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LEADERSHIP TURNOVER AND FOREIGN POLICY CHANGE:

SOCIETAL INTERESTS, DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS,AND VOTING IN THE UNITED NATIONS

1

Royce CarrollRice University

[email protected]

Brett Ashley LeedsRice University

[email protected]

Michaela MattesVanderbilt University

[email protected]

October 5, 2012

ABSTRACT

This study examines the effect of domestic political change on UN General Assembly voting.We argue that foreign policy change is most likely when a new leader comes to power who relies

on different societal groups for support than her predecessor, but that the extent to which foreignpolicy behavior changes with domestic interests depends on domestic political institutions.

Democratic political institutions should increase foreign policy consistency, even in areas thatare less subject to executive constraints. We test our hypotheses using a new measure of UNGA

voting patterns and new data on changes in leaders supporting coalitions. We find evidence insupport of our hypotheses: change in the societal support base of leaders leads to change in UN

voting, especially in non-democracies. This study lends credence to the perspective that foreignpolicy, like domestic policy, can vary with the particular interests that leaders represent.

1Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the The International Politics of Autocracies workshop

at Rice University, May 3-5, 2012 and the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association,Washington, DC, September 2-5, 2010. The authors names are listed in alphabetical order; they view

their contributions as equal. The research was supported by NSF grant SES-0921830. The authors thank

Josh Clinton, Courtenay Conrad, Cliff Morgan, Jim Morrow, Alexander Thompson, Erik Voeten, Jessica

Weeks, and participants at the Rice workshop for comments on earlier versions of this research and Anna

Carella, Daina Chiba, Matthew DiLorenzo, Jinhyeok Jang, Jesse Johnson, Naoko Matsumura, Mariana

Rodriguez, and Eelco Van der Maat for research assistance. Upon publication, all data and analysis

mentioned in the text and footnotes will be available athttp://www.ruf.rice.edu/~leeds/.


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I. INTRODUCTION

What causes change in foreign policy? Certainly foreign policy is driven in part by the

exigencies and opportunities presented to a state as a function of its power and geographic

position and the structure of the international system. The opportunities and constraints of the

international system are not always fully decisive, however, and thus foreign policy is also

influenced by state preferences, which in turn are determined through domestic political

processes. Change in foreign policy can result from changes in the international system or a

states position within it, but change in foreign policy can also result from changes in domestic

politics. Not only should changes in domestic political institutions affect foreign policy, but

changes in which societal groups hold power may also affect the broad contours of a states

foreign policy.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of changes in domestic sources of

leader support on foreign policy. Because leaders wish to stay in power, and because every

leader relies on the support of some group of domestic actors to maintain her leadership position,

leaders tend to pursue policies favored by their core societal support groups. While foreign

policy may not be the most important factor dividing groups within society, we argue that often

domestic cleavages do correspond to different foreign policy preferences. Thus, when a leader

comes to power who depends on a different constellation of societal groups for support than her

predecessor, policy change, including foreign policy change, becomes more likely.

The level of change in foreign policy associated with changes in the domestic source of

leader support is mediated, however, by domestic political institutions. Two factors in particular

should affect the extent to which changes in domestic support result in significant changes in

policy. First, the size and breadth of the support coalition necessary to keep a leader in power


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affects the likelihood of foreign policy change. When leaders require the support of large

proportions of society to stay in power, policy is more likely to focus on matters of general

interest rather than particularistic policies, and thus should exhibit more stability (Bueno de

Mesquita et al. 2003, McGillivray and Smith 2008). Second, the extent to which executives

control policy independently affects the extent of possible change. To the extent that

policymaking requires compromise with other political actors, policy stability is increased

(Martin 2000, Tsebelis 2002). Since democratic leaders require the support of larger proportions

of the population to stay in power and are more constrained by other actors, we expect

democracies to exhibit more stability in foreign policy than non-democracies.

To test our argument about broad changes in the foreign policy of a state, we make use of

voting patterns in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). The UNGA considers a wide

variety of issues, the combined effect of which should reveal many aspects of a states grand

strategy, international alignments, and foreign policy proclivities. Interpreting this data using a

spatial voting model that employs bridge votes to induce comparability across UNGA

sessions, we measure changes in voting patterns during the 1985-2008 time period. Our novel

measure allows us to capture over time changes in a countrys aggregate voting behavior and

interpret positions on a consistent scale. Using these data, we compare voting patterns for state

leaders to the voting patterns of their predecessors. We have developed rules for distinguishing

leadership changes that maintain the same domestic source of leader support from those in which

the leaders support base changes. Commensurate with our hypotheses, we find that changes in

source of leader support are associated with changes in UNGA voting patterns, but that this

effect manifests itself mainly in non-democracies rather than in democracies.


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Predicting foreign policy change is important to policymakers, and it is also an area in

which scholars have not been systematically successful. This study aims to shed light on the

empirical relationship between domestic politics and foreign policy. Our results show not only

that foreign policymaking is shaped by the same factors as domestic policymaking, but that the

competition among domestic groups is a powerful predictor of foreign policy change, even

compared to a factor traditional international relations scholars would emphasize the shift in

the structure of the international system at the end of the Cold War. Changes in source of leader

support are particularly likely to lead to a redirection of foreign policy in non-democracies. The

foreign policies of democracies, on the other hand, are more resilient to changes in the source of

leader support. Responsiveness and stability are not necessarily at odds in democracies.

II. THE DOMESTIC BASIS OF FOREIGN POLICY

For much of the history of international relations scholarship, analysts have implicitly or

explicitly assumed that foreign policy is developed differently than domestic policy. The

analysis of domestic policy focuses on the outcome of competition among groups acting through

particular political institutions, while foreign policy is often assumed to be driven by

international imperatives or a commonly accepted view of the national interest. Scholars

recognize that domestic competition may influence low politics areas such as trade policy, but

typically consider other areas of foreign policy to be outside the realm of political competition

and not subject to partisan, sectoral, ethnic, or regional interests.2

In fact, theories of grand

strategy and international alignments usually turn to domestic politics only as an ad hoc

explanation for behavior that appears unusual from the standpoint of international variablesfor

example, the isolationist turn of the United States between the two world wars. As Narizny

2 For a review of the literature linking domestic politics to trade policy, see Milner (1999).


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(2007, 3) writes, The extant literature . views domestic politics as a constraint on the pursuit

of the national interest, not as the fundamental determinant of state behavior.

Recently, scholars have begun to challenge this view. Narizny (2003, 2007), for

example, argues that class and sectoral interests influence alliance policy and grand strategy.

