Authoritarian Member States of the UN: Determinants of Autocratic Co-Sponsorship of Draft Resolututions as a Signal of Foreign Policy Coordination at the United Nations

Abstract

Do autocracies cooperate internationally? This working paper investigates whether regime-type explains co-sponsorship patterns at the United Nations General Assembly. Co-sponsorship is a relatively costly signal of international cooperation at the UN, which is analyzed based on a novel dataset, including newly validated issue categories and co-sponsorship behavior on 14.995 draft resolutions. Theoretically, the paper unifies three strands of literature: the recent literature on autocratic regional organizations, the growing literature on foreign policy of autocratic regimes and the traditional analysis of the United Nations. The results suggest that regime-type plays a strong role in co-sponsorship behavior: democracies co-sponsor with their peers, whereas autocracies, in line with existing findings, cooperate overall less at the UN. They do, however, prefer to co-sponsor with one another over partners of other regime-types. This seems to be particularly true in issue areas where autocratic regimes could attempt to counter democratic norm-setting, such as human rights. There is mixed results concerning the effect of autocratic regional organizations on autocratic co-sponsorship. Preliminary results suggest at least some positive effect on autocracies and highlight the need for further research.