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BJPIR: 2013

doi: 10.1111/1467-856X.12019

Foreign Policy Convergence in Pacific

Asia: The Evidence from Voting in the
UN General Assembly
Peter Ferdinand
Research Highlights and Abstract
Research Highlights

Comparative assessment of three indexes of voting cohesion

Demonstrates the strong shared orientation towards global affairs among states in the
Pacific Asian region, especially ASEAN and China, which is greater than that of the
EU
Shows the widespread reluctance of most Pacific Asian states publicly to criticize
human rights abuses
Shows the estrangement of the US from the foreign policy orientations of Pacific
Asian states, even Japan and South Korea

This article aims to do three things: (i) compare three different indexes for assessing the voting
cohesion of regional groups of states in the UN General Assembly; (ii) use these indexes to assess the
foreign policy convergence of states in Pacific Asia on global issues between 1974 and 2008; (iii)
compare the extent of that convergence with the European Union (EU). All three indexes show a
high degree of convergence in the voting records of states in Pacific Asia, but particularly in ASEAN,
which is higher than in the EU. The most frequent cause of divergence since the end of the Cold War
has been the reluctance of most states in the region, apart from Japan and South Korea, publicly
to criticize the human rights records of other states. Although there are variations, the results also
reveal the divergence in voting between states throughout the region and the US.

Keywords: United Nations General Assembly; Pacific Asia; Voting cohesion

indexes

Introduction
Over the last two decades the role of regional organizations in global governance
has attracted increasing scholarly attention (Fawcett and Hurrell 1995; Hettne et al.
1999; Breslin et al. 2002; Katzenstein 2005). One facet of this has been a focus on
dimensions of region-ness. There is now a substantial literature on its dimensions
and how it can be measured. Most of it focuses on internal indices, particularly
measures of economic and fiscal integration among a group of countries. At the
same time, one other feature of regionalism is the extent to which a group of states
is perceived by others to form a regional bloc or to act as one on the international
stage. This article will focus on the latter approach, and it will use longitudinal
evidence from voting in the UN General Assembly to assess degrees of cohesion.
2013 The Author. British Journal of Politics and International Relations 2013
Political Studies Association

PETER FERDINAND

This is not an indicator that is included in the standard compendium of articles on

measures of region-ness (Lombaerde 2006), though the principle has inspired
analysis for over forty years.
Since the Vietnam War the concept of an East Asian or Pacific Asian region has
gained increasing acceptance, as analysts both inside the region and outside have
focused upon the trends of growing regionalization and regionalism. Over the past
20 years a substantial literature has grown up documenting the increasing interaction between states in the region (Pempel 2004; Dent 2008; Acharya 2009b;
Beeson and Stubbs 2012). Now works also evoke notions of a more substantial
Pacific community in the making, energized by the hopes of some for a Pacific
century (Mori and Hirano 2007; Acharya 2009a). This analysis has also extended
to coverage, though more limited, of the extent and the ways in which the region
interacts with the rest of the world (Segal 1990; McDougall 2007; Yahuda 2011).
This literature on regionalism in Pacific Asia has focused upon two main themes.
The first is the evidence of increasing interdependence of trading relations. Intraregional trade has risen from 33 per cent of total exports of all the states in the
region in 1980 to 46 per cent in 2008 (Ferdinand 2012, 340), followed by a
proliferation of free trade agreements between states in the region (Dent 2008;
Searight 2009).
The second theme is the creation of region-wide fora to consider and debate issues
of common concern. The most obvious manifestations of this are the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (founded 1967), the broader East Asian Summit
(founded 2005) and the trilateral summit for Northeast Asia (founded 2008)
(Emmers 2012) These have also spawned an increasing range of associated annual
meetings to involve government officials and, increasingly, civil society organizations to debate issues of common concern.
But to what extent do Pacific Asian states act as a coherent group in global
diplomatic terms? Obviously there is the institution of the ASEAN Regional Forum
(ARF), which acts as the primary institution concerned with regional security
matters, and the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) which organizes annual meetings with
various partners from around the world such as the EU, but neither are concerned
with broader global solutions. How else can this be assessed? One solution is to use
the evidence from voting by these states in the UN General Assembly (GA). To what
extent do Pacific Asian states act in a concerted fashion there? The significance of
the GA is that, according to Gordenker, cited in Smith (2006a, 148): The United
Nations General Assembly represents the organized views of more governments on
more subjects than any periodic gathering in the world ... Its agenda always
contains the unconquered difficulties of past years and the new issues of recent
weeks. In addition, as Riggs et al. (2004, 85) point out, [m]any countries feel
compelled to formulate policy on particular issues that never would have concerned them except for their participation in the United Nations. Boorckmann and
Dreher (2011, 462) conclude: Voting [in the UN GA] appears to be expressive
rather than instrumental. They add that cohesion within regional groups is clearly
important in determining those decisions.
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Of course, the United Nations does not deal with every single issue in world affairs,
so generalizations based upon voting there need to be qualified. In general, for
example, the GA passes relatively few resolutions on economic development,
focusing more upon international security and human rights. So voting in the UN
General Assembly is not a comprehensive reflection of the full range of foreign
policy concerns of all states, or of the balance of priorities of individual states.
Nevertheless voting cohesion there is still a very good indicator of common positions on the widest range of global issues.
The rest of this article will concentrate upon the GA voting records of the Pacific
Asian states, which it will analyse using three different indexes of voting cohesion.
Then later it will compare the cohesion record of Pacific Asian states with that of the
European Union so as to calibrate more precisely the extent of convergence among
the Pacific Asian states, before stating its conclusions. It will take 1974 as the
starting point, the year when the Peoples Republic of China began to take effective
part in UN activities after it was originally admitted in 1971. This year also only
marginally precedes the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation signed in Bali in 1976 by
the five original members of ASEAN formally to strengthen their collaboration. This
codified six common principleswhat came to be known as the ASEAN waythe
last of which is a commitment to effective cooperation. We will take 2008 as the
end point of analysis, because this is the year when the database that we are using
ended (Voeten and Merdzanovic 2009). By taking this long view, we should be able
to establish both enduring patterns of relations and significant variations or
changes. At the same time, to try to identify change over time we have divided the
whole period into two almost equal halves: 197490 and 19912008. The intermediate date was chosen for two reasons. Firstly, 1991 saw the collapse of the
Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War that had polarized so much of international politics for half a century, so it is a natural break point. Secondly, 1991 was
also the year when the two Korean states were admitted to the UN.

