Natural Resource Exports and African Countries’ Voting Behaviour in the United Nations: Evidence from the Economic Rise of China

How do African countries’ resource exports to China affect the countries’ voting alignment with Beijing in the United Nations?

YI CHE,  XIAOYU HE  and YAN ZHANG exploit time variation in the swift surge in China's demand for natural resources and cross‐sectional variation in countries’ propensity to export resources. 

Writing in the Canadian Journal of Economics, the authors find that an increase in resource exports to China increases the probability of voting in line with China in the United Nations. “Interestingly, we observe a stronger effect for resolutions on which China and the United States cast opposite votes. We provide suggestive evidence that public goods and state capacity are possible explanations for our main results.”

To establish causation, the authors, in an article titled ‘Natural resource exports and African countries’ voting behaviour in the United Nations: Evidence from the economic rise of China’, exploited the fact that China's surging demand for natural resources has been driven largely by its rapid economic growth, which was triggered by its own institutional reforms and African countries’ propensity to export resources, which is determined mostly by natural resource endowment. 

Using this arguably exogenous interaction term as an instrument for country–resource exports to China, the authors found a positive effect of resource exports to China on the share of the countries’ votes that are in line with China for important human rights resolutions in the UN. 

“We further documented that this baseline result is not influenced by the assumption of an exclusion restriction, alternative dependent variable, alternative methods for constructing the instrument, alternative resolutions or subsample analysis. Interestingly, we found that the effect of interest is particularly strong if we restrict the resolutions to those on which the United States and China take different positions, and more resource exports to China actually reduce the share of African votes that are in line with the United States.

To understand the reasons why countries with more resource exports to China tend to vote more in line with China, the authors explored several possible explanations. They found that government revenue, industry value added and capital investment in the society are all increased due to the profits from resource exports to China. In turn, these countries invest more in public goods, including electricity, roads and telecommunications infrastructure. “Because the increased government revenue and public goods provision elevate the opportunity cost of rebellion, in our sample, we found that countries with more resource exports to China have a lower probability of having an intra‐state conflict, providing a safer environment for citizens in the country. 

“In this sense, our paper contributes to the resource‐curse literature by showing that resources, when used appropriately, can be beneficial for the country's development.”

Che, Y., He, X. and Zhang, Y. (2021), Natural resource exports and African countries’ voting behaviour in the United Nations: Evidence from the economic rise of China. Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique. https://doi.org/10.1111/caje.12514

Aid, Arms or Autocrats: Explaining the Voting Preferences of Developing Countries at the United Nations

Despite their continued effort to bargain collectively on behalf of developing countries, the Group of 77 (G77) at the United Nations consistently fail to coordinate their voting positions. 

With 134 of the UN’s 193 member states in the G77, it has the potential to dominate the UN General Assembly, but it has become so disparate that many now question the logic of the group’s existence moving forward. 

Writing in the New York University Abu Dhabi Journal of Social Sciences, CHRIS WHEELER uses ideal point estimates to analyze the predictors of G77 countries’ individual voting preferences in the UN General Assembly to understand the cause of growing division and disunity within the group. 

He finds that voting preferences for individual countries within the G77 are determined mainly by variation in democracy and human rights. The article, titled ‘Aid, Arms or Autocrats: Explaining the Voting Preferences of Developing Countries at the United Nations’ provides new insights into both the dynamics of the UN General Assembly and the cooperation among developing countries.

“From our results, we can broadly split the tested variables into three levels of importance in terms of their impact on a country’s ideal point estimate,” WHEELER states.

“Firstly, analyzing levels of economic development and receipt of US Foreign Aid shows that neither of these measures has a strong influence on UN voting preferences among members of the G77 group. Secondly, analyzing the choice of military supplier, OPEC, and OIC membership and region, we found that both of these measures impact voting preference.” However, he states, these measures are also strongly correlated with measures of democracy and human rights. 

Finally, the strongest indicator of UN voting preferences among the G77 group is a country’s level of democracy and human rights, which consistently showed a high impact on ideal point estimates across various measures, even when controlling for all other independent variables.

