Your silence speaks volumes: Weak states and strategic absence in the UN General Assembly

Abstract

Country participation in one-state, one-vote forums like the United Nations General Assembly often reflects underlying power asymmetries and endogenous political processes. Voting alignment is undoubtedly an important preference indicator. However, this paper contends that it is incomplete; silence is politically significant as well. Weak states use absence as a form of institutional power that shields them from geopolitical pressure and competing-principals problems. While abstention is a public signal of neutrality that undercuts voting unanimity, the ambiguous intent of absence makes it a distinct form of political expression. We examine the politics of absences at the General Assembly, highlighting how states may be strategically absent from select votes for political reasons. Building on the Bailey et al. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 61(2), 430–456, 2017 roll-call voting data, we distinguish strategic absences from other types of absence and provide evidence that such behavior is linked to US interests and competing-principals problems. Taking these non-random reasons for missingness into account provides a fuller picture of how weak states engage with international institutions and highlights how silence can be a consequence of larger political processes.

1 Introduction

On 23 February 2023, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted on a resolution condemning the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.¹ Russia’s 2014 stealth takeover of Crimea, followed by a full-scale invasion of its neighbor, was clearly a violation of international law. Over the last decade, the UNGA had adopted several resolutions condemning Russia’s actions. Yet despite legal clarity, continued destruction, and sustained international attention, the results of the vote were mixed: 141 in favor, 7 against, and 32 abstaining.² Four months earlier, on October 12, the UNGA had voted on a similar text with nearly identical voting margins: 142 in favor, 5 against, and 35 abstaining. Even more surprising was that 45 countries, and in fact, the very same states, were absent for both votes, with the exception of Venezuela whose vote was revoked.

Why would so many countries miss such an important vote? And why would they miss it twice? International relations (IR) scholars typically treat absences as largely inconsequential, reflecting a lack of capacity or idiosyncratic factors. Yet in the General Assembly, absences often have political origins. One country may fail to vote because it is disenfranchised when it fails to pay its dues, as occurred with Venezuela in 2023. Another may not send a delegation due to internal politics at home. Still another may strategically skip out on a controversial or politically fraught resolution in order to balance competing interests.

This latter scenario sheds light on the situation that materially weaker countries face when the UNGA broaches sensitive subjects. Even prior to the recent war, Russia and the United States viewed UNGA resolutions related to Ukraine as arguably the most important business for the General Assembly. In 2019, for example, Russia urged countries to vote “no” on a resolution condemning its Crimea occupation, calling the resolution a “bare-faced lie”.³

Meanwhile, the United States, a staunch supporter of Ukraine, advocated for the resolution and considered it to be one of the most important UNGA votes of the year. With abstentions guaranteed to disappoint at least one side, countries like Afghanistan, Costa Rica, Jordan, Morocco, and Tajikistan all chose to be absent, perhaps calculating that skipping out was the optimal way to avoid political or financial repercussions.

We argue that strategic absence is a tool that allows weaker states to counteract geopolitical pressure. A rich literature explores the pathways by which powerful countries exert control over international organizations.⁴ Yet when powerful countries seek to influence weaker states, they often hold preferences that conflict with other states or coalitions. For countries with relatively little influence or power, such competing-principals problems can pose significant challenges. Yield to one side and risk straining ties with another. Align with other weak states against the strong, and the powerful may withdraw aid or support.

Strategic absence can be an optimal way for a country to mitigate pressure and avoid negative blowback. Unlike an “abstain” vote, where a country publicly states its neutrality and signals a partial lack of support for a resolution, skipping out leverages institutional rules to minimize political consequences. An absence is quiet, a form of political expression that media coverage typically ignores. For example, in its coverage of a 2022 UNGA resolution on the Ukraine war, the UK’s Evening Standard details “no” votes and abstentions but includes no information on absences.⁵ The quiet nature of strategic absence means it is a tactic more available to materially weaker and smaller states.⁶ Powerful countries have less plausible deniability. For example, when Israel skipped a vote on Crimea in 2014, claiming its absence was due to a strike at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, US government officials rejected the excuse and responded with anger.⁷

Conceptualizing some absences as strategic is important for both theoretical and empirical reasons. Weak state absences are not always exogenous or capacity-driven, but rather may be shrewd attempts to navigate difficult political situations. Institutional engagement is often understood through the Hirschman (1970) canonical exit-voice-loyalty framework, where a dissatisfied state may exit an IO, advocate for change, or remain loyal. But what if the country is weak and the dissatisfaction is not with the IO itself but with how the IO mediates political pressure? Absence is a form of institutional disengagement that seeks not to challenge the status quo, but rather to preserve it without incurring political consequences.

The concept of strategic absence also sheds light on how abstentions function within the General Assembly. Whereas an abstention is formally a public signal of neutrality, in practice it may also be interpreted as signaling a lack of support for a resolution. Because nearly a quarter of all UN resolutions are adopted unanimously, every abstention constitutes a public signal moving away from this “baseline unanimity.” Absences, in contrast, occur without leaving a mark. They reduce the total number of member states voting on a particular resolution but are almost never reported and so have little effect on legitimacy. Our research provides evidence that these two types of voting behavior are not perfect substitutes for each other but are distinct approaches to political situations with different effects on outcomes.

Given such dynamics, we argue that empirical analyses relying on UNGA voting records should integrate strategic absences into measures of state preferences (Gartzke, 1998; Signorino & Ritter, 1999) or views of the US-led liberal order (Bailey et al., 2017). While methodologists remain divided over the nature and extent of biases attributable to “missing data” (Graham, 2009; Lall, 2016; von Hipple, 2020), our strategic absence argument suggests only using UNGA official votes may generate inaccurate inferences. We thus build on existing work that documents how data collection efforts may lead to biased measurements for weak states.⁸

We probe these arguments through an examination of UNGA roll-call voting between 1990 and 2021.⁹ We conceptualize strategic absences as occurring when a country skips out on voting on the same day that it is present for other UNGA votes. This measure allows us to home in on the absences most likely to be strategic rather than absences more likely related to capacity constraints, which have been well-covered by scholars including Diana Panke. To better account for alternative explanations likely to affect a country’s participation pattern, we also incorporate new data on countries that are eligible for voting bans at the UN during this period. Under Article 19 of the UN Charter, the UN Committee on Contributions can recommend banning countries from voting if they fail to pay the equivalent of two years of dues. More than 60 countries have been subject to partial or year-long UN voting bans since 1990.

