Cold-War Cleavages as Seen from the United Nations General Assembly: 1947-1967

TLDR: In this article, a cold-war study of the nations of the world based upon roll call votes cast in the United Nations General Assembly between 1947 and 1967 is presented, focusing on the East-West orientation of individual states and groups of states.

Abstract: T his is a cold-war study of the nations of the world based upon roll-call votes cast in the United Nations General Assembly between 1947 and 1967. Its major purpose is to shed light upon the East-West orientation of individual states and groups of states and, only incidentally, on the orientation of the world organization itself. The Assembly serves here mainly as a stage, as a convenient and strategic meeting hall for observing the reactions of states to this crucial issue. Some 330 roll calls on the cold war were employed to construct indexes to gauge the cold-war policies of states and groups of states thought relevant to the cold war and to test the homogeneity of these groups. The relation between this issue and others that have come before the Assembly was tested by the use of correlations (250 more roll calls were used here). Roll calls have been used in other published writings to shed light upon foreign policy, and their use for this purpose has been defended.' A unique feature of the present study, however, is its formulation of yearly