Reassessing the European Union in the United Nations General Assembly

Abstract

In this article, we compare the European Union's (EU's) voting cohesion in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to other regional organizations like the African Union, the Arab League, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Caribbean Community, the Economic Community of West African States and the Mercado Común del Sur by using a novel index of voting cohesion. The analysis confirms previous findings that the EU member states vote, at first glance, surprisingly incoherent. However, we are able to show that the EU is the only regional organization that can increase its level of voting cohesion in contested votes. We argue that this is a better indicator for the EU's successful vote co-ordination in the UNGA than the average level of voting cohesion, which is commonly used in studies on voting behaviour.