Our analysis suggests that geopolitical ties to the United States and competing-principles situations help explain strategic absences in the UN General Assembly. We find that while US allies are less likely to be strategically absent on votes that the US deems important, non-US allies are more likely to skip such votes. This difference in attendance is particularly pronounced among low-capacity countries. Non-US allies may thus use absence as a way of appeasing the United States and avoiding the political costs of casting a vote. Additional qualitative evidence supports this argument. The United States Department of State chronicles voting coincidence at the General Assembly and reports annually to Congress, holding other governments “accountable” for their votes. However, the State Department did not incorporate data on absences into these reports until very recently. By skipping voting, states could shift their reported coincidence and limit political consequences from acting contrary to US interests.

Subsequent empirical tests shed light on how strategic absences may be linked to US voting interests but also differ from abstentions. When UN member states face competing-principals situations where the US and Russia oppose each other on a resolution, countries are significantly more likely to opt for strategic absence if the US is voting yes against Russia and significantly less likely when the US is voting no against Russia. This finding supports the idea that the US may encourage countries to be absent when it supports a resolution, as abstentions will chip away at a resolution’s legitimacy. Running the same analyses with abstention shows no significant relationship between how the US votes against Russia and the probability of abstention.

Our findings shed light on a key way that states manage geopolitical pressures in IOs. Institutional rules and procedures structure power and influence, serving as channels that guide and constrain the actions of other states (Barnett & Duvall, 2005). In the introduction to this special issue, the authors note that strong states often structure rules to their advantage, but even with such imbalances, weaker states are often better off working within an IO than operating outside of it (Snidal et. al., 2024). Weaker states can advocate for the creation of new, “linked” international organizations that better reflect their preferences (Lugg, 2024), support rules that constrain powerful countries (Beall, 2024), or exploit incomplete contracts to assert control over how an IO carries out policy (Campbell & Matanock, 2024).

IOs provide unique opportunities for weaker states to influence international politics. Powerful states may build institutions that serve their interests, but weak states have institutional strategies that allow them to manage geopolitical pressures. Governments can weigh in on highly salient issues and allow their votes to be “bought” on issues that matter relatively little.¹⁰ Alternatively, when weak states face competing pressures and anticipate high costs and few rewards, their best option may be to choose silence.

2 The power of absence

How should we interpret a state’s absence from an IO? At a conceptual level, theorizing about absences is challenging because the category is broad and all-encompassing. Some absences are clearly exogenous, the result of traffic, a missed train, or a scheduling conflict. Yet outside of unanticipated events, absences may also provide insight into an actor’s motivations and constraints. Absence can signal a lack of capacity or skills. It may be a sign of broader institutional repression. Or absence may be a strategic tactic to avoid paying political costs. When a state intentionally skips out on a vote or meeting for political reasons, we term this behavior “strategic absence.”

Strategic absences are not simply abstentions. In an IO that allows countries to vote “abstain,” abstentions are public declarations of neutrality. They go into the official record and as a result, media coverage of an IO’s action typically discusses the number (and sometimes the identities) of countries that abstain. Abstention may thus become a potent international or domestic signal, one that engenders attention and discourse. When the The Washington Post covered the UNGA’s February 2023 vote on a resolution calling for a Ukraine-Russia peace agreement, its headline read “U.N. resolution to end Ukraine war: How countries voted and who abstained.”¹¹ The Post listed all 32 countries that abstained, drawing extra attention to abstentions by India and China. India’s actions also made headlines domestically, with The Times of India noting that India has abstained on more than a dozen UN actions related to Ukraine.¹²

In contrast to abstention, strategic absences fly under the radar. They require no statements or explanations of vote, and thus shield the state from some of the political consequences associated with being publicly neutral. For a coalition that supports an IO’s action, this quiet form of neutrality may be preferable to public abstention because it has no impact on the perceived legitimacy of a proposal: whereas abstentions are reported, and suggestive of a lack of enthusiasm among abstainers, absences are rarely discussed in media coverage of IO actions.

We expect that strategic absence will be a particularly attractive strategy for countries with relatively few material or ideological resources. States that face capacity constraints are more likely to focus their resources on a small number of priority issues (Panke, 2013). We consider such states to be “weak”, in the sense that they often lack the staff, knowledge, or financial resources to keep abreast of the full UNGA agenda and thus must rely on other states for policy guidance on some issues. For weak states, choosing to be absent can be a covert form of institutional power (Barnett & Duvall, 2005), a category of solutions highlighted across this special issue (Snidal et al., 2024). By leveraging a gap in institutional rules, weaker states can mitigate competing political pressures or avoid blowback from public declarations of neutrality. In rare cases, weak states may also coordinate their strategic absences with more influential countries and boycott a vote in order to deny a proposal legitimacy. This latter situation is an example of productive power. We discuss both points below, although our empirical tests focus exclusively on absence as a form of institutional power in order to highlight a common strategy more particular to the substance of this special issue.

2.1 Institutional power

When a country opts out of a plenary session or vote in order to minimize political blowback, we conceptualize this action as a defensive strategy designed to preserve institutional power. Barnett and Duvall suggest institutional power arises through formal and informal rules and procedures that shape state relationships. While Beall (2024) describes the importance of formal rules for constraining exercises of power, we highlight instead how rule gaps can provide pathways for weak states to shield against political pressure. When states design IOs, they are unlikely to build in procedures to account for absences. The General Assembly, for example, allows states to vote “abstain” but does not require any explanation for absence. The UN’s own press coverage of resolutions contains information about vote tallies and abstentions but rarely mentions non-voting countries. Strategic absence is thus a strategy that builds on rule gaps.

While IO scholars typically think about institutional power in terms of influence over outcomes, strategic absence is more often a defensive tactic. Rather than seeking to control others, strategic absence is a way of shielding against other states. For states that lack significant institutional or material power, this tactic can be a lifeline when navigating high-cost, low-payoff situations.

