Abstract
This article sets out to study the voting pattern of the Visegrád countries in the United Nations General Assembly, since the beginning of their respective memberships, analyzing their voting affinity with the Soviet Union (Russia) and the United States. Somewhat predictably, Visegrád countries tended to be closer to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Surprisingly though, the pattern does not change drastically after the end of the Cold War, and Visegrád countries still tend to vote more closely with Russia than with the United States. Equally striking is the fact that Visegrád countries tend to vote almost identically, without any changes given domestic political changes. Pattern of higher agreement with Russia than with the United States can be seen also when inspecting the voting of all EU members. Such finding is relevant for the study of the geopolitical transformation of the Central European region, but also wider geopolitical dynamics in the UN General Assembly.
Visegrád countries have become a united group of states acting together in the international politics. Not only do they share many institutional frameworks but also cooperate richly in matters of foreign policy. Simultaneously, they have massively refocused their foreign policy since the end of the Cold War and are now considered as some of the most reliable allies of the United States. In spite of the rich case study literature as well as literature on the Visegrád itself, their record in global affairs has escaped a systematic scrutiny thus far. This article purports to correct for this shortcoming by analyzing the voting pattern of the Visegrád countries in the United Nations General Assembly, from their entry to the organization until 2011.
Why should we pay attention to the UN General Assembly voting? After all, UN General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding. There are, however, two main reasons why UN General Assembly voting is important to consider when we think about state preferences.
Firstly, the UN General Assembly provides an arena for iterated state interaction in front of the full international community. Whereas a criticism has been leveled to the effect that it provides only a symbolic venue, where states come and talk, dubbed as “merely a passive arena for the political interaction between member states,” 1 even such interaction provides important clues about states’ preferences and their behavior. 2 Votes signal where states stand on numerous important issues of global importance. For example, the UN General Assembly votes annually on the status of Jerusalem, which has little effect on the status itself, but reveals where individual states stand on the issues of the Middle conflict. UN General Assembly voting has thus been used to approximate countries’ policy preferences repeatedly in empirical research. 3
There is also a secondary reason—a legal one. Although the UN General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, they nevertheless amount to expression of opinion juris and/or state practice, both inherent element of the constitution of the customary international law. 4 The International Court of Justice in its Nicaragua judgment set apart UN General Assembly resolutions from reiteration of treaty commitments and understood UN General Assembly resolutions as participating in the creation of the international customary law. 5 Therefore, the behavior in the UN General Assembly does not only amount to the move in an empty arena but may have a potential legal effect.
In this article, I attempt to map out the country patterns and positions vis-à-vis the two main Cold War superpowers, the Soviet Union (Russia, after the end of the Cold War) and the United States. These two countries were selected not only because they shaped the face of the international politics in the second half of the twentieth century, and because they, in many ways, represent different preferences in the UN General Assembly. I focus on the Visegrád countries, as a specific subset of countries of the Central and Eastern European region, distinguished by the intensive nature of their mutual cooperation in various fields, including foreign and security policy. In such analysis, I use the data set on all UN General Assembly, compiled by Anton Strezhnev and Erik Voeten. 6 In this exercise, I aim to compare the Cold War voting pattern with that after the end of the Cold War, combined with insights into the dynamics of post-1989 shifts. In the final portion, I compare the Cold War and post–Cold War voting pattern of the Visegrád countries with that of the other member states of the European Union and some selected non-European Western powers.
The rest of the article continues as follows. In the first section, I outline the geopolitical transformations of the Visegrád region since the end of the Cold War, with a special emphasis on how the relations with the United States and the Soviet Union (later Russia) developed. In the second section, I outline the data I use, followed by the third section in which I analyze the actual voting patterns. Subsequently, in the fourth section, I compare the voting behavior of Visegrád countries with that of the other EU member states. The final section concludes.
