What can we learn by collecting more complete UNGA voting records?

Joshua Fjelstul1, Simon Hug2 3, Christopher Kilby4
 
Département de science politique et relations internationales,
Université de Genève
 
CefES, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
 
Villanova University

First version: January 2021, this version: May 31, 2021

Abstract

Existing databases for UNGA voting (e.g., Bailey et al. 2017) provide excellent coverage of United Nations General Assembly voting on resolutions that were adopted by roll call vote. These databases, however, have some known limitations: They were built on historical dataset (e.g., the ICPSR dataset) that have varying coverage and definitions. They do not cover resolutions adopted by consensus. They do not consistently cover votes on draft resolutions that failed, i.e., votes on resolutions that were not adopted, or votes leading up to consideration by the UNGA. In this paper, we present an updated dataset that attempts to document and address these shortcomings, as well as explore the implications of more complete data for existing and future research.


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