For weak states, strategically focusing on a subset of resolutions to the exclusion of everything else may be the best tactic to achieve their goals. Lobbying and winning supporters for an agenda item requires significant resources. A lack of expertise can affect concessions during negotiations and produce less favorable outcomes (Busch & Reinhardt, 2003). Indeed, weak states participating in IOs face such significant capacity constraints and burdens that non-governmental organizations now exist to help provide additional support and assistance.¹³ Given that weak states have few resources to spend, they may prefer to disengage from many issues so as not to incur any of the political costs that come from taking a stand or picking a side.

Strategic absence may be particularly appealing for weak states facing conflicting interests or political pressure. Research on absences and legislative voting finds that legislators are more likely to skip votes when they face a “competing principals” problem, where any decisive action will alienate a subset of parties (Rosas & Shomer, 2008; Rosas et al., 2015). In such cases, abstention or absence can be strategic ways for actors to navigate competing political forces (Brown & Goodliffe, 2017; Cohen & Noll, 1991; Fiorina, 1974; Muhlbock & Yordanova, 2017). While both strategies create ambiguity about a country’s policy position, strategic absence creates higher uncertainty about a state’s intent and views. Such ambiguity makes it easier for competing sides to save face. Examples of ambiguous absences abound in international politics, as states seek pathways to appease competing audiences. In the runup to the 2022 Beijing Olympics, for example, the United States pressured other countries to join its diplomatic boycott of the games, while China worked hard to ensure broad attendance. While some countries joined the US in this effort, others opted not to send representatives but claimed it was for Covid-related reasons.¹⁴

2.2 Productive power

Certain types of strategic absences may also be a way of exercising “productive power,” e.g. they are intended to influence social processes and systems of knowledge (Barnett & Duvall, 2005). A country may opt out of voting in order to register a protest or de-legitimize an endeavor. In 1950, for example, the Soviet Union boycotted the Security Council as a way of protesting that the Republic of China (rather than the People’s Republic of China) held a seat on the Council. Notably, the Soviet absence ended up having tangible consequences, as the Soviet delegation was absent from the Security Council vote authorizing military assistance to South Korea in July 1950.

In universal membership IOs with no vote weighting, a single state may find it more difficult to exercise productive power via strategic absence. When nearly 200 countries are casting votes, a single country’s absence is unlikely to send a strong signal about the legitimacy of a proposal. If a state wants to use its absence as a political symbol, it may instead seek out other states with similar preferences and try to de-legitimize an effort via a broader “opting out.” While weak states may participate in such efforts, powerful countries and middle-power states are more likely to be the initiators, as their absences carry greater symbolic weight.

The General Assembly’s efforts to weigh in on Antarctica in the early 1990s provide a clear example of productive power at work. For several years beginning in 1990, the General Assembly voted on resolutions that indirectly criticized the actions of the State Parties to the Antarctic Treaty.¹⁵ These resolutions were highly controversial and most parties to the Antarctic Treaty, including the United States, the Soviet Union, France, and Australia, chose not to attend the votes. Major powers were already engaged in contentious negotiations over the Arctic at the time of the General Assembly’s intervention, and they intentionally opted out of the vote. Indeed, the number of strategically absent states from these votes actually increased over time, culminating in 1992, when 58 countries skipped the Antarctica resolution but were present for votes immediately before and after the resolution. For this issue, strategic absence was also impactful because of the structural power of the missing countries: the Antarctic Treaty has only 54 state parties, and with nearly all of these countries absent, the vote carried significantly less weight.

3 The politics of absence in the General Assembly

Since the end of the Cold War, the UN’s resurgence in international politics has attracted significant attention from political scientists. Scholars have analyzed the political dynamics of UN Security Council decision making,¹⁶ and investigated how non-permanent Council membership affects prestige (Hurd, 2002), foreign aid (Kuziemko & Werker, 2006), economic growth (Bueno de Mesquita & Smith, 2010), IMF programs (Dreher et al., 2009b), and World Bank projects (Dreher et al., 2009a). Others have studied the UN by looking at the Secretariat, examining national control over bureaucratic appointments (Novosad & Werker, 2019), the pathologies of bureaucratic decision making (Barnett & Finnemore, 2004), and the processes that allow UN bureaucrats to insulate new IOs from state decision-making (Johnson, 2013, 2014). Research has highlighted the growing role of transnational actors like nongovernmental organizations and private corporations (Tallberg et al., 2013, 2014) and examined how UN decisions and institutional performance affect public opinion (Chapman & Reiter, 2004) and confidence in the UN (Dellmuth & Tallberg, 2015).

The General Assembly is the democratic cornerstone of the UN system: each UN member state is granted the right to vote on a wide range of topics and issues. Because of the UNGA’s vast mandate and near-universal membership, IR scholars use General Assembly roll-call voting as a proxy for state preference alignment. Since Gartzke (1998) first used this data in a study of democratic peace theory, more than 100 published articles have used UN votes to construct measures of foreign policy preferences.¹⁷ Analyses that rely on UN-based preference measures as independent variables have found that shared foreign policy interests affect the likelihood of interstate disputes (Gartzke, 1998; Oneal & Russett, 1999; Reed et al., 2008), troop contributions to UN peacekeeping operations (Ward & Dorussen, 2016), the content of international law (Koremenos, 2016), accession to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization (Davis & Wilf, 2017), and numerous other outcomes. Analyses that rely on UN voting data as a dependent variable have examined an equally diverse set of questions, including whether socialization through IOs makes member-state interests converge (Bearce & Bondanella, 2007), how state financial capacity affects UNGA voting positions (Brazys & Panke, 2017), and whether leadership and regime changes cause shifts in foreign policy interests (Dreher & Jensen, 2013). Many more studies have included UNGA-based preference measures as control variables in quantitative analyses.

We argue that strategic absences constitute another politically significant form of participation in UNGA. When countries intentionally skip votes, they leverage a gap in institutional rules, which do not require states to report how they would have voted or to account for their absences.¹⁸ Certain UN resolutions are likely to be politically contentious, leading to situations where delegations may prefer to “opt out” rather than cast votes or abstain. We develop several hypotheses about when we expect the context surrounding resolutions to be associated with strategic absence.