Transformations of Visegrád
In this article, I focus on the Visegrád countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary) exclusively. Visegrád constitutes, geopolitically, the heartland of the Central European region. 7 While its level of institutionalization has been fairly low, Visegrád provides an example of an advanced and differentiated grouping, distinct from numerous other similar groups in the post–Cold War Europe. Not only its members have been among the most advanced (politically and economically), but Visegrád countries were bound by an institutional arrangement which provided space (and vital structure) for joint foreign and security policy action. 8 Although this arrangement may be institutionally fairly young (essentially since the end of the Cold War), the underlying conditions of similarity are much older. As described by Rudolf Chmel, a prominent local intellectual, Visegrád “still existed as a psychological and geopolitical unit, which was worked with within Euro-Atlantic structures in spite of its fictitious nature.” 9 The Visegrád Group does not only provide mutual space for cooperation, it has been recognized historically in the West as an important grouping facilitating stability in the Central Europe, and in the East as a grouping with goals incompatible with Russians’ strategic interests in Central Europe. 10
The sense of destiny in mutual cooperation can be sensed from the Visegrád declaration, the founding document of the Visegrád Group, which reads as follows: “The similarity of the situation that has evolved over the past decades has determined for these three countries convergent basic objectives.” 11 In spite of the ups and downs in the inter-institutional dynamics of the Visegrád Group 12 in the 1990s, the Visegrád Group has remained an important foreign policy grouping. As put by the Polish Foreign Minister Cimoszewicz in his 2002 speech, “Despite disputes and manifestations of disloyalty that we witness within the Visegrád Group, it still remains an important direction of our policy in the Central-European region.” 13 Until today, the group provides an important cooperation mechanism among the member states, as can be demonstrated by a number of research projects (joined or led by current or former high policy officials, advisors, or inner–foreign policy circle members) focused on the defense cooperation among the members, commissioned by the International Visegrád Fund. 14 Even the U.S.-based analysts have recently called to give more attention to the Visegrád countries as a future important player. 15 Analytically, therefore, it seems reasonable to focus on these countries exclusively.
It has been argued that the most distinguishable foreign policy feature of the Central European countries has been their pro-transatlantic foreign policy outlook. Ever since the end of communism, the Central European countries strived to achieve positions within the Western economic and political institutions, and Visegrád Group was one of the specific vehicles to achieve that goal. 16 The pro-American orientation is based not only on geopolitical calculations but also on a sense of affinity and search for an economic and social model. Combined with the historical lack of trust in Europeans (fueled by pre–World War II experience, perceived by many Central European leaders as being left out to Germany and Russia by other European powers), Visegrád countries focused on the cooperation with the United States in security policy. 17 This resulted in a situation where the Central European countries are among the most reliable allies of the United States, continuously supporting it in global security issues. 18 In return, Central European countries (Poland in particular) have been recognized as leaders in the “new Europe.” 19
If Visegrád countries are U.S. enthusiasts, their eastward policy is less pronounced. Although the founding goal of the Visegrád group was to achieve the removal of Soviet troops from the Central Europe (and as such was rather antagonistic towards the Soviet Union), 20 currently Russia has been conspicuously missing from the Visegrád agenda. 21 This absence is all the more surprising given the importance of Russia for numerous issues relevant to the region, from energy security to political stability in Eastern European countries. Although in bilateral relations Russia seemed to have become a “taboo topic” for Visegrád countries, 22 the main perception of Russia is that the country has not come to terms with its past, and its meddling in domestic politics of Eastern European countries and Caucasus is reminiscent of Russia’s imperial ambitions. 23
In this article, I set out to study how the Visegrád countries formulated their policy preferences in the UN General Assembly over time. As argued above, the UN General Assembly votes provide a good indicator of where countries stand on various international issues and how their positions change. Simultaneously, because Central European countries have undergone a very profound change in geopolitical orientation, we can reasonably expect that as countries’ geopolitical affinity moves from the Soviet Union (Russia) to the West, we should also witness more recalibration in countries’ votes. In particular, I hypothesize that Visegrád countries will be voting more in agreement with the Soviet Union during the Cold War and more with the United States after the end thereof.