Assessing Voting Cohesion in the UN General Assembly

Before analysing the voting records of Pacific Asian states, we should outline some
basic features about patterns of voting in the UN General Assembly. It is important
to emphasize that the following analysis will only focus on votes on resolutions. It
will ignore other votes. Between two thirds and four fifths of all the resolutions in
the GA are passed by consensus or without a vote (Murthy 1993, 22; Riggs et al.
2004, 125). When votes are taken, most states vote in favour. In the period between
1974 and 2008 there were altogether 3384 issues put to the vote, though states
occasionally missed individual votes. This divides into 2079 in the period 197490
and 1305 in the period 19912008. On average there are between 60 and 150 such
votes in any one year. Overall 511,292 votes were cast by individual states, whether
positive, negative or abstentions. Of these 83.7 per cent were yes, 4.6 per cent
were no, and 11.7 per cent were abstentions. This demonstrates the extent to
which the GA generally operates in a consensual fashion. Table 1 presents the
relevant comparable data for individual Pacific Asian states. This article will only
analyse the data from occasions when votes were split. It will ignore the resolutions
passed without a vote, because the latter do not contribute to our understanding of
the coherence of separate regional groupings.
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PETER FERDINAND

Table 1: Patterns of UN General Assembly Voting by

Pacific Asian States, 19742008 (in Per cent)

Brunei*
Cambodia
China
Indonesia
Japan
Korea (North)
Korea (South)
Laos
Malaysia
Myanmar
Philippines
Singapore
Thailand
Vietnam
UK
USA
World

Yes

Abstain

No

93.2
95.5
88.1
93.2
57.3
86.5
66.9
91.5
93.5
87.7
93.1
90.5
92.8
90.7
41.8
20.2
83.7

5.5
3.8
9.1
4.4
33.1
7.7
27.6
5.8
5.1
10.8
5.9
9.0
6.7
5.4
32.7
23.6
11.7

1.3
0.7
2.8
2.4
9.6
5.8
5.5
2.7
1.5
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.6
3.9
25.4
56.2
4.6