3.1 Hypothesis 1: Political cover

UNGA resolutions vary considerably in terms of political stakes. When geopolitical pressure is high, weaker states will have greater incentives to shield themselves from potential fallout via strategic absence. The United States in particular has a history of lobbying aggressively on certain priority issues. The US government may use aid to buy votes (Carter & Stone, 2015; Dreher et al., 2008; Woo & Chung, 2018), particularly if the topic is substantively important (Dreher & Jensen, 2013).¹⁹

Yet vote buying is not the only viable influence strategy. When the US lobbies other countries in the General Assembly, it is not looking to influence the voting outcome – nearly all important resolutions pass – but rather to “appear less isolated and to purchase legitimacy on key foreign policy issues” (Carter & Stone, 2015, 2). Indeed, in the post-Cold War environment, the United States has sought political cover from international organizations on numerous occasions, most notably to legitimize coercion (Thompson, 2006). If the US cannot convince a country to join its side, and if the country fears the political costs of abstaining, skipping voting may be an ideal option.

US government domestic policy may also have created incentives for countries to skip important votes. As noted earlier, the US State Department publishes an annual voting coincidence report that reports each country’s voting alignment with the United States. The report includes a coincidence measure focused exclusively on important votes. Until recently, absences were excluded from the reported coincidence measure; as a result, many countries received considerably higher voting coincidence ratings than they might have otherwise. In 2022, the State Department changed its methodology, noting “In many cases, members chose to be absent and have their participation registered as a non-vote rather than an abstention. Consequently, this report has changed its methodology to give non-votes a similar value to abstentions” (US Department of State 2022, 6).²⁰

We expect that strategic absence is a particularly appealing strategy for countries not allied with the United States when they are voting on a resolution important to the United States. Such delegations are likely to be seeking outlets for political cover to avoid straining ties with the US government. Countries not allied with the US are typically much smaller and weaker than US allies and may be more subject to political pressure on all sides. Such countries also have more freedom of maneuverability in UNGA, and therefore if they vote in alignment with the United States, they are likely to pay higher political costs for this action. In contrast, all UNGA members know when the US is lobbying aggressively on resolutions and therefore expect that US allies will vote with (or at least avoid contradicting) US preferences.²¹

• Hypothesis 1: Countries not allied with the United States are more likely to be strategically absent if a resolution is important to the United States.

3.2 Hypothesis 2: Competing principals

Absence may also afford political protection from a competing-principals problem. Unlike a vote of abstain, where a country officially declares its neutrality and potentially offends both sides, strategic absence leaves ambiguity about a country’s preferences. This ambiguity provides political cover. In an interview, one State Department official reported “I believe all the P5 quietly encourage [strategic absence] as a way for small countries to stay out of definitive voting columns when there are countervailing political forces. We generally count it as a ‘win’ when our advice is accepted.”²²

A competing principals problem could arise in the UN General Assembly for a number of reasons. A single powerful country could oppose a widely supported resolution, or developing countries could be aligned against developed countries. Former colonies may be aligned against colonial powers, nuclear weapons states may oppose non-nuclear weapons states, and great powers may oppose each other. Ideological opposition may even be quite narrow and specific: in a recent study of UNGA resolutions on the death penalty, for example, Pascoe and Bae (2021) describe how some states were deliberately absent from voting because they had close ties to both retentionist and abolitionist states and did not want to be seen as taking a position.

The most canonical competing principals situation is the renewal of Cold War rivalry: the United States versus Russia. Between 1990 and 2021, Russia and the United States voted against each other on 1188 resolutions: 49 percent of the total roll-call votes during this period. In the vast majority of these competing-principals situations, the US was voting against a resolution that Russia supported.

We expect that the United States is likely to be the most active lobbying force in such situations. The US government has the largest UN mission,²³ and is often isolated, which increases incentives for active lobbying. Carter and Stone (2015) highlight how the US government has different motivations in lobbying when it is voting “No” versus “Yes.” They find that when the United States is voting “no,” it is more likely to reward countries that vote in tandem with it, whereas when the US is voting “yes,” it is more likely to punish defectors. Such logic makes sense because additional “no” votes, or potentially even abstentions, are more valuable as they undercut the legitimacy of a proposal. Extending these insights into the realm of strategic absences, we expect that when the US is voting “yes” against Russia, there are strong incentives for countries to be strategically absent from votes, whereas when the US is voting no, countries should be less likely to be absent.

• Hypothesis 2a: When the US votes “yes” and Russia votes “no”, countries are more likely to be strategically absent from a vote.

• Hypothesis 2b: When the US votes “no” and Russia votes “yes,” countries are less likely to be strategically absent from a vote.

Competing principals situations may also arise when P5 countries are aligned against G-77 states. Some of the General Assembly’s most controversial resolutions have occurred under such circumstances. In December 1995, for example, General Assembly resolution 50/70a responded to recent nuclear tests by France and China by urging the cessation of all nuclear testing. While none of the P5 countries supported the resolution, France and China actively lobbied against it.²⁴ Not only did 44 countries end up abstaining, 22 countries were absent for the vote but present for other votes on the same day²⁵ – including 14 countries that were present for votes immediately before and immediately after the resolution. We probe the impact of a US-China competing principals situation as an additional robustness check (see Appendix, Tables 6 and 7).

4 Missing out on UNGA

The General Assembly’s core work occurs between late September and December each year. Over the course of a single UNGA session, delegates negotiate and debate resolutions on a wide range of topics – the 2019–2020 session included everything from a resolution condemning Russia’s annexation of Crimea to a measure creating an international day for universal access to information. The UNGA typically begins adopting resolutions in October, and about a quarter are adopted without a roll call vote (Hage & Hug, 2013). Most votes occur in December, with a smattering of other resolutions voted on throughout the rest of the year.

We begin by examining patterns of country absences between 1990 and 2021, drawing on the Bailey et al. (2017) UNGA roll-call voting data set (hereafter “BSV data”). This data records every instance of voting within the General Assembly according to the following rule: 1 - yes, 2 - abstain, 3 - no, 8 - absent, or 9 - not a member. We examine this data first in aggregate form, creating a single annual measure of the total number and percentage of absences in a given year.²⁶

Despite UNGA’s concentrated timeline, absences are common across sessions. While about a quarter of all countries have perfect attendance for roll-call votes in any given session, the majority of states miss at least one and sometimes a sizable percentage of votes. Figure 1 shows these patterns, revealing that every year, a portion of countries miss more than 50 percent of the UNGA votes. In our data set, 72 unique countries fall into this category, missing at least 50 percent or more of UNGA votes in at least one calendar year. In an organization with fewer than 200 member states, that is a substantial number.