Data
Before introducing the UN General Assembly voting data, we may look at the actual process of making decisions about voting in the UN General Assembly. When describing this process, I will rely on a series of interviews with senior diplomats representing the Visegrád countries at the United Nations in New York, interviewed in autumn 2012.
The process of decision making is very variegated but almost all of the diplomats agreed that the level at which decisions are made differs with the importance of the issue at hand. Not all issues are of the same importance—some receive high attention whereas others almost none and what issues are of importance varies across the Visegrád countries and across time. For example, issues related to reproductive health are given great attention in Poland and Hungary because of domestic politics. On the other hand, some issues are perceived as so unimportant that they are dealt with minimally. As one of the diplomats noted, “on the Cuba Embargo vote [annually recurring vote calling the United States to stop its embargo of Cuba], I don’t even think we send [the proposal of vote] to the Headquarters for approval.” 24 Usually, however, the decisions are taken after rounds of discussions among the EU member states, after the exchange of reports and memos with the Headquarters. At the Headquarters, the decision about votes is taken at the level of the director general (or equivalent), except for priority areas, where ministers (and even prime ministers) are involved. The vote to accord to Palestine a non-member observer state status in the United Nations 25 serves as an example of such votes.
Last but not least, there is no formal coordination procedure among the Visegrád countries within the United Nations, apart from the bigger EU coordination. Whereas informal meetings exist (as one diplomat put it, “we exchange views over a lunch or so” 26 ), there is no formal cooperation, compared to the lively cooperation among Scandinavian countries.
The UN General Assembly votes have been retrieved from the “United Nations General Assembly Voting Data” database. 27 Authors of the data set provide not only information about the actual country votes but also provide detailed information about each vote—its number, date, topic, and the result of the vote. Each vote is also coded for six categories which occur most often within the UN General Assembly voting: Palestinian conflict, nuclear weapons and nuclear material, arms control and disarmament, colonialism, human rights, and (economic) development. The two databases (country votes and vote descriptions) are provided separately but are easy to tabulate.
All in all, the database contains information about 5,144 votes, out of which 997 related to the Palestinian conflict, 674 to the nuclear issues, 802 to disarmament, 840 to human rights issues, 941 to colonialism, and 444 to economic development.
For the purposes of this article, I calculated agreement scores between each of the Visegrád countries and the Soviet Union (Russia), and the United States. These were computed as session-averages of vote agreements. Each vote agreement was counted as 1, disagreement as 0, and abstentions as 0.5. If any of the countries was absent, the vote was not counted (classified as “missing”). Total score per dyad per session 28 was divided by the number of votes, with the exclusion of special sessions. 29 The score thus ranges from 0 (all votes different) to 1 (all votes identical). 30 Same scores were computed for each of the six categories provided by Voeten and Strezhnev. To make understanding of the meaning of the scores easier, I transformed the sessions back into years—each session was coded by the year, in the autumn of which it started (with the first session taking place in 1946). The unit of analysis is therefore a dyad session, where dyads are formed from Visegrád countries on the one hand and the Soviet Union (Russia) or the United States on the other.
For a quick description of the data, see Table 1. In this table, we may observe summary statistics for individual countries, divided for the Cold War and post–Cold War period. Note that as Hungary became a member of the United Nations only in 1955, this is the first year for which values are recorded. Similarly, in the post–Cold War period, values for Czechoslovakia are recorded only until 1992; from 1993 onwards, values are recorded separately for Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
Voting affinity (descriptive statistics)
Note: Dyadic session-averaged agreement scores of UN General Assembly votes. Scale from 0 to 1, where 0 means no agreement and 1 absolute agreement.