According to Narizny (2003), owners of capital and labor experience different costs and benefits

from military spending, leading owners of capital to prefer a multilateral internationalist strategy

based on alliances and owners of labor to prefer a more isolationist strategy based on self help.

Narizny (2007) also argues that economic sectors within a society that depend on international

trade and investment prefer more internationalist policies. He goes on to claim that among the

internationalist coalition those economic actors who interact mainly with other core states are

likely to prefer law-based relations, whereas economic actors who interact mainly with the

periphery are more likely to see force as a useful and appropriate means for arbitrating

international issues. Importantly, these different economic interests may exist within a state

simultaneously and compete with one another for control of policy (see also Lobell, 2004). The

result is that changes in the coalitions that have power domestically can result in changes in

foreign policy even in the area of high politics.

Economic interests are not the only source of different foreign policy preferences within

states. Davis and Moore (1997), for example, find evidence that when an ethnic minority has

political influence in a state, that state is more likely to engage in international conflict with

states repressing members of the same ethnic group. Regional, religious, and ideological

divisions may also affect a states general foreign policy orientation. Consider the case of

Ukraine, in which a major source of political competition is between ethnic Russians based

primarily in the East and ethnic Ukrainians based largely in the West. While under Prime


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Minister Yulia Tymoshenko Ukraine had actively pursued NATO membership, the election of

Viktor Yanukovych in 2010 was followed nearly immediately by a halting of that process. In

Iran, the replacement of the secular Muslim monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi with an

Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Khomeini led to a significant change in international

alignments. While this transition undoubtedly included changes to the domestic institutional

structure, the change in the interests and goals of the primary regime supporters was even more

dramatic and played a crucial role in the re-direction of Iranian foreign policy.

While certainly international relations scholars have embraced the importance of

domestic influences on foreign policy, much of the systematic work on this subject has

emphasized the influence of domestic political institutions. These institutions, which define the

decision-making process and accountability structure for a regime, change little across time and

best provide cross-sectional explanations for variation in foreign policy. By contrast, the policies

pursued by leaders through these institutions reflect shorter-term change in the groups to whom

they are accountable. Despite the prevalence of anecdotal and post hoc assessments that such

factors have been crucially important in particular cases, the extent to which changes in societal

groups with influence over policymaking lead to foreign policy restructuring is not well

established outside the economic policy arena.

In this paper, we build on the idea that despite the constraints and imperatives of the

international system, leaders retain meaningful choices in the foreign policies they pursue.

These choices are influenced by the interests and preferences of societal groups that the leader

represents and the domestic institutional context. Below we elaborate our argument linking

changes in the domestic groups providing support to a leader to changes in foreign policy.


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III. DOMESTIC INTERESTS, INSTITUTIONS, AND FOREIGN POLICY CHANGE

We assume that, within societies, there are more or less well defined groups of like-

minded individuals who share political interests as a result of their economic, ethnic, religious,

regional, or other characteristics and thus have similar policy preferences on at least some issues.

These groups compete with one another for political influence. We further assume that leaders

wish to stay in power and that maintaining power requires retaining the support of some subset

of these societal groups. The number of supporters necessary to stay in power depends on the

countrys political institutions. Yet, the number of necessary supporters is smaller than the total

set of people with a say in choosing leaders. (In Bueno de Mesquita et al.s (2003) terms, the

winning coalition is smaller than the selectorate.) Thus, a leader may be replaced by a successor

who depends on the support of a different subset of the population for the retention of power

even without significant institutional change.

Given that different domestic groups may have divergent preferences regarding

international issues, we expect that foreign policy changes are most likely when a leader who

depends on the support of a different societal group, and thus caters to different interests and

preferences than her predecessor, comes to power. On the other hand, when a leader relies on

the same source of support as her predecessor, it should be in her interest to continue to pursue

similar policies. Compare, for example, the influence of the transition from Fidel Castro to Ral

Castro on Cubas foreign policy to the transition from Fulgencio Batista to Fidel Castro. While

we have seen little foreign policy change in Cuba since Ral Castro took power in 2008, the

transition from Batista to Castro resulted in significant change in Cubas foreign policy.

Batista supporters included business elites, land owners, the military, professional

associations, and organized industrial laborers in Havana (Dominguez 1978). Among the


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business elites, particularly influential were sugar mill owners and growers many of them

Americans who favored positive relations with the U.S., the main market for their product.

Batistas policies catered to these groups, and he pursued a staunchly pro-American and anti-

communist diplomacy. Castros support base, on the other hand, included those who had

previously been marginalized: farm workers, the unemployed, and peasants (Dominguez 1978).

These groups demanded a re-structuring of the economy and the state and there were

pressures from below that, though poorly articulated, nonetheless had a strategic impact upon

Cuban relations with the United States (Dominguez 1978, 142). Castro established diplomatic

relations with the USSR and China in early 1960, and in September Castro delivered a speech at

the UNGA denouncing American imperialism (Moore and Pubantz 2008, 97).

Whether a change in the domestic source of leader support results in noticeable change in

foreign policy, however, depends on the domestic institutional context. There are two important

sets of political institutions within states that influence the extent to which new leaders

representing different core societal interests are likely to redirect foreign policy: those affecting

the rules of leader selection and those affecting the rules of policymaking. Bueno de Mesquita et

al. (2003) argue that rules of leader selection that require leaders to gain the support of large

numbers of citizens (common in democracies) encourage leaders to pursue policies that provide

public goods. Leaders operating in systems in which only a small number of supporters is

necessary to stay in power, however, benefit most from providing private goods to their

winning coalition. The incentive to produce broader public goods creates consistency in the

types of policies pursued by different democratic leaders. On the other hand, when a new leader

in a small winning coalition state (generally a non-democracy) comes to power, there may be

very little overlap in the particularistic policies preferred by her small coalition compared to her


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predecessors. Compared to democracies, we expect to see greater change on average between

the policies of leaders with different support coalitions when those leaders depend on the support

of a few to stay in office (McGillivray and Smith 2008).

While the rules of leadership selection influence the extent to which leaders are likely to

pursue broad-based public policies as opposed to the provision of narrowly-based private goods,

rules governing the policymaking process have an influence on the ease with which a new leader

can implement the policies she prefers. Some chief executives are relatively unconstrained in

their ability to make and change policy. On the other hand, many chief executives operate in

systems in which the consent of other political actors is necessary for the formulation of policy.