Fig. 1

Missed UNGA roll-call votes across time—The stacked bar plot shows annual absence data aggregated by country across time. Countries with perfect attendance (light grey) missed no votes in a given year

Chronic absences are often linked to low state capacity. Because the UNGA session is highly concentrated, smaller countries have difficulty staffing missions with the manpower to attend simultaneous negotiations and meetings. Country missions to the UN vary significantly in size, with some states maintaining offices of four or five officials while others like P5 countries have staff approaching or surpassing 100 employees. Given such constraints, small states stand the best chance of being influential if they are selective, concentrating their efforts on a small number of important issues. This focus implies trade-offs, however, so smaller and weaker states may be more likely to be absent from UNGA votes (Panke, 2014).

Chronic absences may also be linked to institutional disenfranchisement. States with budgetary challenges can end up stripped of voting rights. Under Article 19 of the UN Charter, a country that is in arrears for the equivalent of two years’ dues can lose the right to vote in the General Assembly unless the state is granted an exemption. To better account for these absences, we collect new data on Article 19 status between 1990 and 2021. Our data come primarily from Committee on Contributions reports, supplemented with documents from the General Assembly. We code each country’s Article 19 status at the start of the calendar year, as well as whether the country subsequently paid its dues, or country requested and was granted an exemption. Between 1990 and 2021, more than 100 countries were eligible for Article 19 sanctions as of the start of the calendar year, and 62 countries faced partial or full voting bans at some point.²⁷ The majority of countries were eligible for more than a single year, with countries like the Central African Republic, Comoros, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, and Somalia spending nearly the entire post-Cold War period in arrears and eligible for sanctions.²⁸

Despite such long-term eligibility, Article 19 bans that affect UN voting vary significantly across time. Figure 2 shows the number of countries that were eligible for Article 19 sanctions during at least one UNGA vote in a given year, separated by whether they were banned from voting at some point (black, top of bar plot) or not banned (grey, bottom of bar plot). The number of eligible countries increased significantly throughout the 1990s but began to decline in the early 2000s after changes to the budgetary assessment process. The UN also increasingly granted exemptions to countries beginning in this period.

Fig. 2

Non-payment of dues and UNGA absences—The stacked bar plot shows the number of countries that were eligible for disenfranchisement based on non-payment of dues. Banned countries are those that lost voting rights at some point during the year

While chronic absences account for a large absolute number of missed UNGA votes, states most commonly miss only a handful of votes (less than 5 percent per session). Indeed, between 1990 and 2021, there were 965 instances where a country missed only a single vote in a given year. Countries with few annual absences may sometimes miss votes due to exogenous factors; however, many such occasions occur when a country misses a vote on the same day that it is present for other UNGA votes. This pattern suggests some absences may be strategic in origin.

4.1 Conceptualization of strategic absence

We conceptualize “strategic absences” as occurring when a country skips out on a vote due to the politics surrounding the resolution. As a proxy for when absences are strategic as opposed to random, we use data on the precise date of all UN General Assembly resolutions,²⁹ and code an absence as strategic when a country is absent for a vote on the same day that it is present for a vote on a separate resolution. Approximately 3 percent of country-resolution observations are coded as strategic absences.³⁰ Across the 2436 resolutions in our data set, the average number of strategic absences is 6.2, with a minimum value of 0 and a maximum value of 70.

Our primary coding of strategic absence has several strengths. Most UNGA votes take place over a handful of days in November and December, and therefore most strategic absences are likely to occur on days that countries are voting on a variety of resolutions. By isolating instances where a country skips out of a vote on a day that it also casts a vote, we increase the probability that we are identifying strategic behavior rather than simply capacity-related absences. While strategic absences may also occur on days where the UNGA holds a single vote (such as special sessions), it would be difficult to determine whether such absences were strategic or due to exogenous circumstances.

As a robustness check, we also include a narrower measure of strategic absence. For this variable, we code absences as strategic only if a country is present for a vote prior to its absence. Because we require a delegation to show up and vote before it can be strategically absent, this formulation automatically excludes instances where a country may simply be running late. Unfortunately, this measure also makes it impossible for a country to be strategically absent from the first vote of any day, which means the first resolution of each day automatically has 0 strategic absences. Across the full data set of 2436 resolutions, the average number of strategic absences with this narrow categorization is 4.3, with a minimum value of 0 and a maximum value of 70.

4.2 Patterns of strategic absences

The number of strategic absences per resolution varies significantly, as seen in Fig. 3, but shows no significant time trend. There are also three notable clusters of outliers, where more than 40 countries were strategically absent for several UN resolutions. The first cluster occurred in the early 1990s for resolutions related to the Antarctic Treaty. A second cluster of absences occurred in the early 2000s, culminating in 2003 when 57 countries missed a vote on the adoption of an International Atomic Energy Agency report. Finally, a more recent cluster includes two controversial resolutions related to Afghanistan (adopted in 2018 and 2020). These latter resolutions were departures from UNGA precedent – previously, the General Assembly had adopted similar Afghanistan resolutions unanimously without a vote– and the request for roll-call voting reflected Russia’s dissatisfaction with the draft text. For the 2018 resolution, 124 countries voted “yes”, 3 countries (Libya, Russia, and Zimbabwe) abstained, and the rest of the countries skipped voting entirely.

Fig. 3

Strategic absences per resolution across time - The scatterplot shows the number of countries strategically absent from each UNGA resolution between 1990 and 2020

Nearly all countries in the data set engage in a strategic absence at some point in time. For powerful countries, strategic absences are often the only votes that they miss. China, for example, missed only one vote per year between 2002 and 2007. In four of these years, China was absent on resolutions related to nuclear weapons and material, and disarmament. Indeed, in 2002 and 2003, China missed voting on nearly identical resolutions on the reduction of non-strategic nuclear weapons, despite being present to vote on other resolutions on the same days.³¹ These resolutions were clearly controversial for nuclear weapons states: in 2002, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States were the sole “no” votes (with Russia abstaining) and in 2003, all four nuclear powers voted against the resolution.