* Since 1984

Since 1991

Did the pattern of voting change as a result of the end of the Cold War, since it had
polarized the world community? In the period 19741991 inclusive, 85.1 per cent
of votes were yes, 3.9 per cent were no, with 11 per cent abstentions. In the
period 19922008 there were 81.6 per cent positive votes, 5.7 per cent negative
ones, and 12.8 per cent abstentions. This shows that the General Assembly has
become a little less consensual since the collapse of the communist regimes in the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but only marginally so.
As for systematically analysing the voting cohesion of states in the UN General
Assembly, there is now a substantial literature (e.g. Lijphart 1963; Powers 1980;
Holloway 1990; Kim and Russett 1996; Voeten 2000; Volgy et al. 2003), though
most analyse much shorter runs of data than are considered here. The field has
been surveyed in two recent studies (Di Mauro 2009; Hosli et al. 2010). This article
will follow the strategy of Hosli et al., which focused on the voting behaviour of
predetermined regional groupings, because it gives greater insight into the potential
of such groupings for a durable impact upon global governance.
Within this strategy two possible approaches can be adopted to assess cohesion. The
first involves taking the votes of all the states in a predetermined group on an
issue-by-issue basis and then averaging their score over the whole of a given period.
For this approach two formulae have been proposed: the Agreement Index (AI) and
the Cohesion Index (CI).
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PACIFIC ASIAN VOTING AT THE UN

The formula for the AI is the following (Hix et al. 2005):

MAX (Y , N , A) 0.5[(Y + N + A) MAX (Y , N , A)]

Y +N+A
where MAX(Y, N, A) refers to the highest number of votes on a particular resolution
from all the states in the group, whether it is yes (Y), no (N) or abstain (A). As
can be seen, it counts cohesion on a particular choice of vote equally, whether it is
yes, no or abstain. The score has then been multiplied by 100 to make it directly
comparable with the results of the other indexes. The range of possible cohesion
thus runs from 0 (complete lack of cohesion) to 100 (perfect cohesion). Perfect
cohesion is obtained only when the votes for each of the three alternatives were
absolutely equal. If there are equal scores for yes and no, but no one abstained,
that will still produce a score that is higher than zero (because the states at least
cohered in not choosing to abstain) but less than one hundred.
AI =

The formula for the CI is:

CI = AVx 0.5 2 100

where AVx represents the average vote across the group on resolution x (Hosli et al.
2010).
The second approach leads to the third index, the Index of Voting Cohesion (IVC),
and it is a two-step process. The first step is to compare the similarity in voting
records of all the states in a group on a pair-by-pair basis. The second step is to
average the scores of all these pairings across the whole group. It was originally
advocated in Lijphart (1963) and was then formulated in Hurwitz (1975, 228229)
as follows:

IVC =

( f + 0.5 g ) 100

t
where f denotes the number of cases when a particular pair of countries vote
exactly the same way, whether yes, no or abstain; g denotes the number of cases
when one of the states votes yes or no, whilst the other abstains; and t denotes
the total number of votes in which that pair of states participated. Thus it ignores
the occasions when two states vote the opposite way. As can be seen, this Index
differs from the other two in one other respect. It scales an abstention as half as
important as a definite vote, whether positive or negative, if only one of the two
states votes that way, so it does not regard an abstention as effectively equivalent to
a no vote, as some analysts have done.

Pacific Asian Voting in the General Assembly

Tables 24 show the figures for the voting records of Pacific Asian states according
to the three indexes presented above.
The first thing to note is the high degree of continuity in voting patterns that they
present both for the region as a whole and for sub-regions throughout the whole
period 19742008. The countries constituting Northeast Asia in the UN are China,
Japan, North Korea and South Korea. In practice, of course, this region only
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PETER FERDINAND

Table 2: Adhesion Index scores for UNGA Voting of

Pacific Asian States
19741990 19912008 19742008
Pacific Asia
NE Asia
SE Asia
SE Asia + China

83.82
67.56
91.61
90.74

83.22
68.18
93.09
92.07

83.59
67.80
92.19
91.26

Table 3: Cohesion Index Scores for UNGA Voting of

Pacific Asian States
19741990 19912008 19742008
Pacific Asia
NE Asia
SE Asia
SE Asia + China

86.68
68.01
91.87
91.29

86.17
71.22
92.29
91.96

86.48
69.25
92.03
91.55

Table 4: IVC Scores for UNGA Voting of Pacific

Asian States

Pacific Asia
NE Asia
SE Asia

19741990

19912008

19742008

90.65
70.94
94.86

90.24
79.36
96.08

89.58
79.23
95.36

amounted to China and Japan for the period 197490, because the two Koreas
were only admitted in 1991. Those constituting Southeast Asia are Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore,
Thailand and Vietnam, though Brunei was only admitted to the UN in 1984. Five
(Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand) founded ASEAN in
1967, to be later joined by Brunei (1984), Vietnam (1995), Laos and Myanmar
(1997) and Cambodia (1999).
The second thing that these figures demonstrate is the high degree of agreement
between results from the three indexes. Although there are very marginal differences between the results of the AI and CI indexes, and somewhat greater ones
between the two of them and the IVC, the overall picture is very similar and very
consistent.
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PACIFIC ASIAN VOTING AT THE UN