No Major Shifts
To analyze the changes which came with the end of the Cold War, I embark on analyzing each of the V4 countries separately, scrutinizing its voting with the United States and the Soviet Union (Russia) and comparing these.
For each of the countries, I provide a simple graph plotting votes with the Soviet Union (Russia) against votes with the United States for all years. Each element demarcates one year, squares during the Cold War, and circles after the end of the Cold War. In the middle of each graph, there is a dashed line equivalent to the x = y line. If a marker lies above the line, the country voted more similarly to the Soviet Union (Russia) than to the United States in given year. If a marker lies below the line, the country voted more similarly to the United States.
Czechoslovakia
In Figure 1, we can observe that every year, Czechoslovakia voted more with the Soviet Union than with the United States. This is not unusual if we take into account that almost all the recorded years were during the Cold War.
Voting affinity during the Cold War and Thereafter
To see whether the agreement score of votes with the Soviet Union was systematically higher than that of votes with the United States, I conducted a simple paired samples t-test (results of all statistical tests can be found in Appendix A). The result was unsurprising—the agreement score with the Soviet Union was statistically significantly higher, 31 with a mean difference (MUS – MRus) of −0.64. Same results are achieved when we look at the agreement scores in six individual subcategories: in each of them, Czechoslovakia had higher agreement score with the Soviet Union than with the United States, and this result was statistically significant. 32
Czech Republic
Figure 1 depicts voting of the Czech Republic with Russia and the United States since 1993. Compared to the plot for Czechoslovakia, we observe a marked shift and higher agreement scores of voting with the United States, but the country is nevertheless still more in agreement with Russia in its voting in the UN General Assembly.
In this case too, I computed a paired samples t-test. The test again shows that agreement scores with Russia are statistically significantly different from those with the United States, 33 though the mean difference is much smaller compared to the Czechoslovakian case (MUS – MRus = −0.24). We may observe a similar change when comparing subgraphs in Figure 1 visually. However, agreement scores with Russia were higher than those with the United States for all subcategories, except for human rights. In this subcategory, Czech Republic’s voting record was more similar to the United States than to Russia, though the mean difference of about one-tenth of a point signifies that the actual difference was not too high. 34
Slovakia
Figure 1 provides a graphical description of Slovakia’s vote in the UN General Assembly. As was the case with the Czech Republic, we may observe that in all years, Slovakia’s voting record in the UN General Assembly was more in agreement with Russia than with the United States.
The difference between votes is also statistically significant, 35 with the mean difference similar to Czech Republic (MUS – MRus = −0.26) but much lower than in the case of Czechoslovakia. Comparably to Czech Republic, in all subcategories but human rights, the agreement scores with Russia were statistically significantly different compared to those with the United States. In case of human rights, the difference between agreement scores was not statistically significant. 36
Poland
Poland provides an interesting case, providing a possibility to compare voting during and after the end of the Cold War. As we can observe in Figure 1, the voting after the end of the Cold War shifts markedly. The agreement scores with the Soviet Union (Russia) decrease (signified by the general tendency to move downwards for post–Cold War votes), whereas the agreement scores with the United States increase (demonstrated by a general tendency to move rightwards). 37
Analyzing the mean differences using paired samples t-test, we find that, similarly to Czechoslovakia, agreement scores with the Soviet Union were statistically significantly higher compared to those with the United States, 38 with a mean difference also similar to Czechoslovakia (MUS – MRus = −0.64). In all subcategories, the outcome of the test is almost identical, signifying that Poland’s UN General Assembly votes were statistically significantly more similar to those of the Soviet Union than those of the United States. This is, however, not surprising, if we take into account that we are talking about the Cold War era.
