Seite - (000099) - in Knowledge and Networks

91 international law and its codification; (b) promoting international cooperation in the economic, social, cultural, educational, and health fields; and (c) assisting in the realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion (Charter of the United Nations, Article 13). When a member state, a regional group, or an ad hoc group of states submits a resolution proposal to the General Assembly, there can be one of two outcomes. The first and most frequent one is the resolution’s adoption by consensus without any vote. Depending on the session, between two thirds and three quarters of all resolu- tions are adopted by consensus. A vote indicates a controversial issue, and member states have four options (only member states are able to vote): vote yes, abstain, vote no, or abstain. The last option often indicates a small and/or failed state that cannot obtain a permanent delegation in the UNGA. It should also be noted that nearly all states are UNGA members: The Holy See and the State of Palestine have observer status (they can sponsor a resolution but cannot vote), and Taiwan is the only independent state not recognized by the UN system, a situation due to the strong and persistent opposition of China. Geographical Voting Patterns in the UNGA Studying votes in the UNGA has had a long academic tradition since the seminal paper by Ball (1951). The main hypothesis is that states that vote the same way on a vast range of topics are supposedly politically close and like-minded. Kissack (2007) noted that studying votes has advantages as well as drawbacks, and among the latter is the inability to infer any cooperative behavior from results obtained. In other words, in an arena where many resolutions are ritually adopted year after year over several decades, two states can exhibit the same voting behavior without hav- ing any actual relation. However, in an arena where two thirds of the resolutions are adopted by consensus, putting an issue up for vote already indicates a lack of con- sensus. Whereas a similar vote does not necessarily imply a close relation, a dis- similar vote conversely indicates opposition between two actors. When dozens of votes are considered, similar voting patterns can infer a relation between a pair of actors. Moreover, the autonomy of actors is not equally distributed: Some delega- tions have dozens of members (e.g., diplomats, lawyers, and counselors), whereas delegations from the poorest countries have only two to five members. It is obvi- ously difficult for the small delegations to study all proposed resolutions, to con- sider their legal implications, and so on, and voting behavior will depend on group directives rather than on national orientation. For the two sessions considered here (the 42nd and 63rd), voting results were selected according to (a) resolutions and (b) member states. First, tables recording all voting results per session were made from the UNBISnet website, which provides all details of states’ behavior per resolution.2 Then, near-unanimous resolutions 2 http://unbisnet.un.org/ 5 Studying Networks Geographically: World Political Regionalization in the United…