The third thing to observe is the high degree of harmonization of policy stances that
characterizes the voting of states throughout the region for the whole of the period.
All three indexes show figures of well over 80 per cent for the region as a whole.
Fourthly, there is a striking disparity between the records of the states in Northeast
and in Southeast Asia. The figures show clearly the fact that Pacific Asia is divided
clearly into two sub-regions as far as voting in the UN General Assembly is concerned.
ASEAN is the more integrated of the two and has become a little more integrated
recently. This is despite its shortcomings as a coordinator of foreign policyaccording
to Dent (2012, 271), the organization lacks the representative and interlocutor
capacity to champion the regions interests externally. Although the Bali Treat of
1976 made effective cooperation one of the basic principles of ASEAN, the organization has not officially attempted to integrate the foreign policies of member states
as the EU has done since 1993. Nevertheless, one of the first things that ASEAN
members did after 1976 was to establish an ASEAN contact point within their
respective foreign ministries. The regular consultations between them no doubt
explain the high degree of GA voting cohesion demonstrated in Tables 24.
By contrast Northeast Asia is less integrated as a region. In one sense this is not
surprising since for the period 19741990 it was only represented in the UN by
China and Japan, and relations between them still remain somewhat fraught.
However, as Table 4 shows, the admission of the two Koreas to the UN has reinforced this division in the more recent period.
Fifthly there was a very marginal reduction in convergence for the region as a whole
in the period 19912008 as compared with 19741990. However, within that overall
picture each sub-region shows slightly greater convergence over the two periods.
This means that the differences between Northeast and Southeast Asia have become
slightly more pronounced, although as we shall see later China is effectively the
hinge between the two sub-regions in that its own voting record diverges less from
each of them. In particular the figures in Tables 2 and 3 show that the cohesion of the
ASEAN members is only one per cent greater than the cohesion of ASEAN and China
combined. This suggests that China is better placed than Japan to provide leadership
in setting the orientation of the region towards global issues, if ASEAN itself cannot
provide it, and if the strident territorial disputes between China and some ASEAN
states can be resolveda big if. It reinforces the claim by Thomas (2012, 138) that
the China-ASEAN relationship is the key nexus for wider moves towards Asian
regionalism. It confirms the conclusion of Goh (2012, 115) that ASEAN has found
a major normative ally in Beijing. Conversely Acharya (2009a, 227) reminds us:
China needs ASEANs acquiescence to realize its leadership ambition in Asia and the
world. Its relationship with ASEAN is a test case of Beijings credibility as an engaged
and constructive world power. All of this points to a more solid impact of China and
ASEAN on global affairs. By contrast Japan, the other potential leader of Pacific Asia,
agrees much less with the ASEAN states and China.

How Exceptional is Pacific Asian Voting Cohesion?

Is the record of cohesion of Pacific Asian voting in the General Assembly exceptional? How does it compare, for example, with the EU? As has already been
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PETER FERDINAND

Table 5: Adhesion Index Scores for UNGA Voting of

the EU 12, 19742008

EU 12

19741990

19912008

19742008

74.49

91.51

81.05

mentioned, a great deal of the work on regional voting cohesion in the GA has been
devoted to examining the record of the EU there (e.g. Hurwitz 1975; Strmvik
1998; Luif 2003; Johansson-Nogues 2004; Young and Rees 2005; Smith 2006b;
Smith and Laatikainen 2006). There is no doubt about the intention of the EU to
move towards more integrated positions, especially since the Treaty of Maastricht in
1993. EU delegations at the UN now meet regularly to coordinate their positions as
far as possible.
Table 5 presents the figures for the voting records of the 12 states that were
members of the EU in 1991the date that we have chosen for the beginning of the
most recent period for analysing the Pacific Asian states. These states are: Belgium,
Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands,
Portugal, Spain, and the UK.
Table 5 shows firstly that in the earlier period the positions of the EU 12 converged
significantly less than those in Pacific Asia as a whole, though not surprisingly they
converged more than China and Japan. However, over the period 19912008 the
EU 12 developed significantly greater integration than Pacific Asia as a whole,
where their scores were 91.51 as compared with 83.22. This demonstrates that the
EU states now display more coordination on global issues at the UN than does
Pacific Asia as a whole.
On the other hand it is striking that despite all the efforts to coordinate the positions
of the EU 12, they still fall below the degree of cohesion of the ASEAN members.
The scores for the latter are 92.86 as compared with 92.19 even though, according
to Tan (2011, 156), ASEAN is best designed for a minimalist brand of regionalism.
Yet at the UN it presents a more uniform face to the rest of the world than does the
EU.