Legislatures often have influence over the appropriation of funds, personnel appointments, the

implementation of executive directives, and treaty ratification (Martin 2000). Similarly,

coalition partners and subnational leaders often have a say in policymaking and a role in

mobilizing resources for policy implementation. When leaders have to compromise with a

number of other political actors in order to change policy, we are likely to see a bias towards the

status quo even given a change in leader preferences.

Democracies generally combine features of leadership selection rules and policymaking

rules that discourage dramatic change in policy. Thus, given a change in the core societal

supporting coalition of a leader, we expect more subsequent change in foreign policy in non-

democratic systems than in democratic systems, both because leader preferences are likely to be

more particularistic and because leaders are less likely to be constrained from changing course

by other political actors. That being said, in all states, we believe that change in foreign policy is

more likely when new domestic groups gain influence over policymaking than it is when leaders

depend on similar domestic groups to retain power.


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IV. DOMESTIC POLITICAL CHANGE AND VOTING IN THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY

An arena in which we may be able to witness and measure changes in the general foreign

policy orientation of states is voting in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). The

UNGA is the only forum in which all countries have the opportunity to express their views on

issues that confront the international community. While wealthy and powerful countries are able

to communicate their foreign policy positions in a number of ways (through foreign aid,

economic sanctions, or the use of force, for instance), the foreign policy tools of developing

states tend to be more limited. For them, the UNGA annual meetings provide a particularly

valuable opportunity for making their views heard (Vengroff 1976, Moon 1985).

The UNGA covers a wide range of international issues such as the North-South gap,

disarmament, and human rights. Occasionally topics covered in the UNGA are directly relevant

to domestic constituencies and different societal groups take different stances on these issues

(Moon 1985).3

Many issues considered by the UNGA, however, do not map directly to

domestic cleavages. On these issues, large portions of the domestic population are likely

indifferent to the specific topics under consideration in the UNGA. Thus, we do not see UNGA

voting as directly reflecting the interests of domestic groups with regard to particular votes.

Instead, we view UNGA votingpatterns as providing an indirectreflection of the foreign policy

position of a state that corresponds to the broad preferences of domestic groups for alignment

with or distance from particular states. Many UNGA resolutions, for example, represent

3 While Moons discussion focuses on developing countries, there are notable differences on

some of these policy issues in developed democracies as well. Consider for example the

differences among West German voters, and their parties, on questions of nuclear proliferation

during the 1980s.


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declarations of affinity or disagreement with other states and governments votes on these topics

will reflect their constituencies preferences of who to ally with and who to oppose on the

international stage. In the aggregate, a countrys voting record in the UNGA is a latent indicator

of its grand strategy and international alignments; it is a record of how the state wants to be seen

by others and the positions it is willing to take publicly on a wide variety of issues.

UNGA voting is particularly informative regarding domestically motivated changes in a

countrys foreign policy positions for three reasons. First, unlike treaty cooperation, UN voting is

not regulated by international law and countries are free to revise their positions as frequently

and as much as they desire. Second, the non-binding nature of most UNGA resolutions makes it

more likely that a countrys overall behavior can reflect a reaction to the views of important

domestic constituencies rather than international strategic considerations (Gartzke 1998, Voeten

2001). While some scholars have argued that UNGA votes may be bought, the conditions

under which aid or loans influence UNGA voting appear to be limited, and evidence concerning

the conditions under which this phenomenon occurs is mixed.4

Moreover, the willingness to sell

ones vote is also an indication of foreign policy, and thus even if such transfers occur, they

4For example, Lai and Morey (2006) claim that non-democratic aid recipients increase their

voting similarity with the U.S., while Carter and Stone (2011) argue that it is democracies that

vote with the U.S. in return for economic support. Studies show that countries are only more

likely to vote in line with the U.S. if they receive World Bank non-concessional loans (Dreher

and Sturm 2012) or benefit from general budget aid and untied grants (Dreher, Nunnenkamp, and

Thiele 2008), and not in return for other kinds of loans and grants. Wang (1999) argues that aid

affects UNGA voting only on the small proportion of votes that the U.S. considers to be

particularly important.


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would not undermine our claim that the aggregation of UNGA votes serves as a representation to

the world of a states chosen policy positions.5 Third, unlike many other foreign policy

behaviors, UN voting does not strictly involve interdependence among states. For trade to occur,

an alliance to form, or a war to start, at least two states must choose to participate. UNGA

voting, on the other hand, may involve consultations with other countries but ultimately reflects

autonomous decisions by each government. Thus UN voting patterns can more easily change as

the result of domestic political shifts in a state.

The universal membership of the UNGA, the opportunity it provides to all states to

express their positions on different international issues, the lack of international legal constraints,

and the fact that voting is a monadic activity make the UNGA an excellent forum for studying

countries foreign policy positions. In fact, the extent to which two countries vote together on

UNGA resolutions forms the basis for a commonly used measure of interest similarity and

international alignment (Gartkze 1998).

We are not the first to consider the influence of domestic political changes on UN

voting.6 Early studies by Vengroff (1976) and Moon (1985) focus on the effect of domestic

5A similar logic applies to other types of insincere votes, such as the decision of authoritarian

governments to vote in favor of human rights resolutions. While such a vote does not mean that

the government and its domestic elites are truly committed to improve human rights conditions,

it does reflect an underlying preference to be seen as cooperating with Western values and this is

an important component of a countrys overall foreign policy that can be affected by preferences

of domestic elites to maintain business ties to the West.

6There are also numerous studies that more generally examine the issue dimensions that

dominate voting in the UNGA, identify voting blocs and their membership, and determine


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instability, especially violent leader transitions, on UN voting and report mixed findings. Hagan

(1989) expands the scope of domestic changes to include non-violent changes in leadership that

bring to power different groups from the same or opposite end of the political spectrum and

shows that both revolutionary and non-revolutionary changes influence Third World countries

alignment with the U.S. between 1946 and 1984. Voeten (2001) moves beyond Hagans study by

expanding the empirical domain to all countries, but at the same time returns to a more limited

focus on how institutional shifts affect foreign policy. Finding little support for his hypotheses,

he concludes that his results do not necessarily demonstrate the irrelevance of domestic politics.7

Rather, he points out that the current dominant focus in the international relations literature on

the effects of domestic institutions is too restricted. The interaction between institutional

arrangements and societal preferences produces political outcomes (Voeten 2001: 31).