Although all states appear to use strategic absences to some degree, the tactic is significantly more common among weak states. Previous research indicates that UNGA absences often correlate with government capacity (Panke, 2010, 2013). Figure 4 examines this relationship, separating out US allies as such states may face different voting incentives. Nearly all countries have strategic absences, but the total number varies significantly across states. In general, countries not allied with the United States and lower capacity states are more likely to rely on this strategy in the General Assembly.

Fig. 4

Cumulative strategic absences and GDP per capita—The scatterplot shows the each country’s total number of strategic absences for 1990 to 2020, separated out by GDP per capita in 2020 and US alliance status

Strategic absences also vary depending on the content of the resolution. Drawing on the BSV coding of resolution content, we examine how the type of resolution correlates with strategic absences. Specifically, we compare each category’s proportion of resolutions in the upper quartile of strategic absences (eight or more).³² Figure 5 reveals that more than 20 percent of resolutions on human rights and more than 25 percent of resolutions relating to Israel and Palestine have eight or more strategic absences. Many resolutions that do not fall into a specific issue area also have a sizable number of strategic absences.³³ The differences across categories support the idea that strategic absences may correlate with the underlying political stakes of resolutions.

Fig. 5

Resolution content and strategic absences—The figure compares each category’s percentage of resolutions with eight or more strategic absences

5 Empirical approach

We assess our hypotheses through regression analyses examining how political and contextual variables correlate with strategic absences from UNGA between 1990 and 2021. Our primary data source is the BSV data on roll-call votes. This data records each country’s voting record and its absences, which we use to generate our dependent variable of interest. We supplement the BSV data with additional control variables and our new data on a country’s Article 19 eligibility. Across all samples, we estimate a pooled logistic regression with standard errors clustered by country and resolution. We account for time dependencies with a cubic polynomial for time (Carter & Signorino, 2010), although our results are robust to year-fixed effects (see Appendix, Table 5).

Hypothesis 1 stipulates that when a resolution is important to the United States, countries not allied with the United States are more likely to be strategically absent from voting. We use the BSV variable Important Vote, which indicates whether the US State Department has identified a vote as particularly important in its annual report Voting Practices in the United Nations.³⁴ We use this report as a proxy for US government pressure: the State Department consistently identifies the same topics as important each year, and also publicizes its voting priorities prior to UNGA votes. We expect that the impact of an important vote will depend on a country’s alliance ties with the United States (US Ally), which is drawn from the Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions (ATOP) data set, and indicates whether a country has signed a defensive pact with the United States in a given year. To reduce concerns about simultaneity, this variable is lagged by one year.

Hypotheses 2a and 2b suggest that when countries face competing-principals situations between the US and Russia, they will be more likely to be absent when the US is voting yes and less likely to be absent when the US is voting no. Drawing on the BSV data, we construct the variables US-Russia Opposed (US No, Russia Yes) and US-Russia Opposed (US Yes, Russia No), which are equal to 1 if the US and Russia vote against each other as specified on a given resolution and 0 otherwise.

5.1 Controls

We control for other geopolitical and state-specific factors likely to affect UNGA attendance. Just as alliance ties with the United States may influence voting, so too might alliance ties with Russia influence how a country manages geopolitical pressure, particularly when the US and Russia are opposed to each other. To account for this relationship, we include Russia Ally, which is drawn from the ATOP data set and indicates whether a country has signed a defensive pact with Russia in a given year. To reduce concerns of simultaneity, this variable is lagged by one year.

Strategic absence is also likely to be linked to additional resolution-specific factors, such as the political stakes of a vote. Literature on legislative voting suggests that legislators are more likely to cast votes on closely contested bills (Cohen & Noll, 1991; Kromer, 2005; Noury, 2004), so we include Vote Margin, which represents the ratio of majority votes to minority votes (i.e., if a resolution passes, then the variable is yes votes divided by no votes). If a resolution passes with no opposing votes, this variable simply reflects the number of yes votes. In the data set, Vote Margin has a minimum value of 1 (reflecting equal numbers of yeas and nays), a median value of 9, and a maximum value of 186. We expect that as the voting margin increases, and a vote becomes less contentious, strategic absences should become less common. We also include the variable Abstentions, which indicates the number of countries that vote “abstain” on a particular resolution. Abstentions are likely to correlate with strategic absence as they indicate a vote is more contentious. Because the distribution of both variables is highly skewed, we log them in all regressions.

Strategic absences could be linked to a country’s Article 19 status. Countries that are eligible for Article 19 sanctions at the start of the calendar year often pay their dues at some point prior to or during the next UNGA session, and thereby earn back the right to vote. Moreover, since 2000, a growing number of countries have applied for exemptions so as not to lose voting rights during UNGA. Despite these facts, we expect that Article 19 eligibility is a proxy for a country’s general engagement with the UN system. Countries that are the equivalent of two years in arrears at the start of the calendar year are less likely to follow UNGA resolutions closely, and therefore may be less willing to bear the political costs of voting in a way that will alienate a subset of states. For this reason, we include Article 19 Eligibility, which is a dichotomous indicator that indicates whether a country is eligible for Article 19 sanctions at the start of the calendar year. Approximately 4 percent of country-vote observations in the data set are coded as eligible.

Because both hypotheses probe how US power and ties influence strategic absences, we include variables to account for a country’s underlying preference alignment with the United States and Russia. Lagged BSV ideal point estimates for each country’s distance from the United States (Preference Similarity to US) are included in full models, as are ideal point estimates for each country’s distance from Russia (Preference Similarity to Russia).

Descriptive patterns suggest resolution content may also affect the probability of strategic absence. We include the BSV issue codes as variables: Colonialism, Development, Disarmament, Human Rights, Israel/Palestine, and Nuclear Weapons. These categories are not mutually exclusive, nor do all resolutions fall into one of these issue areas (for example, administrative or budgetary resolutions do not fit any category).

Beyond our baseline model, additional tests include variables to account for plausible counter-factuals. Countries may miss UNGA votes due to a lack of capacity.³⁵ Panke (2013, 2014) has documented the extensive challenges that low-capacity states face when trying to participate in the General Assembly. Less developed countries may be more likely to miss UNGA votes due to financial or logistical difficulties.

