Soft Balancing Efforts at the United Nations General Assembly: A Study of Second-Tier Nations’ Voting Patterns for Important Votes

Abstract

The post-Cold War system of power is a unipolar system, in which the U.S is the sole superpower. For years, scholars have grappled with the issue of balancing, and have attempted to explain the behavior of nations, for the United States keeps being the exception to the rule that states balance against superior power. Soft balancing is a concept that has been used to answer the question of why second-tier nations are not balancing against the power of the United States. Developed by Robert Pape and T.V Paul, the theory of soft balancing seeks to explain the less threatening measures that have been used by nations to delay, interfere with, or oppose U.S interests, particularly at international organizations. The United Nations General Assembly is one of the most important platforms for international collaboration. I believe the UNGA is also an apparatus for soft balancing. I hypothesize that there is soft balancing behavior happening at the UNGA, and that second-tier nations are using this forum of collaboration to identify issues that are important to the U.S, as well as, identify other states to form balancing coalitions with. The data sources used for this study are the Voting at the UN reports from 2000 to 2017. After analyzing the data, the results show that there is indication of balancing behavior happening at the UNGA.