However, even in the post–Cold War era, the Poland’s voting in the UN General Assembly was much more similar to that of Russia, compared to that of the United States. We may see that already in Figure 1 and a statistical test only corroborates the evidence. The agreement score with Russia is statistically significantly different from that with the United States, 39 with the mean difference comparable to that of post–Cold War Czech Republic and Slovakia (MUS – MRus = −0.25). As was the case with Czech Republic and Slovakia, the agreement scores in all but one subcategory were statistically significantly different, and the agreement score was higher with Russia than with the United States. The only category where this was not the case was human rights, where the mean difference was rather small, though statistically significant (at the 10% level). 40
Hungary
As was the case with the other two Visegrád countries during the Cold War, Hungary’s voting record was much more similar to the Soviet Union than to the United States, as can be seen in Figure 1. After the end of the Cold War, Hungary (similarly to Poland) started to be more in disagreement with Russia and more in agreement with the United States. 41
During the Cold War era, Hungary’s voting was statistically significantly more in agreement with the Soviet Union compared to the United States, 42 with the mean difference comparable to other Visegrád countries (MUS – MRus = −0.65). As was the case with the other countries too, an almost identical situation applies to the individual subcategories.
After the end of the Cold War, Hungary continued voting more in agreement with Russia than with the United States, as is the case with the other Visegrád countries too. However, the mean difference was smaller, meaning smaller differences between the agreement scores. 43 Again, comparably to other Visegrád countries, the voting in all subcategories but human rights was more similar to that of Russia than to that of United States. The difference in agreement scores in human rights–related votes with Russia and the United States was statistically significant only at the 10% level. 44
Already from this quick description, we may observe that the Visegrád countries tend to vote very similarly (in fact, almost identically) in the UN General Assembly. The general tendencies of Visegrád countries’ votes are almost uniform. We can see that in Figure 2, the trend of votes with the United States and Russia are plotted over time. The trends are clear and manifest and we can also very clearly observe the Cold War and post–Cold War period trends.
Voting affinity over time.
First of all, we may observe that immediately at the end of the Cold War, the voting agreement with the Soviet Union (Russia) decreases, but does not drop completely. The agreement during the Cold War has been almost absolute. Indeed, in most years the agreement with the Soviet Union has been almost absolute (median and mode during the Cold War are almost 1, meaning absolute agreement; cf. Table 1). Whereas after the end of the Cold War the voting agreement with Russia decreases, it does not decrease below the agreement score of 0.7. There are virtually no noticeable country deviations among the Visegrád countries.
When it comes to the voting with the United States, the picture is much more variegated. There are noticeable periods where the agreement has been higher—the first one in 1952–1955 (1957), the second one in 1971–1978, and the third one in 1990–1997 (2000). The first period is roughly the period of destalinization in the Soviet Union (associated with some relaxation of the Cold War tensions), 45 the second roughly corresponds to the period of détente, 46 whereas the third one is the first phase of the post–Cold War era ended by the acceptance of Visegrád countries to NATO in 1999 (except for Slovakia, which became member only in 2004). Again, we may observe that the individual country patterns of the Visegrád countries do not differ too much.