We account for these capacity-based explanations in several ways. First, we include GDP and GDP per capita, drawn from the World Bank WDI dataset. We log both variables to address their skewed distributions and introduce one-year lags. Second, we use newly available data on UN delegation size (Vleck 2023) to account for a country’s UN capacity. UN delegations vary significantly in size, stretching from small missions of only a few officials to large missions of more than 100. Because GDP data is not available for all countries and delegation data is only available for 1993 to 2016, we do not include these variables in all models.

6 Results: The geopolitics of strategic absence

Table 1 displays the results of our regression analyses, which suggest strategic absences are linked to the geopolitical context surrounding a resolution. We begin by examining hypothesis 1, which suggests that countries not allied with the United States may find strategic absence to be a useful strategy for avoiding the political costs of voting on resolutions important to the United States. Pooled logistic regressions analyze the relationship between an important resolution to the US and strategic absences, comparing US allies to other countries. The results suggest that US allies respond quite differently to votes important to the United States. While US allies are significantly less likely to be absent for important votes, countries not aligned with the US are more likely to skip out on such votes.³⁶ These findings align with the idea that the US may pressure its allies to show up for important votes but encourage other countries to be strategically absent.

Table 1 Geopolitics and strategic absences- The table shows the results of pooled logistic regressions estimating the effect of important votes and ties to the United States (hypothesis 1) and competing principals (hypotheses 2a and 2b) on strategic absence. Standard errors are clustered by resolution and country

To explore how this relationship might vary across relatively weaker and stronger states, Fig. 6 examines how important votes link with strategic absence across three samples: (1) the full group of UN member states, (2) low-capacity countries (those with a GDP per capita in the bottom quartile of the sample, i.e., below 1425 USD), and (3) high-capacity countries (those with a GDP per capita in the top quartile of the sample, i.e., above 13,393 USD). The figure shows that among countries not allied with the US, important votes are associated with significant increases in the probability of strategic absence, with the largest effect occurring among weak (low GDP) countries. The differential effect of important votes across US allies and other countries is strongest among the poorest countries (open circles), as there is a difference of approximately 0.02 in the predicted probability of strategic absence between these two groups. For high GDP countries (open diamonds), the difference in predicted probability is notably smaller.

Fig. 6

Determinants of strategic absences—The figure shows point estimates and 95 percent confidence intervals for the change in predicted probability of a strategic absence. Estimates calculated based on moving from 0 to 1 for the important vote variable, with alliance status set as shown and all other variables sampled from the distribution. Pooled logit model includes clustered standard errors and full set of controls (Table 1, Model 5), but Article 19 eligibility and Russian ally are dropped in the wealthy sub-sample because of too few observations. Confidence intervals calculated using a Monte Carlo simulation

Turning to hypothesis 2, we find more evidence of the geopolitics of strategic absence. We theorized that countries will be incentivized to use strategic absence when they face a competing principals situation where the US and Russia are on opposite sides of a resolution. We expect, however, that incentives will differ depending on whether the US is voting yes or voting no. Table 1 shows strong support for this relationship: across all models, when the US is voting yes against Russia, strategic absence becomes more likely, whereas when the US is voting no, strategic absence becomes less likely. The coefficients suggest that the US voting yes against Russia is associated with between a 1.5 and 1.7 increase in the odds of strategic absence, while the US voting no against Russia is associated with a 1.3 decrease in the odds of strategic absence.³⁷

We examine this relationship across different sub-samples through predicted probability plots drawn from Models 2 and 5 in Table 1. Figure 7 estimates the change in the probability of strategic absence when a vote becomes a competing principals situation across three samples: the full data set, countries with a GDP per capita below 1425 USD (bottom quartile), and countries with GDP per capita above 13,393 USD (top quartile). The plot shows how the effect of competing principals is strongest among the materially weakest countries—indeed, among such states, the US voting yes against Russia is associated with a 0.4 percent increase in the probability of strategic absence, whereas the value is only 0.2 percent for the full sample and insignificant for wealthy countries.

Fig. 7

Determinants of strategic absences (US-Russia opposed)—The figure shows point estimates and 95 percent confidence intervals for the change in predicted probability of a strategic absence. Estimates calculated based on moving from 0 to 1 for US Yes, Russia No and Russia Yes, US No. Models include additional controls (see Models 2 and 5 in Table 1), clustered standard errors, and a cubic time polynomial. Confidence intervals calculated using a Monte Carlo simulation

We find a similar pattern when we examine the impact of US-China competing principals situations (see Appendix, Table 6). Figure 8 examines the predicted probability of strategic absence when the US votes yes against China and when China votes yes against the United States. The results are supportive of the notion that the US may encourage countries to be strategically absent when it is voting yes on a resolution against China but absences are considerably less desirable when the US is competing with China but relatively isolated (voting no).

Fig. 8

Determinants of strategic absences (US-China opposed)—The figure shows point estimates and 95 percent confidence intervals for the change in predicted probability of a strategic absence. Estimates calculated based on moving from 0 to 1 for US Yes, China No and China Yes, US No. Models include additional controls (see Appendix, Table 6, Models 2 and 5, clustered standard errors, and a cubic time polynomial. Confidence intervals calculated using a Monte Carlo simulation

Turning to the control variables, we note that relatively few variables maintain statistical significance across specifications. The number of abstentions is a notable exception, with a positive and significant association with strategic absence across all specifications, although such effects are quite small when compared with the geopolitical variables. As expected, country capacity (proxied by GDP, GDPPC, or delegation size) has a consistently negative association with strategic absence, suggesting the tactic is less common among wealthier states with higher bureaucratic capacities. Countries also appear to be less likely to be strategically absent for resolutions related to economic development and nuclear weapons and materials.

As a robustness check, we re-run our main analysis with the narrow measure of strategic absence, which requires a country to skip out on voting after attending a vote earlier in the day. The results of this exercise provide further support for our argument. All three hypotheses attain significant support, with the coefficients for hypothesis 1 increasing in size and statistical significance. The results of this exercise are available in Table 4 in the Appendix.