Voting Divergences in Pacific Asia

Having demonstrated the high and enduring degree of voting cohesion among
Pacific Asian states, there still remains the question of the issues that cause persisting differences. What patterns can be identified here? The only Index that can
throw light on this is the IVC, because its foundation is pair-wise comparison of the
voting records of all the states in a given group, before these figures are aggregated
into an overall composite score.
Hosli et al. (2010) suggest that although the IVC is an elegant way of assessing
cohesion, it is also time-consuming, requiring as it does comparison of voting
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PACIFIC ASIAN VOTING AT THE UN

patterns by all pairs of states in a given set. They do not recommend using it for
large samples of states, and that advice is well-taken. On the other hand this
method does have the merit of facilitating the identification of differential patterns
of voting within groups of states that would otherwise be subsumed in an overall
score, as can be seen from Table 6, which presents the raw pair-wise data that are
combined in Table 4.
There are noticeable and surprising clusters of similar votes between certain pairs of
states within a region. It is Northeast Asia that brings this out most clearly. On the
one hand Japan and South Korea are much more prone to vote the same way than
they are with the other two states, i.e. China and North Korea. This is striking, since
the existing literature on relations between Japan and South Korea tends to stress
the differences rather than the convergences. South Korean politicians and nationalists still regularly protest statements from Japanese politicians that seem to play
down Japans responsibility for atrocities committed during WWII and its colonial
rule. The territorial dispute over the Dokdo/Takeshima islands can regularly arouse
nationalist passions on both sides. Yet those disputes, whilst certainly highly
charged emotionally, should be seen within the context of much greater convergence of views on global affairs between their two governments than is usually
recognized.
Similarly China and North Korea form another pairing in Northeast Asia that vote
similarly extremely oftenindeed their scores are almost identical to those for
Japan and South Korea. Between 1991 and 2008 they voted opposite ways only ten
times. This is perhaps not so surprising, given the extent to which the North Korean
regime, isolated as it is, depends upon China for support of all kinds. Yet what is also
striking is the convergence in voting that also takes place between North Korea and
all the ASEAN states as well, despite their political dissimilarity. North Korea follows
China in a much closer orientation to ASEAN than do Japan and South Korea. It
shows that within Pacific Asia North Korea is not as isolated as it is in the wider
world, although a few ASEAN states have occasionally condemned North Koreas
human rights record and nuclear policy.
The Southeast Asian states display even stronger pairwise alignments. For
example, eight pairs of states have never voted the opposite way throughout the
whole period 19912008: Indonesia/Malaysia, Laos/Malaysia, Laos/Myanmar,
Laos/Vietnam, Malaysia/Myanmar, Malaysia/Vietnam, Myanmar/Vietnam and
Singapore/Thailand. A further eight pairs have only done so once throughout the
same period: Brunei/Indonesia, Brunei/Malaysia, China/Laos, China/Myanmar,
Indonesia/Laos, Indonesia/Myanmar, Indonesia/Vietnam, Laos/Thailand. And altogether 52 pairs of states out of a possible 91 have voted opposite ways 9 times or less
throughout this period, i.e. at most on average only once every two years.
Yet in general, given the extent to which most resolutions are passed without a vote
or by overwhelming majorities, it is particularly interesting to examine when states
vote the opposite ways, for the decisions that lie behind them allow us to pinpoint
the limits of what those states regard as desirable or acceptable in foreign policy
terms. Marin-Bosch (1998, 9798), a former Mexican ambassador to the UN,
expresses the point clearly:
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96.5
94.4
97.5
75.0
96.8
98.3
95.7
94.3
97.2
95.5
78.8
96.6
96.9

93.2
95.9
76.1
97.5
96.3
94.6
92.6
97.2
95.7
78.4
96.0
95.5

98.7

Camb

94.6
72.2
96.1
94.3
96.7
96.0
92.9
91.0
76.3
91.6
97.1

95.2
97.2

China

73.4
97.3
98.1
96.4
95.3
96.2
94.0
77.0
95.3
97.9

97.0
96.7
92.9

Indnsia

72.7
74.8
71.8
67.9
76.3
78.3
91.7
77.9
71.3

70.2
73.5
70.9
70.9

Jpn

The figures for 197490 are above the diagonal, those for 19912008 below it.