From Figure 2, we can see that the lines of agreement scores with the Soviet Union (Russia) and the United States never intersect. The same information can be derived from Table 1—minimum agreement scores with Russia are always higher than the maximum agreement scores with the United States. This means that regardless of the period, Visegrád countries voted always more in agreement with the Soviet Union (Russia) than with the United States. A more straightforward exhibition of the same phenomenon can be found in Figure 1: whereas after the end of the Cold War states clearly move towards more agreement with the United States (and simultaneously disagreement with Russia), they still end up agreeing more with Russia than with the United States in all years. The same is true also for the six subcategories of the vote, except for the human rights. In that case, the Visegrád countries tend to vote more with the United States in the post–Cold War period. This finding corresponds to other findings, which suggest that democracies tend to vote on human rights more in line with other democracies. 47
Another interesting phenomenon is that apparently, domestic political arrangements matter very little for the formulation of geopolitical preferences. Although government ideology in Visegrád countries changed significantly, there seems to be very little effect on how the geopolitical interests of these countries were exhibited on the international scene. In spite of the sizeable structural pressures (such as power position, trade interests, etc.), governments maintain sizeable discretion over how to respond to these. Governments may endorse or reproduce, or otherwise respond to them. Governments may use this discretion “to shape their countries’ policy according to their political beliefs and ideology.” 48 As Rathbun and Schuster and Maier have demonstrated, government ideology can also explain variance in foreign and security policies, arguing that the left-wing governments value non-military conflict management much higher than right-wing governments. 49 This clearly is not the case in Visegrád countries, because as we see, the countries move simultaneously regardless of the domestic government composition. If this was not the case, we would observe more of the individual country deviations corresponding to ideological changes in government compositions. Similarly, we see that even emergence of a strong leaders with leaning towards Russia (such as Vladimír Mečiar in Slovakia in 1990s) does not change the vote of the country in the UN General Assembly compared to other Visegrád countries. As one of the diplomats remarked, “government changes don’t matter too much,” 50 save for rare occasions when some issues become more important. This observation lends some credence to the argument made by other observers who argued that the policy elites in the Visegrád region are like-minded (and U.S.-leaning). 51 Certainly at least when it comes to the UN General Assembly voting, the elites are like-minded, though not as much U.S.-leaning.
Different from the Rest of Europeans?
An important issue to consider is whether such voting behavior sets apart the Visegrád countries from the other EU members. We may think about this in terms of three possible mechanisms which could be at play when deciding about the votes in the UN General Assembly:
Intra-EU policy cooperation and consultation in the United Nations. EU member states consult and coordinate policies and positions in the UN related to a number of issues. 52 We may thus expect that Visegrád countries, in the process of EU accession and later membership, adopt (or approximate) their policy positions in the UN General Assembly. The same result would be achieved by the process of socialization, but there the coordinating mechanism would not be external but internal. 53 Both processes would lead to uniformity of votes; the Visegrád countries would not be too different from the rest of the EU. Below I propose a simple way of differentiating between the policy coordination and wider socialization, although it is arguably difficult to analytically differentiate the two completely (there would be no coordination without social acceptability of coordination mechanism).
“New Europe”phenomenon. As mentioned above, the Visegrád countries were often dubbed as being part of the “New Europe,” meaning that they would be more pro-U.S. oriented compared with the rest of the EU. In such a case, Visegrád countries would be different from the rest of the EU, meaning being more pro-U.S. inclined than the rest of the EU members
Transformation of the geopolitical balance. The end of the Cold War brought about an era in which the United States was the only superpower. As has been observed by other scholars, such an effect led to the outcome of not being the only but also “lonely superpower.” 54 Other countries were softly shifting their policies against it, balancing (in terms of the realist IR theory) without necessarily shifting their alliance portfolios. Such “soft balancing” 55 was also present in the UN General Assembly, where the United States was also becoming isolated on various issues of global affairs. 56
To see how the Visegrád countries compare to the rest of the EU, in Figure 3 I plot the country agreement scores with Russia and the United States against each other and see how the voting affinity shifted over time. In a very simple graph, I compare how current EU members (I take into account all 27 states, without giving attention to their EU accession years) voted with the United States and the Soviet Union (Russia) over the course of the UN General Assembly history. 57 The dashed line in the middle is again the y = x line; markers above symbolize years when the state voted more in agreement with the Soviet Union (Russia), and markers below years when the state voted more in agreement with the United States. The black squares mark the Visegrád countries; the gray circles symbolize all other EU members.
Voting affinity with the US and Russia (Visegrád and other EU members).