6.1 Are strategic absences the same as abstentions?

Because strategic absence is a way of mitigating geopolitical pressure without alienating strong states, it shares many similarities to abstention. Nonetheless, we theorized earlier that the two processes are not perfect substitutes. Abstentions are official votes in UNGA, and thus they detract from the perceived legitimacy of a resolution. In contrast, absences go unreported in the official accounting. Our initial findings with respect to the United States support this difference—strategic absences are more common when the US is voting yes against Russia or China, but less common when the US is voting no.

We further investigate the distinction between strategic absences and abstentions by rerunning our pooled logistic regression models from hypotheses 1 and 2 but changing the dependent variable to abstention. If abstention and strategic absence are distinct processes, we would expect that the underlying politics driving each decision would be different. The results, shown in Table 2, support this idea. While there is some support for hypothesis 1 holding true for abstentions, there is no evidence that competing principals problems are associated with abstaining from voting. Additional analyses confirm a similar pattern for US-China competing principals situations (see Appendix, Table 7).

Table 2 Geopolitics and abstentions- The table shows the results of pooled logistic regressions estimating the effect of important votes and ties to the United States (comparison with hypothesis 1) and competing principals (comparison with hypotheses 2a and 2b) on abstention. Standard errors are clustered by resolution and country

To further unpack the difference between abstention and strategic absence, we investigate the possibility that states may coordinate strategic absences in response to geopolitical pressure. We create the variable Other Strategic Absences, which indicates the number of other states that are strategically absent from a given vote. For a given resolution, strategic absences may correlate either because many countries are subject to similar political pressures or because weaker states learn that others plan to skip a vote and emulate this action. Because we expect that this variable may be lagging indicator of the broader geopolitical process driving strategic absence, we analyze its effect separately in a baseline regression and then include it with a full set of controls. We compare these results to a second set of identical regressions that examine how strategic absences affect the probability of abstentions.

The results of this exercise, available in Table 8 in the Appendix, provide further evidence that strategic absence is not simply a substitute for abstention. Figure 9 compares the effect of other states’ strategic absences and abstentions on the likelihood of strategic absence (top figure) and the likelihood of abstention (bottom figure). The plots show that when both variables are included in a model, strategic absences are strongly associated with other strategic absences, and abstentions are strongly associated with other abstentions, but the two relationships do not overlap. Indeed, in the top figure, moving from 0 to 25 strategic absences increases the probability of a strategic absence by 1 percent, whereas a similar increase in the number of abstaining states has no effect on strategic absence. In contrast, moving from 0 to 25 abstentions increases the probability of abstention by approximately 1.5 percent, but a similar increase in strategic absences has no effect on abstention. Both processes seem to diffuse across states, perhaps as solutions to different underlying geopolitical concerns.

Fig. 9

Coordination of strategic absence vs. abstention—The top figure shows point estimates and 95 percent confidence intervals for the change in predicted probability of a strategic absence based on the number of other strategically absent states (solid circles) and the number of abstaining states (solid triangles) for a given vote. The bottom figure shows point estimates and 95 percent confidence intervals for the change in predicted probability of abstention based on the number of strategically absent states (solid circles) and the number of other abstentions (solid triangles). Estimates calculated based on moving from 0 to value shown on x-axis. Models include additional controls (see Appendix, Table 8, Models 2 and 5), a cubic time polynomial, and clustered standard errors. Confidence intervals calculated using a Monte Carlo simulation

7 Conclusion

The UN General Assembly is a unique institution. It has near-universal membership, a horizontal voting structure, and covers a wide range of topics. For these reasons, it offers important insights into states’ foreign policy preferences. But just as voting patterns can reveal similarities between countries, a country’s intentional absence from a specific roll-call vote is also a political signal. As Albert Hirschman pointed out fifty years ago, exit and voice are both ways to express discontent with the status quo (Hirschman, 1970). Given that 10 percent of data on UN General Assembly voting is missing due to absent states, analyzing momentary “exits” helps illuminate how states manage the geopolitical pressures of such a vast institution.

How should scholars conceptualize missed opportunities to vote? We argue that states may opt out of voting strategically in order to mitigate the political costs of casting a vote. Because the General Assembly allows countries to cast votes of abstain, abstentions do not provide the same ambiguity and political cover as in many legislative contexts. The General Assembly is a forum where a quarter of all decisions are unanimous. In such a context, abstention detracts from unanimity in a way that may damage the legitimacy of a proposed resolution. Strategic absence, in contrast, reclaims ambiguity. We conceptualize such behavior primarily as an exercise of institutional power, where UN member states leverage institutional rules to enhance political cover and shield themselves from negative blowback. For weaker states in particular, this option may be an appealing strategy for minimizing political costs amid capacity and financial constraints.

Our empirical analysis suggests strategic absences are linked to geopolitical concerns. The United States is known to lobby strongly for a handful of important resolutions. For US allies, such votes require demonstrations of solidarity. For non-US allies, however, important votes increase incentives to opt out of voting and are thus associated with increases in strategic absences. We also find evidence that countries may find strategic absence to be a particularly appealing strategy when the US supports a resolution that Russia opposes, and a less optimal strategy when the US opposes a resolution that Russia supports. Additional tests suggest that such patterns are particularly pronounced among materially weaker countries, and that strategic absence operates quite differently from abstention.

Our findings have important implications for IR scholarship. From an empirical perspective, many scholars rely on UNGA voting data to proxy state preferences but exclude absences from the data set. We show, however, that some absences are strategic in nature, and may be as informative as abstentions as a form of political participation. When a country intentionally opts out of voting, this action is a signal about the broader way that power operates in international institutions.

Understanding the politics of absence is also important for IR theory. Power manifests in international organizations in varied ways. Strategic absence may be a way of altering negotiating dynamics, highlighting one’s own bargaining power, or it may be designed to mitigate political pressure and avoid the costs of political expression. For weaker states in particular, institutional participation may introduce a new downside as delegations are forced to weigh in on non-salient topics and grapple with the consequences. The fact that states choose to be absent from voting on such measures highlights the inherent inequality in such a system but also the strategies that weaker states may use to skirt the rules in ways that protect their interests. In theory, the General Assembly places countries on an equal playing field. Without adequate political and economic resources to support participation, however, weaker countries would rather opt out of contested votes than exercise their institutional rights. Such behavior raises questions about the UNGA’s legitimacy as a global focal point and norm creator, and suggests more work is needed to discover the political determinants of institutional participation.