Recent studies have picked up on the notion that societal preferences and the resulting

policy orientation of governments should affect a countrys UN voting record. Potrafke (2009),

for example, shows that OECD countries are less likely to vote similarly to the U.S. when their

leaders are from left-leaning parties, and that this relationship is particularly strong when the

U.S. President is a Republican. Dreher and Jensen (2012), in turn, demonstrate that when a

states leader is of similar political orientation (that is, left or right) as the U.S. President, the

country is more likely to vote similarly to the U.S.

whether voting dimensions and bloc membership have changed over time (e.g. Alker and Russett

1965, Kim and Russett 1996, Voeten 2000, Voeten 2004).

7A recent study by Ratner (2009) finds that democratic regime transitions lead to greater foreign

policy alignment with the U.S., but only if the U.S. had not previously supported the countrys

non-democratic leaders.


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While Hagan (1989), Potrafke (2009), and Dreher and Jensen (2012) direct attention to

the importance of domestic preferences and government policy orientation, they do not consider

the constraining effect of different domestic political structures. Yet, like Voeten, we believe that

state policy derives from the interaction between domestic interests and institutions. Our study

thus sets out to connect these two components of the domestic political process and to examine

their effect on voting in the UNGA, using a larger sample than previous studies as well as a new

measure of changes in domestic preferences and of UNGA voting. Unlike previously used

measures of UNGA voting, our measure does not depend on comparison between the voting

records of two states and thus allows us to disentangle which side is changing policy when two

states move apart. In addition, our measure is designed to be less sensitive to apparent changes

voting behavior that might only reflect differences in issues being considered by the UNGA from

one session to the next.

One thing to keep in mind when assessing the interaction of domestic political

preferences with institutions is that, in UNGA voting, the influence of executive constraints

should be somewhat muted in comparison to other policies like treaty formation or abrogation,

the waging of war, or trade policy.8

Most UN votes do not require much consultation with other

domestic actors directly. On the other hand, the appointment of UN ambassadors may be subject

to legislative confirmation or compromise with coalition partners, and many UN votes do pave

the way for foreign policy actions that require legislative action, for example treaty ratification or

8 Leeds, Mattes, and Vogel (2009) find that the effect of changes in the domestic sources of

leader support on the decisions of states to terminate alliances in violation of their terms is

conditional on political institutions. Democracies show little foreign policy change with changes

in the societal base of leader support in a highly institutionalized arena of foreign policy.


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budgetary appropriations. Furthermore, leaders who have difficulty engaging in political action

without the support of other actors will avoid casting unpopular votes in the General Assembly

in order to ensure domestic veto players support on issues where they do have a gate-keeping

role. Thus, the influence of executive constraints on UNGA voting should be lessened in

comparison to some other foreign policy actions, but not absent entirely. Since democratic

leaders both operate under conditions of higher executive constraint and derive their policy

preferences from the need to satisfy larger constituencies, we believe democracies should exhibit

more stability than non-democracies in UNGA voting patterns, but the distinction should be less

stark than in policy arenas in which other political actors have more direct influence on the

policy process, for instance, treaty formation.

In the next sections we describe our research design and test the following hypotheses:

H1: Leadership changes accompanied by changes in domestic sources of leader

support are associated with more change in the states UNGA voting pattern

than leadership changes that are not accompanied by changes in domestic

sources of leader support.

H2: Democratic states show more consistency in UNGA voting patterns across

all leadership changes than non-democratic states.

H3: The impact of changes in domestic sources of leader support on changes in

UNGA voting patterns is stronger in non-democracies than in democracies.

V. RESEARCH DESIGN

Our goal is to examine the impact of changes in leadership on foreign policy, and

specifically on UN voting. Following a number of recent studies, we adopt the leader as unit of

analysis in investigating foreign policy behavior (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003, McGillivray


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and Smith 2008, Goemans, Gleditsch, and Chiozza 2009). Thus, we compare the UN voting

pattern of each leader during her entire tenure to her predecessors record during his time in

office. We believe there are a number of advantages to this approach. First, it moderates the

effects of any short term spikes during a leaders tenure that might be driven by exogenous

factors that we do not control for. Second, a leader-based approach allows us to avoid imposing

a time range for how long it takes for a new leaders foreign policy to become apparent; while in

some systems change is immediate, in other systems it takes a while for the new leader to place

new representatives in policymaking positions and implement her preferred policies. Third, it

allows for a straightforward comparison of leadership transitions that are accompanied by

changes in the societal groups that support the leader and leadership transitions without such

changes. This provides evidence as to whether changes in supporting coalitions affect foreign

policy beyond the effect that leadership transitions alone might have.

Using information on leaders and the dates they were in office from Archigos (Goemans,

Gledistch, and Chiozza 2009), we compare the mean of a leaders ideal point across UN sessions

during her tenure to that of her predecessor.9 Since voting in the UNGA typically occurs late in

the year (October through December)10

, the countrys voting record in leader transition years is

9Archigos covers all independent countries from 1875-2004. Leadership transitions from 2005-

2008 are coded based on worldstatesmen.org. If a leader briefly loses power during the year but

then resumes office in time to affect UN voting we code the leader spell as continuing

throughout the year. This ensures that consecutive leader spells represent different leaders.

10Based on the Voeten and Merdzanovic (2008) data, we find that, during the 1985-2008 period,

December is the month with the highest number of votes (84%), followed by November with


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attributed to the new leader rather than her predecessor. The exceptions are leader transitions that

occur in the month of December. If a new leader comes to power after November 30th, it is

unlikely that she can assemble a team of UN diplomats and provide comprehensive instructions

in time to shape voting in the UNGA for that year. Thus, in the case of December leader

transitions we attribute the countrys voting record in that year to the leader in power before

December 1st. If there are multiple leader transitions in a given year, we code the leader in

power during November as the leader in charge of the countrys voting in that year.

Our data include a total 773 leaders over the 1985-2008 period. However, because we are

interested in the change in the leaders ideal point from her predecessors, the first leader for

each state during our observation period is dropped from the analysis.11

We also drop leaders

from countries that did not vote in the UNGA.12

Finally, we exclude interim leaders who do not

represent any particular societal groups but rather are tasked with maintaining the status quo until

a new regular leader takes office. This leaves us with 541 leaders from 147 countries.13

12% of votes, and then October with about 2%. The remaining 1.8% of votes occur outside the

regular session in the months January-September.

1115 countries were dropped entirely because they only had one leader throughout the 1985-

2008 period. These countries are Kosovo, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Cameroon, Gabon,

Somalia, Eritrea, Angola, Zimbabwe, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Oman, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan.

12 This includes four states: Montenegro, Kosovo, Taiwan, and East Timor.

1321% of countries have two regular (i.e. non-interim) leaders between 1985-2008, 17% have

three different leaders, 17% have four leaders, 19% have five leaders, and about 25% have six or

more leaders. The average number of years a leader controls voting in the UNGA is 4.36.


