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The shifting salience of democratic governance: Evidence from the United Nations General Assembly General Debates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2016

Catherine Hecht
Catherine Hecht*
Affiliation:
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow, Vienna School of International Studies
*
*Correspondence to: Catherine Hecht, Vienna School of International Studies, Favoritenstraße 15a, A-1040 Vienna, Austria. Author’s email: catherine.hecht@da-vienna.ac.at
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Abstract

How has the salience of democratic governance varied as an issue and as a basis of social status in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over time? International Relations (IR) scholars typically assume a high salience of democratic governance in international society after the Cold War, yet evidence suggests important fluctuations and that these assumptions should be qualified. This article presents quantitative and qualitative results of a manually-coded content analysis of the UNGA General Debates between 1992 and 2014, with comparison to 1982, illustrating variation in the frequency and content of state representatives’ references to democracy and the use of democratic governance as a symbol of status. What factors influence the salience of a given dimension of social status in an international organisation? Explanations supplement IR approaches with insights from social psychology, including the relevance of high and low identifiers, accessibility, fit, current and anticipated group status, and regional status concerns. The article analyses trends in states’ support for principles underpinning international order, which have broader implications for literature on global governance and status in world politics as well as for international democracy support.

Keywords

International OrganisationsDemocratic GovernanceSymbols of Status in Global PoliticsSalienceGlobal GovernanceUnited Nations
Type
Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 5 , December 2016 , pp. 915 - 938
Copyright
© British International Studies Association 2016 

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57 Provisional Verbatim Records of UNGA General Debates, New York. 1982: A/37/PV.5-35; 1992: A/47/PV.4-30; 1994: A/49/PV.4-28; 1996: A/51/PV.4-30; 1998: A/53/PV.7-26; 2000: A/55/PV.10-28; 2002: A/57/PV.2-19; 2004: A/59/PV.3-17; 2006: A/61/PV.10-23; 2008: A/63/PV.5-16; 2010: A/65/PV.11-24; 2012: A/67/PV.6-21; 2014: A/69/PV.6-20, available at: {http://documents.un.org/}.

58 GA Resolution 55/96, ‘Promoting and Consolidating Democracy’; CHR Resolutions 1999/57 and 2000/47.

59 Provisional Verbatim Records of UNGA General Debates, available at: {http://documents.un.org/}. See footnote, Figure 1.

60 Source for democracy rankings was Freedom House, Freedom in the World index, with recognition of the data’s methodological limitations. See Munck, Gerardo L. and Verkeuilen, Jay, ‘Conceptualizing and measuring democracy: Evaluating alternative indices’, Comparative Political Studies, 35:1 (2002), pp. 5–34 Google Scholar. Breakdown corresponds to their categories of ‘free’, ‘partly free’, and ‘not free’. Potential biases in Freedom House data, paradoxically, would not harm the current analysis because of the focus on status; this data potentially reflect perceptions of established democratic states, the US in particular, of the democratic standing of UN member states. Since this analysis required data on each UN member state, it was impossible to use Polity IV, which did not collect data for states with populations under 500,000. Available at: {https://freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedom-world}, Individual Country Rankings and Status, FIW, last accessed Sept. 2015.

61 The UN General Assembly’s official regional groups were used for disaggregation. Available at {http://www.un.org/depts/DGACM/RegionalGroups.shtml}, last accessed Mar. 2016.

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63 Wlezien, ‘Salience of political issues’.

65 Statements in category 6 may overlap with others. In very few instances, statements with no mention of ‘democracy’ were nevertheless also coded as containing references to ongoing domestic democratic reforms or support for democracy in their foreign policy if warranted by the specific context. For example, a few such statements were included in categories 3 or 4 only if nearly synonymous terms such as electoral and constitutional political reforms conveyed a meaning synonymous to democracy and were mentioned in conjunction with fundamental democratic components, for example, when accompanied by the idea that the will of the people should serve as the basis of the authority of government. The quantitative analysis of the number of democracy mentions presented in Figures 1, 2, and 3 did not include these synonymous terms.

64 Provisional Verbatim Records of UNGA General Debates, available at: {http://documents.un.org/}. See footnote, Figure 1.

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73 A few statements were categorised as expressing more than one interest. Seeking a non-permanent Security Council, ECOSOC, or Human Rights Council seat might also affect states’ use (or non-use) of status-related democracy rhetoric in this forum, although no clearly discernable patterns were detected in this data.

74 UNGA, A/55/PV.23, New York, 19 September 2000, p. 20.

75 UNGA, A/57/PV.13, New York, 17 September 2002, p. 15.

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77 UNGA, A/65/PV.12, New York, 23 September 2010, p. 28.

78 UNGA, A/61/PV.11, New York, 19 September 2006, p. 30.

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80 UNGA, A/69/PV.7, New York, 24 September 2014, p. 14.

81 Provisional Verbatim Records of UNGA General Debates, available at: {http://documents.un.org/}. See footnote, Figure 1.

82 See footnote, Figure 3a.

83 The UN General Assembly’s official regional groups were used for disaggregation. See footnote, Figure 3b.

84 Ludwig, ‘Free and fair’.

85 UNGA, A/47/PV.10, New York, 24 September 1992, p. 18.

86 CHR Resolution 2000/47.

87 A/RES/55/96; see also HRC Resolution 19/36.

88 UNGA, A/67/PV.13, New York, 27 September 2012, pp. 4–5.

89 See Doosje et al., ‘Social identity’, p. 59; Oakes, ‘Salience of social categories’, pp. 120–1.

90 Barreto and Ellemers, ‘Effects of being categorized’, p. 142.

91 Ibid., p. 155.