The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has passed over eighteen thousand resolutions since its foundation. It is a very heterogeneous collection, containing at once landmark documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and scores of less important and even controversial pieces. Hence, scholarship for the past 75 years has been divided on the actual relevance of UNGA resolutions and on member states’ motivations in engaging with their drafting. We propose a novel theoretical typology to organize prevailing views on the role of UNGA resolutions. Relying on the dimensions of effect and consensus, that is, whether or not resolutions are deemed to have a real-world impact and to what extent they represent world opinion, we sort the literature into four ideal types: resolutions can be regarded as the fruit of deliberation, dispute, diversion, or drama. We discuss the rationale of each view and indicate proposals within the UNGA that exemplify these perspectives. Our typology contributes to scholarship by both tidying previous debates and highlighting unnoticed commonalities between the UNGA and topics from the political representation literature.

中文翻译：

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联合国大会决议有什么用？议会外交的四种观点

联合国大会（联大）自成立以来已通过一万八千多项决议。这是一个非常多样化的集合，既包含具有里程碑意义的文件，例如《世界人权宣言》，也包含许多不太重要甚至有争议的文件。因此，过去 75 年来，学术界对联大决议的实际相关性和成员国参与起草决议的动机存在分歧。我们提出了一种新颖的理论类型学来组织关于联大决议作用的主流观点。根据效果和共识的维度，即决议是否被认为具有现实世界的影响以及它们在多大程度上代表世界舆论，我们将文献分为四种理想类型：决议可以被视为成果商议、争论、转移，或戏剧。我们讨论了每种观点的基本原理，并在联合国大会中提出了体现这些观点的提案。我们的类型学通过整理以前的辩论和突出联合国大会与政治代表文献中的主题之间未被注意的共性来为学术做出贡献。