of interest. The conflict receives substantial attention in every UNGA session; since the Cold War ended, it inspired no fewer than 11 and routinely between 15-20 resolutions each year, accounting for nearly 25 percent of all roll-call votes.

Our new subject-matter data reveals not only that the absolute number of Israel-Palestine resolutions have declined across time, but that the content of these resolutions has shifted. Whereas the early 1990s saw nearly 10 resolutions per year condemning Israel, this number dropped dramatically after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1994. This year, with the Israel-Hamas conflict intensifying, the UNGA will undoubtedly experience a surge in resolutions once again.

The U.S. Isn’t as Isolated as the Media—or the U.S. Government Itself—Suggest

U.S. political isolation is commonly assumed within Washington as well. The State Department’s yearly report covers the percentages in which other UN member states align with the United States on three categories: all votes, important votes, and votes related to Israel.

Yet the State Department deems most of the resolutions concerning Israel one-sided, unproductive, and low priorities: in last year’s session, only one of the 30 resolutions designated “important” concerned Israel, but as a contentious issue that triggers roll-call votes, the resolutions still heavily skew the data provided to Congress. And the yearly report until 2022 excluded consensus resolutions, even though they account for 70-80 percent of all UNGA votes. For example, a consensus met the United States on the situation of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, human rights in North Korea, and the international trade in small arms and light weapons—all deemed critically important.

In other words, how the U.S. government interprets UN voting data is biased against issues where there is widespread consensus, even when the U.S. government deems a resolution an important policy priority.

The United States may chart its own path with respect to Israel, but it is aligned with countries on many other aspects of the liberal world order. For example, the data suggests a broad consensus on many issues related to trade, finance, and global development. And the United States has other countries’ support for solutions to problems that have stymied the UN’s efficacy, such as the too-common use of the veto within the Security Council.

While UNGA votes where the United States stands isolated are likely to dominate the news coverage at this year’s UNGA, the evidence shows that the world is more aligned with the United States—or the United States is more aligned with the rest of the world—than is generally assumed. Right now, it seems that we are unintentionally over-weighting areas of contention rather than consensus, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of American estrangement from much of the world.

Bridget L. Coggins is an associate professor of political science at UC Santa Barbara. Julia C. Morse is an assistant professor of political science at UC Santa Barbara. JungJae Hong is a Ph.D. student in political science at UC Santa Barbara. Annjulie Vester is a Ph.D. student in political science at UC Santa Barbara.

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