Sequencing United Nations Peacemaking: Political Initiatives and Peacekeeping Operations

The United Nations has developed a diverse range of peacemaking tools, including different forms of political initiatives (diplomatic, technocratic, and political-development missions) and peacekeeping operations. Yet we know surprisingly little about when and why we observe the onset of different types of UN missions, write HAN DORUSSEN, TOBIAS BÖHMELT and GOVINDA CLAYTON in the journal Conflict Management and Peace Science.
Examining an ‘escalatory trajectory’, the authors analyze the United Nations Peace Initiatives data, a new dataset providing information on all different types of UN engagements. “Our main contributions are that we provide insights into how the different types of missions relate to one another and conceptual clarity about what the different types of missions are.”
Increasingly detailed data and sophisticated analyses have provided a better understanding of the determinants of peacekeeping. However, much less attention has been paid to political missions, the authors write in ‘Sequencing United Nations peacemaking: Political initiatives and peacekeeping operations’. The risk is that peacekeeping is compared with a broad and relatively poorly understood reference category of “no peacekeeping.” 
“Here, our main contribution is to add to unpacking of the baseline by considering political missions as distinct instruments of UN peacemaking. Analyzing the UNPI dataset on political missions, we find strong support for treating them as separate from peacekeeping missions as well as “non-interventions.”
Peacekeeping missions are not always a feasible, or even the most appropriate, response to situations that may threaten international peace and security. Over time, the UN has developed and extended different options enabling it to engage with a variety of conflictive situations.
Arguably, different types of political missions impose distinct costs on the UN system as well as on countries contributing to supplying or hosting missions. Whether it is appropriate to accept these costs depends on the potential benefits of a mission relative to contextual needs. Not intervening at all may well turn out to be the costliest option. That said, after considering the costs of authorization, funding and supply, and belligerent consent, peacekeeping stands out in being more expensive than political initiatives. 
“Given budgetary and political constraints, we expect the UN and hosting states to minimize intervention costs. Put simply, peacekeepers will only be deployed when such costly intervention are required.” 
The authors empirically assessed the impact of different conflict characteristics on the onset of different mission types and found that political missions are more likely to occur than peacekeeping missions when a conflict has not (yet) escalated and more time has passed since the last fighting. Their results further suggest the UN is more likely to opt for a peacekeeping mission in conflicts that are ‘new’. It is plausible that such conflicts indeed present a larger risk to international peace and security and need to be addressed urgently.
Political missions are not only generally less costly than peacekeeping missions, but there is also variation in the likely costs of diplomatic, technocratic, and political-development missions. Considering the relative costs of different political missions, political-development missions are more costly than technocratic and diplomatic missions, respectively. Political-development missions are usually field missions, while diplomatic and technocratic missions face lower barriers for authorization. “Our analyses do not necessarily support such conjectures. The impact of key conflict characteristics does not vary much on various political missions.” 
Control variables, such as population size and wealth, affect the choice for political mission differently, but not in a way that seems related to their relative costs. At the same time, the authors find evidence for the escalatory logic underlying political missions. Less costly missions tend to set the framework and requirements for costlier efforts in the future.
Future work might then seek to explore the wider range of factors that lead to the adoption of one form of political mission over another, the authors suggest.

Dorussen H, Böhmelt T, Clayton G. Sequencing United Nations peacemaking: Political initiatives and peacekeeping operations. Conflict Management and Peace Science. April 2021. doi:10.1177/07388942211000678

Peacebuilding and Authoritarianism: The Unintended Consequences of UN Engagement in Post-Conflict Settings

Many UN peacebuilding interventions take place in settings governed by authoritarian regimes and are often overtly designed to overcome deeply entrenched patterns of autocratic rule. Whether large multidimensional peacekeeping operations like those in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Mali, and Central African Republic, smaller peacebuilding missions in places like Guinea-Bissau and Haiti, or peacebuilding projects in non-mission settings like Kyrgyzstan and Cameroon, the legacies of autocratic rule present some of the most direct and immediate challenges for international intervenors, a new report by United Nations University Center for Policy Research asserts. 

“In fact, peacebuilding has seldom resulted in a complete transformation from an authoritarian system to an open democratic one,” write ADAM DAY, SARAH VON BILLERBECK OISIN TANSEY and MAYHAM AL MALEH. 

“Instead, most systems retain some form of authoritarianism via a continuation of a particular ruler, ruling party, or consolidation of power in a small elite.”

More worryingly, many post-conflict settings experience a further concentration of power and even greater repression as regimes take advantage of new forms of economic development and international support, according to the report titled ‘Peacebuilding and Authoritarianism: The Unintended Consequences of UN Engagement in Post-Conflict Settings’. 

In some cases, there is evidence that peacebuilding support may have contributed to increasing levels of authoritarianism, even while advancing other important goals.

The report explores the ways in which peacebuilding may unintentionally enable authoritarian tendencies, despite its stated goal of more inclusive forms of governance. The authors build on scholarship that has analyzed the impacts of democratization efforts in post-conflict settings, and the substantial literature describing how authoritarian systems may prove resilient to external efforts to transform them, including by instrumentalizing democratic institutions, controlling resources, and emplacing political structures that tend to centralize authority in a small elite. While helpful in understanding the politics of authoritarian rule, this literature seldom offers an analysis of the causal relationships between peacebuilding and authoritarianism, leaving policymakers and practitioners without a clear framework to understand the impact of their interventions. 