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Measuring Foreign Policy Changes Using UNGA Voting

Our interest is in detecting changes in foreign policy that may arise from changes in

political leadership. While individual UNGA votes do not necessarily capture specific foreign

policy action, we argue that the set of votes cast by a leader in the aggregate captures latent

tendencies in a nations grand strategy and international alignments, the notion of foreign policy

emphasized here. Behind the disparate topics on which votes occur is an underlying dimension

of international cooperation and conflict that reflects the broader foreign policy positions of

states, large and small.

We must therefore first construct a measure capable of capturing a latent foreign policy

tendency driving a large number of individual choices across a range of topics. Second, our

measure must be sensitive to short-term changes in foreign policy that could potentially vary

across any changes in leadership. Third, we must establish continuity across periods such that the

choices made in the UNGA are comparable from session to session, rather than subject to the

varying agenda of that body. For instance, in a given session, there might be many more votes

on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict compared to the next or previous session, which could

inaccurately be interpreted as a change in individual countries voting patterns. Finally, our

measure should detect change in each country without relying on relative similarity to any one

country. By tracking a countrys behavior only relative to the U.S., for instance, we lose the

ability to account for changes in the U.S. itself.14

14 Most scholars investigating change in UN voting have employed the affinity score (Gartzke

1998) to assess how alignment with the U.S. changes over time. A problem with this measure,

however, is that it does not take into account movement in the U.S. position itself. Like Voeten

(2004), we find that the U.S.s UNGA voting behavior has changed over time. For instance,


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We have created a new measure of revealed foreign policy preferences that attempts to

address each of these issues. We begin by estimating the ideal points of states using a spatial

voting model, specifically the item response theory model used by Clinton et al. (2004). The

spatial voting model is designed to capture underlying tendencies in voting patterns that occur on

an overarching dimension of conflict in a choice environment. This method is widely used for

uncovering latent ideological tendencies behind voting in legislative or judicial contexts and has

previously been applied to the UNGA (e.g. Voeten 2000, 2004, Reed et al. 2008).

We employ the Clinton et al. model in conjunction with an approach similar to that of

Bailey (2007), who uses votes that occur in multiple sessions to anchor the preference space.

This is designed to ensure that choices in different periods can be compared, despite changes in

the range of choices from session to session. Bailey uses the information from those questions on

which legislators had taken a position in multiple time periods as bridge votes. In a similar

vein, we fix the location of those UNGA resolutions that are considered in multiple sessions by

considering them as if they were a single item in the voting data. This provides the basis upon

which we link together each country-session across time. Except that these votes are fixed i.e.,

grouped across time into single votes our approach is otherwise a joint scaling of the entire

UNGA voting record within our sample, as if each country-session existed simultaneously in a

common preference space.

This approach is possible because of the high frequency with which the UNGA considers

the same resolutions. In the period under study, votes occurred on 293 resolutions that were not

George W. Bushs record was quite different from Clintons, and thus changes in similarity

between the voting records of other states and the U.S. might not reflect changes in the votes of

other states at all.


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unique. These resolutions were linked across time using the titles obtained from Voeten and

Merdzanovic (2008) as follows. First, we aligned each item with the same title. For instance,

each time the UNGA voted on a resolution entitled Prevention of an arms race in outer space,

we allowed this to function as effectively the same vote such that it would have a fixed

location in the preference space. Note that our sample is limited to 1985-2008 because only

these resolutions employed a system of UNGA resolution titles that makes this grouping

technique possible. To ensure consistency was maintained in the response, we then removed

from each set any resolutions for which substantial shifts in the numbers of yeas, nays, or

abstentions occurred relative to the adjacent years in that resolution group.

15

This process

produced 1,137 unique resolutions from a total of 2,099 resolutions.

With this unified matrix of votes in place, we estimate the ideal point for each country in

each session using a Bayesian MCMC simulation approach (Clinton et al. 2004, Jackman 2004).

We focus on the dichotomous choice between supporting resolutions or not supporting them,

which can manifest as either abstentions or formal no votes (with absences treated as missing

data).16 The result of this process is an estimate of the ideal point for each country in each

15To be as conservative as possible in treating multiple resolutions as single votes, we removed

dissimilar vote outcomes and allowed multiple groups with the same title when vote distributions

were dissimilar. We excluded the resolution from the group if the total of yes/no/abstain votes

was greater (less) than the median number of yes/no/abstain plus (minus) the standard deviation

of that set within the group. When the group contained more than five resolutions, this was done

using the median from the first five resolutions and again from the last five resolutions.

16As Voeten (2000, 193) explains, "since UNGA resolutions are not binding, what really matters

is whether or not a state is willing to go on the record for supporting a resolution."


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session that is comparable to their estimates in other sessions (i.e., on a common scale) yet

sensitive to any changes in each states pattern of voting relative to other states on the scale.17

From these ideal points, we generate a continuous measure of foreign policy change

across leadership periods. We first aggregate the data by averaging the ideal points across

sessions for each leadership period. We then construct a measure of UN voting change that

represents the absolute value of the difference between the mean ideal point of each leader

period and that of the previous leader period. This is our dependent variable in the analysis

below.

Measuring Changes in Domestic Sources of Leader Support and Regime Type

In order to assess the effect of changes in domestic interests on UNGA voting, we need to

identify instances in which a leader comes to power who has a different source of leader support

(SOLS) than her predecessor.18 The coding rules used to determine whether leadership changes

are accompanied by SOLS changes vary depending on regime type.19

Country-years are coded as

17The anchoring effect of the constraints we introduce provides sufficient consistency to produce

patterns similar to those in earlier work, such as Voeten (2004).

18To identify these cases, we build on the coding rules developed by Leeds et al. (2009), who

collected data on SOLS changes for countries with bilateral alliances between 1919-2003. We

extend their data by including all countries with a population larger than 500,000. Teams of

coders at two different universities coded each case. Inter-coder reliability was very high, with

agreement in 93.4% of state-years with leadership transitions during 1945-2008.

19Note that our coding is designed only to measure when a leader is replaced with a leader from

a distinct SOLS, as needed to test the hypotheses above. Given the wide range of domestic


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democratic if they have a POLITY IV democracy score of 6 or higher and non-democratic

otherwise (Marshall, Jaggers, and Gurr 2010).20

In democracies, we conceptualize a leaders SOLS as those who vote for or associate

with the leaders party. We follow the basic rule that whenever a leader with a different party

affiliation comes to power, this constitutes a SOLS change. In cases where a leader is an

independent we follow two rules: 1) if the new leader is the pre-designated successor of the old

leader, we code no SOLS change. Pre-designated successors are vice presidents, those appointed

by the outgoing leader, or relatives (brother, son) of the old leader; 2) if the voters who elected

both leaders are similar based on their regional, ethnic, class etc. characteristics, we also code no

SOLS change.