The graph is telling, because it shows how much the voting pattern shifted compared to the Cold War and also, how much more homogenous the EU members became. Except for a few deviations, all of them vote more in agreement with Russia compared to the United States, and Visegrád countries do not stand out in any special way from the general pattern of EU members. 58
Although this article does not purport to analyze the voting patterns of all EU members in general and in all aspects, 59 it is interesting to note that we cannot observe much differentiation between the “old” and “new” Europe. The EU members tend to vote in one block and the differences between them are fairly minor. In fact, the Visegrád countries are not statistically significantly different from the other EU members throughout the post–Cold War period. 60
To differentiate between the external and internal coordination mechanisms (formal coordination negotiations and socialization), I compare the agreement scores of the Visegrád countries with three major EU and three major non-EU Western powers—France, Germany, and the United Kingdom on one hand and Australia, New Zealand, and Canada on the other. In a process identical to the one described above, I calculated session-based voting agreement scores between the four Visegrád countries and the six Western powers.
In Figure 4, I plot these scores across time. Again, we observe almost no differentiation between the Visegrád countries, as was the case with the voting agreement scores with Russia and the United States. At the same time, we see also little differentiation between the Western powers in terms of the agreement scores. There is no major difference in voting agreement scores with different Western countries. 61 This outcome would give, implicitly, more credence to the thesis that the increased voting agreement with the rest of the EU members after the end of the Cold War is due to the socialization, for there is no difference between the EU and non-EU Western powers. Yet, as I mentioned before, making a clear-cut analytical distinction between coordination and socialization is difficult. Social acceptability of coordination is conditioned by socialization and which then in turn reflects in relative unwillingness to break coordinated solutions (as one of the diplomats described it, breaking consensus “brings a stigma” 62 ). Furthermore, even the diplomats of the Visegrád countries agree that they discuss constantly with their partners beyond.
Voting affinity of Visegrád with selected Western countries.
We may thus conclude that the voting pattern in the UN General Assembly makes Visegrád countries more likely to vote with Russia than with the United States. However, in the post–Cold War period, this pattern is not different from the other EU members’. In relation to the three possible mechanisms outlined earlier, we observe that:
Policy coordination (whether external or internal) is in place, exemplified by the fact that the EU members vote in block. Very few outliers are present and even these are not systematic but rather on yearly basis. Visegrád countries’ voting record is similar compared to both European and non-European Western states.
New Europe phenomenon does not occur. Visegrád countries do not substantively differ from their European parties.
Clearly, we observe a shift from the vote with the United States since the end of the Cold War. We can observe it by visually inspecting Figure 3, but a simple independent sample t-test comparing Cold War and post–Cold War voting scores reveals the same result. 63 At the same time, we can observe a move towards more vote agreement with Russia. This result corroborates the earlier findings that in the post–Cold War era, the United States has been facing resistance even from its old allies—even the EU members are likely to vote more in agreement with Russia than with the United States. This finding is, however, at odds with the existing literature which suggests that rich and democratic countries tend to vote together in the UN General Assembly 64 and thus merits attention (and scrutiny) in the further research.
Conclusion
In this article, I set out to analyze the voting patterns of the Visegrád countries in the UN General Assembly, ever since their entry into the organization. Focus on the Visegrád countries is justifiable given their mutual institutionalized cooperation and recent focus on foreign and security cooperation. In addition, they provide an interesting case which allows analyzing how the Cold War affected the formulation of geopolitical preferences and how this changed after the end of the Cold War. Given that the UN General Assembly addresses many issues of global importance in its work, national state positions may be understood as expressions of state preferences on a number of important global issues.
In general, one may conclude that Visegrád countries have always voted in the UN General Assembly more in agreement with the Soviet Union (Russia) than with the United States, since the inception of the United Nations until today. The extent of the vote agreement has diminished since the end of the Cold War, but has not disappeared completely. Simultaneously, Visegrád countries’ votes became more in agreement with the United States. However, at no point did any of the Visegrád countries vote more similarly with the United States than with Russia. The same is the case in six possible subfields: Palestinian conflict, nuclear weapons and nuclear material, arms control and disarmament, colonialism, human rights, and (economic) development. During the Cold War, Visegrád countries voted in each of these more with the Soviet Union, and the trend continued after the end of the Cold War too, except for the subfield of human rights. However, in case of human rights, the difference is either weakly or not at all statistically significant. Interestingly enough, this article also shows that the Visegrád countries voted almost always in unison, meaning that various domestic ideological post–Cold War shifts left little footprint on states’ UN General Assembly voting pattern.