The fact that peacebuilding is one amongst many factors influencing authoritarianism means that its possible contribution to tendencies of centralization and political repression often go unnoticed.

The principal argument of the report is that peacebuilding support may enable authoritarian forms of governance in two ways: (1) by providing material and other resources to the central State, thereby allowing it to consolidate control over key institutions and levers of power, and (2) by signaling in ways that lower the perceived costs of autocratic, non-democratic forms of rule and may help to shield leaders from accountability for their actions. 

“Together, these operate as a causal mechanism through which international peacebuilders may bolster authoritarian tendencies within political systems even while ostensibly promoting democratic forms of rule.”

In contrast, where peacebuilding support diversifies its resources to a broader range of stakeholders and sends signals that the political costs of non-democratic forms of governance may be high, it should contribute to reductions in authoritarian tendencies. 

While these impacts may be difficult to isolate – especially given that the UN is often a small player in the broader peacebuilding landscape – an examination of international peacebuilding support more generally across a range of settings will facilitate a better understanding of these dynamics at play.

This approach would also help us understand the dilemmas facing peacebuilders who must often choose between supporting State institutions as key actors in conflict prevention, while also recognizing that authoritarian governments may instrumentalize the same institutions to consolidate power. Moreover, it offers an evidence base for policymakers and major donors hoping to understand how to translate elite bargains into more sustainable forms of peace.

The report not only explores the relationship between peacebuilding and authoritarianism, but also aims to provide a usable framework and set of recommendations for policymakers and practitioners to avoid some of the common pitfalls and ensure that peacebuilding support is not distorted or co-opted. 

To that end, this paper is organized as follows: Part One reviews the literature on post-conflict peacebuilding and authoritarian governance, noting that the bulk of scholarship on peacebuilding provides few causal explanations for the prevalence and resilience of highly centralized forms of governance. It then lays out the research design and the use of the two-part causal mechanism described above. 

Part Two illustrates how these dynamics play out in a range of country settings where the UN has invested significantly in peacebuilding support. The analysis compares across in-depth country case studies on DRC, Haiti, and Cambodia, and draws on an assessment of peacebuilding funding flows in eight other countries. 

Part Three builds on the country comparison and provides a framework for policymakers and practitioners involved in peacebuilding, offering key considerations and suggested approaches to planning future interventions.

It should be noted at the outset that this paper is primarily focused on UN-led peacebuilding efforts, the authors state, though it analyses a broad range of international peacebuilding support and provides recommendations that can be applied to bilateral donors and international financial institutions (IFIs) as well as the UN.

Taken together, this framework proposes a reexamination of the elite bargain at the heart of much of the UN’s conflict prevention and peacebuilding paradigm. It suggests that the tendency of the UN to identify solutions based on a core group of powerful elites may appear necessary to mitigate the immediate risks of escalation, but that it also carries significant risks of longer-term drift into the kind of deeply unequal, highly centralized rule that the Sustaining Peace resolutions and the UN/World Bank Pathways report have identified as the major drivers of instability globally. 

“Implementation of this framework will not necessarily mean jettisoning the elite bargain, but it will require that peacebuilders strike a balance between the exigencies of day-to-day conflict prevention and the ways in which international interventions might unintentionally bolster authoritarianism in the longer term.”

COVID-19 and Humanitarian Access: How the Pandemic Should Provoke Systemic Change in the Global Humanitarian System

The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed the world. With over 103 million cases reported as of February 2021 and over 2.2 million deaths worldwide, it is the deadliest pandemic since the 1918 Spanish Flu. 

It has disrupted societies in a number of ways: over 400 million jobs lost in the first few months, widespread food insecurity, national and local lockdowns, hospitals overwhelmed, education reduced or postponed, and travel grinding nearly to a halt, according to a new United Nations University report. The pandemic has had an especially acute impact on vulnerable populations receiving humanitarian assistance. Widespread loss of income, massive drops in remittances, and limited access to social safety nets have combined to drive larger numbers of people into vulnerability while worsening the conditions for many already receiving assistance, the report titled ‘COVID-19 and Humanitarian Access: How the Pandemic Should Provoke Systemic Change in the Global Humanitarian System’.

At the same time, international organizations have had to scale back the number of international staff in field locations as they managed travel and quarantine restrictions, often placing even greater burdens on local partners as well as resident staff to undertake delivery, state the report’s authors, REBECCA BRUBAKER, ADAM DAY, and SOPHIE HUVÉ. 

In some settings, governments and armed groups have placed additional restrictions on the ability of humanitarian organizations to access populations in need. And, more broadly, the global economic downturn has contributed to widespread funding shortfalls for humanitarian aid, in a context of increasing need and growing inequality.

