Bloc Politics at the UN: How Other States Behave When the United States and China–Russia Disagree

Abstract

Abstract China and Russia have been progressively deepening their partnership in global governance to achieve common goals. However, do other states share their policy positions? Existing scholarship addresses the dyadic affinity among major powers and the growing importance of rising power groups, but it does not examine how the policy positions of other states align with those of the United States and its major rivals: China and Russia. To investigate how states align with the positions of these major powers, we examine voting patterns in the UN General Assembly over a 30-year period from 1991 to 2020. By utilizing simple t-tests and estimating both OLS and LOGIT models (N = 219,625), we find that the Sino–Russian positions enjoy much broader global support than those of the United States. Additionally, states that belong to the Group of 77 (G-77) and soft-balancing institutions such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) are more likely to align with China and Russia than states that do not belong to these groups. Conversely, members of NATO are more likely to side with the United States than their non-NATO counterparts. Further, the findings suggest that the effect of states’ membership in soft-balancing institutions on their propensity to align with China and Russia has steadily increased over time. Meanwhile, the effect of states’ membership in NATO on their likelihood to align with the United States lacks a clear temporal trajectory.