In non-democracies, the identification of SOLS changes is more challenging. Here we

rely primarily on Geddes, Wright, and Frantzs (2012) classification of post-1945 autocracies as

single-party, military, personalist, monarchical systems or combinations thereof. The use of this

categorization scheme is appropriate because their coding criteria emphasize control over

access to power and influence rather than formal institutional characteristics (Geddes 1999:

123). Geddes et al.s classifications are thus based on identification of the groups that form the

political environments represented in our broad sample of states, it is not possible to capture the

specific foreign policy preferences of each SOLS and thus to predict a direction of change.

20Interruptions (-66) or interregna (-77) are considered to be non-democratic years. Transition

periods (-88) are coded as democratic or non-democratic based on Cheibub et al. (2010).


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leaders support base and hold sway over policymaking. When these support bases change, we

should be more likely to observe shifts in foreign policy.21

Because in single-party systems consecutive leaders are accountable to the party cadre,

and because party elites are likely to share basic policy preferences over time, we code no SOLS

changes for the duration of a single-party regime. Similarly, we code no SOLS changes for the

duration of a single military regime. Studies suggest that military officers share an overarching

commitment to advancing the military interest, and military leaders depend heavily on the

support of other high-ranking military officers within their regime (Geddes 1999: 126). Thus,

different leaders within the same junta should not be expected to pursue different policies.

Sometimes, however, one military regime is replaced by a different military regime with a

support base that is regionally, ethnically or ideologically distinct. In these instances, we do

code a SOLS change. In personalist systems, because a leaders support group consists of a

clique of family and friends that are loyal to that particular leader, changes in leadership are

usually accompanied by changes in the source of leader support. Exceptions are pre-designated

successors who build on the outgoing leaders supporters and should continue to pursue policies

that are in the cliques interest. Thus, in personalist systems, we code SOLS changes if a new

leader who is not a pre-designated successor assumes office. In monarchies, if a ruler descends

from the same dynasty as her predecessor, the source of support is likely to stay the same. We

only code SOLS changes in monarchies when a leader transition is associated with the

ascendance of a new dynasty. Geddes et al. code some countries as hybrids of two or more of

21It is worth noting that some of these changes may entail institutional change as well within the

broader category of autocracies. Thus, it is probably not possible to disentangle all forms of

institutional changes in autocracies from simultaneous changes in the source of leader support.


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the above regime types. With some rare exceptions, we code no SOLS changes for the duration

of a single hybrid-regime.22

Some country-years cannot be classified according to the Geddes et al. scheme, however.

Most of these are country-years during which politics are in flux. Some of these cases are

characterized by warlordism (where no particular leader can be said to be in control of the entire

country and its policies) or foreign occupation (where no real domestic competition exists

because policies are directed by outsiders). We treat cases in which no domestic actor has clear

control over the foreign policy apparatus as experiencing no changes in domestic sources of

support during the period of incapacity. For countries that have functioning governments but

still display too much ambiguity to assign them to any of the Geddes et al. categories, we use a

pre-designated successor rule. SOLS changes are coded as occurring when the new leader is not

the pre-designated successor of the old leader.

Using these coding rules, we create a dummy variable, SOLS change, that is coded 1 if

the leaders SOLS is different than her predecessors.Democracy is coded 1 if the country is

democratic throughout the entire duration of the current leaders tenure and the entire duration of

her predecessors term. Only if the two leaders are operating in a stable democratic regime

should we see an attenuated effect of SOLS changes. If the current leader presides over a

democracy but her predecessor did not, we would expect a much more significant effect of SOLS

change on UN voting.

22 Geddes et al. do not code countries with populations below one million. We categorize nine

countries with populations between 500,000 and one million according to Geddes et al.s coding

scheme and code them based on the rules outlined above: Bahrain, Bhutan, Comoros, Cyprus,

Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Guyana, Qatar, and Solomon Islands.


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Of our 541 leadership periods, 305 were democratic both during the leaders tenure and

her predecessor's, 142 were non-democratic throughout the leaders tenure and her predecessors,

and in 94 cases either the current leader or her predecessor governed during a transition from

autocracy to democracy or vice versa. We find a greater number of leadership transitions in

democracies despite the fact that stable democracies (countries that are democratic throughout

our observation period) make up only 31% of countries in our data. Stable democracies have on

average 4.6 leaders, while other countries average 3.3 leaders, a statistically significant

difference.23

Democracies also experience significantly more SOLS changes than non-

democracies. Among the 305 democratic leadership periods, 202 represent SOLS changes.

Among the 236 non-democratic or regime transition leadership periods, 138 represent SOLS

changes.

Control Variables

While our main focus is on the effect of SOLS changes in democracies and non-

democracies, we also conduct analyses including three control variables. Two of these variables

capture different aspects of how the Cold War and its ending may have affected UNGA voting.

Under the rigid bipolar structure of the Cold War, international pressures to vote consistently

with ones bloc constrained a countrys ability to change its positions. In some countries, Cold

War politics even constrained domestic change itself. To account for systematic differences

23 29% of countries in our sample were consistently non-democratic, while 41% experienced

regime transitions. The twenty-four year period under observation is an era of significant

domestic change as a result of the Third Wave of Democratization as well as some reversals to

non-democracy. The average number of leaders in consistently non-democratic countries is 2.2,

while it is 4 in countries that experienced regime transitions.


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between the Cold War and post-Cold War periods, we create a Cold War Periodvariable that is

coded 1 for leaders that end their term before 1990. Only 23 leaders completed their term before

the Cold War ended.

It is important not only to capture the different structure of international constraints

before and after 1990, but also to account for the short-term effect of the end of the Cold War.

The fall of the Iron Curtain was a watershed event that led both to significant international

realignments and to domestic political changes in a number of countries. To ensure that we do

not falsely attribute changes in UNGA voting to SOLS changes, when really both were due to

the massive changes in the international system, we include a control for whether the current

leader is the first post-Cold War leader. This dummy variable,FirstPost-Cold War, is coded 1 if

the predecessors term was completed before 1990, but the new leaders term included 1990.In

the data, 69 leaders are coded as first post-Cold War leaders based on our operationalization.