Wider comparison with the other EU members reveals that whereas during the Cold War Visegrád countries were clearly distinct (along with the other countries of the Eastern block) from the multitude of the European countries, once the Cold War was over, Visegrád countries behaved just like the other European countries and this behavior was similar to that of other non-European Western powers. This, however, hints towards a wider geopolitical trend of balancing against the United States, as countries come to vote increasingly less with the “lonely superpower.”
As such, the article casts a shadow over two myths surrounding the Visegrád states. The first one is that they stay apart from the other European allies of the United States as more reliable. While this may be true in the battlefield, in the global political arena, the Visegrád countries stand together with the rest of Europe, and they stand quite often opposed to the United States. Second, it shows a marvelous similarity among the EU members, regardless of the domestic political shifts. It thus shows that geopolitical preferences of Visegrád countries are more deeply ingrained—where domestic ideological battles rarely encroach.
Footnotes
Appendix
Statistical analysis (Visegrád towards other Western countries)
| Poland | Hungary | Czechoslovakia | Czech Republic a | Slovakia a | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Post–Cold War b | 0.37*** | 0.34*** | 0.44*** | ||
| (0.04) | (0.04) | (0.03) | |||
| Western Countries c | |||||
| Canada | −0.02 | −0.02 | −0.01 | 0.02 | 0.02 |
| (0.04) | (0.04) | (0.04) | (0.04) | (0.04) | |
| France | −0.01 | −0.03 | −0.01 | 0.01 | 0.02 |
| (0.04) | (0.04) | (0.04) | (0.04) | (0.04) | |
| Germany | 0.08* | 0.05 | 0.08 | 0.07 | 0.07 |
| (0.04) | (0.04) | (0.04) | (0.04) | (0.04) | |
| New Zealand | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.03 | 0.03 |
| (0.04) | (0.05) | (0.04) | (0.04) | (0.04) | |
| United Kingdom | −0.07 | −0.08 | −0.07 | 0.00 | −0.01 |
| (0.04) | (0.04) | (0.04) | (0.04) | (0.04) | |
| Interactions d | |||||
| Post–Cold War × Canada | 0.03 | 0.04 | 0.04 | ||
| (0.05) | (0.05) | (0.04) | |||
| Post–Cold War × France | 0.02 | 0.04 | −0.04 | ||
| (0.05) | (0.05) | (0.05) | |||
| Post–Cold War × Germany | −0.02 | 0.02 | −0.06 | ||
| (0.05) | (0.06) | (0.05) | |||
| Post–Cold War × New Zealand | 0.01 | 0.01 | −0.03 | ||
| (0.05) | (0.05) | (0.04) | |||
| Post–Cold War × United Kingdom | 0.06 | 0.07 | −0.02 | ||
| (0.05) | (0.05) | (0.05) | |||
| Constant | 0.48*** | 0.51*** | 0.48*** | 0.84*** | 0.84*** |
| 0.03 | 0.03 | 0.03 | 0.03 | 0.03 | |
| N | 369 | 324 | 255 | 114 | 114 |
Note: Values in parentheses are robust standard errors.
As these two countries exist only after the end of the Cold War, no effect of post–Cold War era could be estimated.
Cold War as a reference (scores denote difference from the scores during the Cold War).
Australia as a reference (scores denote difference from the agreement score with Australia).
Interactions should be interpreted as an additional difference taking into account the existing effect during the (post–)Cold War era and individual country.
p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
Acknowledgements
Author wishes to thank Dagmar Zakopalová and the EEPS reviewer for their helpful comments on the earlier version of this article. All mistakes remain my own.