The report explores the impact of COVID-19 on humanitarian access in the initial months of the crisis, including both the delivery of assistance and performance of protection activities. It examines the varying crisis responses, including the shift to a more localized approach in certain cases. The analysis draws on case research from Colombia, Myanmar, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen, as well as on wide-ranging interviews with humanitarian practitioners and experts from around the world. The research was conducted between August – November 2020. It does not make claims about the legitimacy of government decisions to restrict access – indeed, in many instances, there appeared to be a clear objective of limiting the spread of COVID-19 – but instead focuses on how access limitations have affected the delivery of aid.

While covering principally issues of access and humanitarian space, the study also describes how the pandemic has altered the relationships between international and local humanitarian organizations, deepening inequalities in terms of access to services, and requiring a global attempt to prioritize programming amidst financial shortfalls. More broadly, the pandemic response has accelerated a debate regarding the extent to which the commitments made at the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit – especially the demand to shift to a more equitable model of cooperation among donors, the UN, international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and local civil society organizations (CSOs) – are being adequately met.

The paper contains six sections: (1) an overview of major access challenges preceding the pandemic; (2) an analysis of how COVID-19 responses adopted by governments, local authorities, and humanitarian organizations themselves have affected issues of humanitarian access and delivery; (3) a review of the primary and secondary impacts of these measures on the humanitarian sector; (4) a description of innovations and responses by the UN and its partners; (5) the main challenges to adapting in the current context; and (6) recommendations for governments, INGOs, local CSOs, and donors. 

The paper concludes with the following ten recommendations for governments, donors, the United Nations (UN), and local non-governmental organizations on improving access and prioritizing in a crisis moment:

1. Revisit the standard humanitarian response.

2. Recommit to the 2016 Grand Bargain with tangible, system-wide steps for addressing inequalities across international and local service providers. This could include:

a. Giving even greater priority to the most vulnerable.

b. Pre-arranging finance.

c. Pooling resources.

d. Demanding transparency.

e. Equalizing contracts and increasing multi-year funding.

f. Investing in consortia and twinning approaches.

g. Adding chairs to the table.

3. Improve the provision of equitable duty of care or “occupational safety and health” for all personnel, regardless of nationality or contract status.

4. Invest in monitoring capacities of local staff and local partners.

5. Develop a coherent and consistent approach to humanitarian exemptions.

6. Define “life-saving” activities in coordination with humanitarian actors.

7. Prioritize protection activities related to sexual and gender-based violence.

8. Invest in information campaigns.

9. Look for opportunities in crisis.

10. Build a coherent, multi-scalar approach to risk.

Governing Uncertainty: The Future of Global Governance Over the Next 30 Years

Continuing growing inequality will undermine the legitimacy of global institutions as the diffusion of centers of power will create uncertainty and drive new conflict risks, the authors of a new report published by the United Nations University Center for Policy Research state. 

Strategic litigation will empower non-State actors and challenge State authority, while technology will continue to drive rapid, highly unequal advances in development, ADAM DAY and DAVID PASSARELLI add in the report titled ‘Governing Uncertainty’.

Commissioned by the UK Ministry of Defence’s Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, the report surveys major trends that will shape the future of global governance over the next 30 years. 

The report maps trends in society, politics, technology, security and the environment, and considers how the interplay across these sectors impact traditional and new development actors in their efforts to deliver a transformative development agenda centered on social inclusion, shared prosperity, safety and environmental sustainability.

The trends and changes outlined in the report are tied to a specific set of political and economic decisions and influences that marked the decades since the end of the Cold War. The globalization of economies and the impact of liberal trade and regulation policy on economic development and the distribution of wealth – within and across States – over three decades enabled rapid technological innovation, specialization through global value chains, poverty reduction and wealth generation in many parts of the world. However, this prosperity has not been equally distributed, leading to unequal development outcomes felt most acutely in the developing world and by global youth who will be forced to grapple with the intergenerational consequences of a worsening development emergency.

The report finds that many core societal risks – inequality, debt, mistrust, environmental and technological change, and the important role of non-State actors – persist today and have grown in importance following the outbreak of COVID-19.

Using the methods of foresight research, the report extrapolates possible future scenarios based on three cross-cutting trends (technological change, environmental change, demographic change and human mobility) and three megatrends (loss of trust in institutions, judicialization of governance, stakeholder activism). An integrated and systematic analysis of these trends results in four projections that will impact global governance, as well as security and development outcomes over the next 30 years:

-Inequality will continue to grow, undermining the legitimacy of global institutions.

-The diffusion of centres of power will create uncertainty and drive new conflict risks.

-Strategic litigation will empower non-State actors and challenge State authority.

-Technology will continue to drive rapid, highly unequal advances in development.

While it is impossible to say with certainty what this means for the future of global governance in 30 years, the authors formulate ten assumptions about the future, upon which three long-term pathways are explored.