In addition to accounting for the dynamics associated with the Cold War and its

termination, we also control for regime change. Regime transitions from democracy to autocracy

and vice versa constitute significant changes in a countrys institutional rules that are likely to

affect UN voting. Regime transitions also often involve changes in the source of leader support.

Thus, in cases of regime change, it is difficult to disentangle the effects of new institutions from

the effects of changes in the leaders societal support base. Yet, while regime transitions are

usually accompanied by SOLS changes, SOLS changes also occur quite frequently in the

absence of this kind of dramatic institutional change.24 By controlling for transitions between

24We code a SOLS change in 91% of the cases where a leader came to power heading a new

regime type, but only 16% of SOLS changes occurred when there was also a regime change. The

correlation between SOLS change and regime change is 0.21.


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democracy and autocracy, we provide a more conservative test that is better at isolating the pure

effects of changes in sources of leader support. Regime change is coded 1 if there is a change in

a countrys POLITY IV democracy score from 6 or above to below 6 or vice versa when the

leader assumes office. Of the total 541 leader periods, 58 experience such a regime transition.

VI. EMPIRICAL RESULTS

We begin our analysis with a simple regression model that includes our main theoretical

variables of interest, SOLS change and democracy, and the control variables. Our dependent

variable, the absolute change in UNGA voting between the current leader and her predecessor, is

logged in order to approximate a normal distribution.

25

All models also include state-level

random intercepts. This allows us to account for unmeasured factors associated with states, while

allowing even states with very few leadership changes to have a meaningful basis of comparison.

TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE

Table 1 shows that, in line with Hypothesis 1, leadership changes that coincide with

SOLS changes lead to greater shifts in UN voting than leadership changes in which the new

leader has the same societal base of support as her predecessor.26 We also find that, consistent

with Hypothesis 2, our democracy variable has a statistically significant negative effect on

change in a states UNGA voting. That is, leadership changes in continuing democracies are

25Because some values are near zero, we add a constant (0.01) to this variable before logging.

26As a robustness check, we used a variable that includes cases where, in parliamentary

democracies, junior partners enter or leave the coalition. Results are similar to those presented.


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generally less likely to lead to changes in UN alignment than leadership transitions in non-

democracies.27

In order to establish how the SOLS change effect differs between the two regime types,

we split the sample between democracies (Model 2) and non-democracies(Model 3). Unlike the

democratic sample, which includes only cases in which the current and previous leader both

presided over a democracy, the non-democratic sample may include leader transitions that were

accompanied by regime changes so we control for regime transitions in this set.28 We find that

the effect of SOLS changes is not statistically significant within the sample of democracies.

However, SOLS changes have a statistically significant positive effect on change in UNGA

voting when the leader transition involves leaders of non-democracies.That is, the overall effect

of SOLS changes, shown in Model 1, is being driven mostly by SOLS changes occurring in non-

democracies. Regime transitions that are not SOLS-changes, meanwhile, have no effect in this

sample (or in the other models).

Hypothesis 3 also implies that democracies should display greater foreign policy stability

than non-democracies when leadership changes coincide with changes in the source of leader

27Recall that democracy in this context refers to cases that were democratic across the period

of change, while non-democratic can refer either to cases where both leaders ruled autocracies or

where either leader presided over a regime transition from democracy to autocracy or vice versa.

28 We also conducted analyses where we focused on transitions from one non-democratic leader

to another, excluding leader changes that coincided with regime transitions. The results hold. The

results for models 1 & 6 are also very similar whether cases of regime transitions are included or

excluded. We are thus confident that we are capturing differences between democracies and non-

democracies rather than between democracies and transitional regimes.


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support. Models 4 and 5 examine this proposition by splitting the sample into those leadership

periods that began with SOLS changes (Model 4) and other leader changes (Model 5). We find

that, compared to non-democracies, continuing democracies are significantly less likely to

experience shifts in their UN voting patterns when a new leader with a different societal support

base comes to power. They are, however, no more stable than non-democracies when leaders

with the same domestic support base as their predecessors assume office. While this is

consistent with the logic of Hypothesis 3, this suggests that the relative stability of democracies

predicted by Hypothesis 2 (and found in Model 1) is driven by those cases in which a change in

leadership results in a change in the source of leader support.

29

In the final model, Model 6, we examine the size of the difference in the SOLS change

effect between regime types, using the full sample and interacting the SOLS change and

democracy variables. The interaction term is negative as expected but not statistically significant

at conventional levels, indicating that the effect of SOLS change in democracies and non-

democracies is not statistically different. While we cannot reject the hypothesis that SOLS

changes have similar mean effects in democracies and non-democracies, it does appear that the

effect of SOLS changes is more robust in non-democracies than in democracies. Mirroring the

split sample results, the results in Model 6 suggest that we can reject the null hypothesis of no

effect of SOLS changes on changes in UNGA voting more confidently in non-democracies

(p=0.016) than in democracies (p=0.084). Furthermore, we observe that continuing democracies

29We also compared variation in UNGA voting within leader terms across regime type. Non-

democratic leaders display significantly more volatility in ideal points over their tenure than

democratic leaders, even controlling for the number of years in office.


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display more stability in the face of SOLS changes (p=0.020) while there is no real difference

between democracies and non-democracies when there is no SOLS change.

As for the effects of the other control variables described above Cold War Period, and

First Post-Cold War, the only one of these variables to have a statistically significant effect on

UN voting isFirst Post Cold War.30

Models 2 and 3 indicate that this effect is driven by leaders

in non-democracies, where leaders that were in power in the immediate aftermath of the Cold

War pursued a foreign policy that was distinct from their Cold War predecessors. These leaders,

some of whom weathered the transition into the new era and some of whom came to power right

after the end of the Cold War, were clearly facing a radically different international environment.

As traditional IR theories would predict, the profound changes in the structure of the

international system exerted significant influence on a number of countries foreign policy

positions. Interestingly, the magnitude of the effect of the end of the cold war on UNGA voting

is quite similar to the effect of changes in the domestic sources of leader support. This lends

30 In order to ensure that we have captured most of the exogenous factors behind change in our

dependent variable, we examined a model controlling for the average change in the dependent

variable for the year of a leadership change, as well as dummies for each region. Neither of

these substantially affect the results presented. We also ran a model controlling for changes in a

countrys power. For this measure, we averaged the predecessors composite indicator of

national capability (CINC) score over his tenure and then subtracted that quantity from the

leaders average CINC score (Singeret al. 1972). There are few cases that experience significant

changes in power and this measure is not a significant predictor of UN voting change. Our main

conclusions hold when this measure is included, but missing data for the year 2008 leads us to

lose observations.