Brunei
Cambodia
China
Indonesia
Japan
Laos
Malaysia
Myanmar
N. Korea
Philippines
Singapore
S. Korea
Thailand
Vietnam

Brnei

96.6
96.8
95.8
96.6
94.9
76.9
95.5
98.4

92.8
91.2
90.1
92.7
66.5

Laos

95.6
94.1
96.5
95.2
78.2
96.5
96.7

98.5
98.5
94.0
97.7
72.4
92.1

Mlysia

96.9
94.1
92.8
75.4
92.8
98.1

96.0
95.1
92.2
94.4
72.9
90.3
94.5

Mynmr

92.3
90.5
71.9
91.0
96.8

N.Kor

95.7
79.7
97.3
95.2

97.4
97.5
93.5
96.4
73.4
91.1
97.1
94.2

Phlppn

81.1
96.5
92.9

96.8

98.2
97.8
92.6
95.5
75.2
90.1
97.0
95.1

Sing

81.3
75.8

S.Kor

Table 6: IVC of Pacific Asian States UN General Assembly Voting by pairs, 197490 and 19912008

93.7

97.7
97.9

98.7
97.9
93.2
96.9
73.2
91.3
98.1
95.3

Thai

90.5

90.2
88.8

92.4
90.7
90.6
92.2
63.7
99.3
91.2
89.3

Vtnm

10
PETER FERDINAND

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PACIFIC ASIAN VOTING AT THE UN

11

The fact is that of the three votes possiblein favour, against or

abstentionthe negative votes are the most interesting. A country can go
along with the majority without much enthusiasm, almost by inertia, and
thus avoid distinguishing itself from the rest. It can also seek the comfort
that goes with the limbo of an abstention. But to vote no is often an
imperative necessity, an act of conviction (for large, medium and small
countries) or the result of bilateral pressure of larger nations. To go against
the will of the majority thus requires a decision that can have some
unpleasant consequences for the country in question, especially if is a
relatively small one.
So what are the main issues that divide Pacific Asian states? Here we distinguish
between three groups: those in Southeast Asia, those in Northeast Asia and those
between Northeast and Southeast Asia.

Southeast Asia
This is the region which has had the least divergences, especially in the more recent
period. Before 1991 there were obvious divisions, mostly caused by the Cold War.
Vietnam and Laos were clients of the USSR and, especially from 1979 when the
Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and Vietnam overthrew the Khmer Rouge
regime in Kampuchea, these two states voted against resolutions that criticized the
regimes in Kabul and Phnom Penh, whilst the ASEAN nations voted in favour. This
split was replicated over occasional resolutions aimed at the alleged holdings of
chemical and biological weapons in the USSR, and on a few resolutions on disarmament in general. Another divergence was over East Timor: the states in Indochina voted in favour of resolutions condemning Indonesia for invading the former
Portuguese colony in 1975, whilst the ASEAN states generally voted against. Otherwise the only differences occurred when the Philippines, Vietnam and Laos voted
occasionally to condemn human rights abuses on other continents, e.g. in Iran and
Chile, whilst the rest of ASEAN either abstained or voted against. But even during
this period the divergences were very limited.
In ASEAN respect for sovereignty is the foundation of their foreign policies
(Acharya 2009a: 72). As Narine (2002, 4) put it: Sovereignty enjoys the highest
position in ASEANs hierarchy of norms. In this respect they align themselves with
the global South, where, according to Zifcak (2009, 167): National sovereignty is
their overarching value. For ASEAN this is a higher priority than encouraging the
observance of human rights. Admittedly ASEAN is not completely united on this
issue. Jones (2010, 497) has argued: The view that it [non-interference] is an
unchanged melody, a cast-iron cherished principle or a norm that has socialised
member states is not sustainable. The meaning and the application of the norm has,
in fact, changed considerably over time, reflecting the changing pressures of social
conflict, economic change, and the international political environment. Nevertheless ASEAN member states have always been very reluctant publicly to condemn
other states for human rights abuses. Only four have occasionally done so: Cambodia, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand. More often ASEAN states will
abstain on such issues. Apart from that the only other disagreement has come over
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resolutions in 2007 and 2008 that proposed a moratorium on the death penalty,
where Cambodia, the Philippines and Thailand voted in favour, whilst the others
voted against.

Northeast Asia
As was mentioned before, till 1991 this group effectively consisted of China and
Japan and they voted in opposite ways over a wide range of topics. Apart from
disagreeing repeatedly over the UN budget and the financing of particular UN
programmes, where China was in favour of expanding UN activities and Japan
followed the US (and the USSR) in voting against, they also voted opposite ways on
a number of resolutions on nuclear disarmament. China voted repeatedly in favour
of resolutions declaring the Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace, where Japan voted
against them. China also voted to criticize Indonesia over East Timor, whilst Japan
for once voted with most of the Southeast Asian states in opposing it. There were
a number of resolutions that were directed against the apartheid regime in South
Africa and colonial regimes in southern Africa, where China voted in favour and
Japan against. There were also some disagreements over explanations of events in
the Middle East and assistance to Palestinian refugees. Japan was the Pacific Asian
state whose voting behaviour most closely conformed to that of the US: their IVC
score was 62.5 over the period 197490, though in the subsequent period this fell
to 48.7. This was still the highest score for any state voting with the US in Pacific
Asia, but the divergence has grown since the end of the Cold War. Yet in both
periods the IVC score for Japan and China was markedly higher than that for Japan
and the US.
After 1991 the range of disagreements between these two states narrowed, as Japan
diverged more from the US. By far the most persistent difference was the issue of
human rights in other countries. Like most of ASEAN, China refuses to criticize
other states for human rights abuses, so it consistently voted against resolutions
aimed at Cuba, Sudan, Iran, Congo, Nigeria, Turkmenistan, North Korea and
Belarus, whilst Japan (and South Korea) voted in favour. They also disagreed over
resolutions critical of sanctions against human rights abuses, over the impact of
globalization and over the promotion of a democratic and equitable world order.
On these questions China voted with the developing world, whilst Japan voted
against.
By and large South Korean voting mirrored that of Japan. The only exception was
over a few resolutions that criticized the activities of foreign economic and other
interests that impede the realization of independence from colonial rule, where
South Korea voted in favour and Japan against.
On the other hand, North Korea usually voted the same way as China, and also the
same way as the majority of developing countries. The only significant divergence
between China and North Korea was over resolutions proposing the acceleration of
nuclear disarmament and, strikingly, resolutions approving reports from the International Atomic Energy Authority that included criticism of North Korea. China
voted in favour of the latter, whilst North Korea voted against. So China is prepared
publicly to endorse criticism of North Korea from an international organization.
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Nevertheless South Korea and the US have an IVC score of 45.2 for the years since
the Koreas joined the UN in 1991, whilst the figure for South Korea and North
Korea is 71.9. In other words, despite the fact that the two Koreas have still not
concluded a peace treaty since the end of hostilities in 1953, despite the continuing
military skirmishes between them, and despite the fact that the US is still the chief
military ally of South Korea, the voting of the two Koreas in the General Assembly
converges more than does that of South Korea and the US. This is an extremely
striking finding.

Northeast Asia-Southeast Asia

Given the similarity in voting between China, North Korea on the one hand, and
Japan and South Korea on the other, the divisions across the two sub-regions in
Pacific Asia as a whole reflect those within the two sub-regions separately. Before
1991 the Cold War structured relations there, as Vietnam, Laos and later Cambodia
took positions that usually coincided with those of the USSR, whilst China and
ASEAN usually opposed themBa (2003, 625626) refers to the de facto alignment of the latter group against Vietnam in the period 197889. This structured
opposing positions on nuclear disarmament, on chemical and bacteriological
weapons, on sanctions against South Africa, on Afghanistan and Kampuchea, on
the Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace, and on the UN budget.
Since then the focus of disagreements has narrowed considerably, just as it did in
Northeast Asia. One specific new disagreement between China and the rest of the
region was over the still unratified 1997 Convention on the Non-Navigational Uses
of International Watercourses, which laid down that where rivers cross international boundaries, states should avoid doing harm to other states sharing the waters
of the same river and should compensate them where they do. China voted against
it, whilst almost all the ASEAN states as well as Japan and South Korea voted for
it. But the main sources of divergence after 1991 were fourfold. Firstly there were
disagreements over nuclear disarmament, where China is more sensitive than
ASEAN, Japan or South Korea. Secondly, on Middle Eastern issues, China, North
Korea and ASEAN generally voted for resolutions that defended the interests of
Palestinians, especially Palestinian refugees, and that occasionally explicitly criticized Israel, where Japan and South Korea often voted against them. Thirdly there
were issues of development, such as the promotion of a democratic and equitable
world order, where ASEAN, China and North Korea voted together, whilst Japan
and South Korea voted against. Fourthly there were the issues of human rights,
which have become the most common source of voting divergences across the
region. Japan and South Korea have shown themselves most ready to criticize other
states over human rightsCuba, Iran, Sudan, Congo, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan,
Belarus, Myanmar, as well as North Korea. Another human rights issue that cuts
across the Northeast/Southeast Asia divide has been the issue of the death penalty.
Cambodia and the Philippines have voted in favour of a moratorium on its use,
whilst Japan joined most ASEAN states and China in voting against. It is this
divergence over the treatment of human rights abuses in individual countries, and
in particular the readiness publicly to criticize them, that now represents the
greatest divide between Pacific Asian states in the UN General Assembly.
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Nevertheless the divisions within Pacific Asia are not as great as they are globally.
Zifcak (2009, 187), for example, has emphasized the importance of the NorthSouth divide in the General Assembly generally: It is as if the two sides have
different conceptual frames, different languages and different vocabularies. Weiss
(2009, 71), however, stresses the extent to which interests cut across this basic
divide. And it is certainly true that two of the most developed Pacific Asian states
(Japan and South Korea) tend to vote often with the North, whilst the one with
the highest GDP per capita on a PPP basisSingaporevotes overwhelmingly the
same way as ASEAN, China and North Korea and most often with the developing
South.