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support to the notion that changes in the leaders source of societal backing can be important

factors in explaining foreign policy change.

The overall pattern we uncover is that, in non-democracies, SOLS changes exert a

significant effect on UN voting change and non-democratic institutions do little to constrain this

effect. In democracies, SOLS changes may also lead to foreign policy change, but this effect

appears to be somewhat less significant. Democratic institutions successfully mitigate the effect

of SOLS changes on foreign policy and thus promote greater consistency. Our findings are

nicely illustrated by two examples from Iran and Australia.

One of the more significant shifts in UN voting in our data is connected to the 2005

transition from Khatami to Ahmadinejad in Iran. While Supreme Leader Khamenei possesses

ultimate authority over Irans foreign policy, these two presidents were able to leave their own

marks on Irans stance in the international arena. The Khatami government generally took a

more conciliatory approach to the West and embraced aspects of globalization, while

Ahmadinejad is a staunch anti-Americanist, famous for his tirades in the UNGA. As a reformist,

Khatami relied on the support of technocrats, younger entrepreneurs, and bazaar (bazaari)

merchants and traders pressing for decreased state control, [seeking] privatization, increased

trade with Europe and Asia, a utilitarian over an ideological approach to foreign policy, and

decreased tensions with international institutions (Solingen 2007, 178) as well as women and

the youth who did not share the same revolutionary fervor as their parents. Ahmadinejad, on the

other hand, has the support of the Revolutionary Guards, paramilitary youth groups, and social

conservatives among the clergy and bazaari. In favor of these groups, Ahmadinejad opted for

inward-looking economic policies. Even Irans nuclear policy can be seen as advancing his


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supporters interests. Sanctions shelter their businesses from competition and allow them to

benefit from selling banned products (Solingen 2007, 180-181).

By contrast, consider the example of constrained change in a democratic regime seen in

the recent politics of Australia. After the 2007 transition from the center-right Liberal Party

(John Howard) to the center-left Labor Party (Kevin Rudd), the new government made a

noteworthy foreign policy shift by reversing the policy of the previous government and voting

against the Israeli position on several UNGA resolutions related to settlements in Palestinian

territories (Hudson, 2008). However, Australias overall pattern of voting remained fully

consistent with the position of the previous government, including in support of Israel on many

other resolutions.

VII. CONCLUSION

International relations scholarship has traditionally been more successful at explaining

foreign policy continuity rather than change. Part of the problem lies in the excessive focus on

the structure of the international system and basic state characteristics like power and geographic

position. Given the relatively immutable nature of these factors, they explain continuity well but

fall short if the goal is to predict change. The basic premise of this paper is that if we want to

understand foreign policy change we need to consider domestic political processes. Domestic

changes that bring to power new leaders with different societal support groups can be a powerful

source of change. If leaders represent different interests and preferences than their predecessors,

they may opt to pursue a distinct foreign policy course. Yet, the extent to which such changes in

leader support entail shifts in foreign policy should also depend on the domestic institutional

context, with democratic institutions mitigating against excessive change and non-democratic

institutions allowing new leaders greater leeway in the re-direction of foreign policy.


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Our empirical focus in this study lies in explaining changes in countries UN voting

patterns. Voting in the UNGA is not only a frequently used measure of foreign policy

preferences, but it is also particularly useful for gauging the effect of domestic political changes

on foreign policy. The opportunity to vote in the UNGA occurs under virtually every domestic

leader, and voting is a monadic activity. Leaders are constrained by international law when it

comes to changing policies enshrined in treaties, but there are no such constraints on UN voting.

This suggests that new leaders have more leeway in changing foreign policy positions in the UN

than elsewhere. It also means that any stability that we observe is likely to have been induced by

domestic institutions rather than international ones.

Using a new measure of change in UNGA voting over the 1985-2008 time period and

new data on changes in leaders sources of domestic support, we find that SOLS changes are

consistently a significant predictor of foreign policy change in non-democracies but not in

democracies. Democracies also display greater foreign policy consistency in the face of SOLS

changes than non-democracies. Interestingly, however, it appears that the difference between

democracies and non-democracies is not as pronounced in this relatively unconstrained area of

foreign policy as a previous study has shown it to be in the highly legalized arena of military

alliances (Leeds, Mattes, and Vogel 2009). Democracies seem to be more responsive to shifting

domestic preferences in areas of foreign policy that are subject to fewer domestic and

international political constraints, but, even in these areas, democracies do display a greater

foreign policy consistency than non-democracies. Leaders in democratic regimes may therefore

not face a dilemma between responsiveness to domestic interests and maintaining stable foreign

policy.


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Our study supports a perspective that views foreign policymaking even in the high

politics arena as intertwined with the domestic policymaking process, whereby groups compete

to advance their interests and implement their preferred policies within given institutional rules.

The fact that foreign policy generally involves strategic interaction with other states does affect

both domestic competition over foreign policy and ultimate policy choices, but politics does not

entirely stop at the waters edge. This suggests that policymakers hoping to predict foreign

policy change should pay particular attention to the dynamics of domestic political competition

and leadership selection, particularly in non-democracies.


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Table 1. Change in UNGA Voting Between Leaders as a Function of SOLS Change and

Regime Type, 1985-2008

(1)All Cases

(2)Dem.

(3)Non-Dem.

(4)SOLS

Changes

(5)Non-SOLS

LeaderChanges

(6)All Cases

SOLS Change 0.229*** 0.176 0.274** 0.282**(0.081) (0.111) (0.118) (0.117)

Democracy -0.210** -0.285*** -0.122 -0.160(0.089) (0.109) (0.146) (0.133)

Democracy X SOLS Change -0.090

(0.161)Cold War Period 0.016 -0.269 0.185 -0.009 0.047 0.016(0.237) (0.319) (0.316) (0.351) (0.352) (0.237)

First Post-Cold War 0.253* -0.097 0.512*** 0.128 0.398** 0.250*(0.134) (0.222) (0.159) (0.185) (0.165) (0.135)

Regime Transition 0.179 0.187 0.116 0.404 0.156(0.148) (0.146) (0.164) (0.446) (0.148)

Constant -1.554*** -1.687*** -1.623*** -1.252*** -1.619*** -1.579***(0.091) (0.096) (0.107) (0.093) (0.120) (0.103)

Observations 541 305 236 340 201 541

Number of Countries 147 82 100 115 102 147Robust standard errors in parentheses

*** p

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