Conclusion
It is now time to review the conclusions of this analysis. Six points stand out.
Firstly, when considering the relative merits of the three indexes used to measure
the degree of voting cohesion in Pacific Asia, it is clear that they come to similar
results, so any of them can be used. The Cohesion Index scores were slightly higher
than those of the Agreement Index for Pacific Asia as a whole, but they were almost
identical when analysing Northeast and Southeast Asia separately. The Index of
Voting Cohesion, which takes more note of split voting involving an abstention,
consistently suggested a higher degree of cohesion, and it is much more laborious
to calculate. However, by focusing as it does upon pairs of states as well as the group
as a whole, it can bring out more clearly variations in the degree of cohesion that
are obscured in the overall figure. So there are pluses and minuses in using the IVC.
Secondly, Pacific Asian states have shown a consistently high level of cohesion
throughout the whole period 19742008, which the EU has only begun to emulate
in recent years. This does indeed suggest a coherent regional identity on the global
stage and it adds a new dimension to the existing general literature on the extent
of regional integration within and across the region.
Thirdly, within Pacific Asia there is a markedly higher degree of UN voting cohesion
in Southeast Asia than in the Northeast. It suggests at least the basis for increasing
policy cooperation and even integration in ASEAN foreign policy in the future. In
Northeast Asia states still diverge more often than did the EU 12 states in the period
19741990, i.e. even before the formal objective of a Common Foreign and Security
Policy.
Fourthly, across the whole spectrum of issues that serve as the basis for General
Assembly resolutions, China has consistently converged much more with the
ASEAN states than have Japan and South Korea. In this sense it reflects the identity
that ASEAN and China have constructed for themselves of still belonging to, or at
least being more sympathetic towards, the developing world, even as they have
achieved substantial economic growth. Whilst this identity has been widely recognized in the literature on Chinese foreign policy, it has not been so widely recognized for ASEAN.
Fifthly, the most common source of voting divergence across Pacific Asia is now the
issue of human rights, and in particular whether the GA should publicly criticize the
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human rights records of individual member states. Japan and South Korea are
much more willing to do this, although a few ASEAN states have done so occasionally. China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea and Myanmar
never do. Whilst most of these states are authoritarian regimes, so their reluctance
is understandable, this also reflects a more deep-seated divergence over the use of
public diplomacy, namely the norm that has been adopted within ASEAN of
shunning public criticism of other states. Indonesias stance on this issue has not
substantially changed since the (re)introduction of democracy in 1998. Admittedly
more recently several SE Asian states voted to condemn the Assad regime in Syria
for repression of opposition, but by then the crisis in Syria had expanded beyond a
human rights issue to become a humanitarian one.
Sixthly, although this was not the prime focus of this study, the figures also show
the enormous divergence in voting between the US and all the states in Pacific Asia,
particularly China and ASEAN. This is despite the close attention that the US State
Department pays to GA votes, since it has to report annually to Congress on how
often other states side with the US there and it pressures them to conform. Japan
comes closest to the positions of the US and South Korea comes not far behind. Yet
it is striking that South Korea has a much higher IVC score with North Korea than
it does with the US. Voeten (2004) has shown the general tendency for states
increasingly to vote differently from the USthe lonely superpowerin the
period 19912001, and this analysis confirms it, but it also shows that it enlarges a
pre-existing divergence. The average IVC score for the US and Pacific Asian states
was 36.7 for the period 197490already only 40 per cent of the average scores for
Pacific Asia, but it fell to 27 for the period 19912008, i.e. only 30 per cent of the
regional average. One contributory factor in the long-term divergence is the disagreement over relations in the Middle East, especially over Israel and Palestine, ever
since the founding of the state of Israel and it has been unaffected by the end of the
Cold War. However, other issues of human rights and development have become
more salient and explain the increasing voting divergence between the US and
Pacific Asia since 1991.
Additional research is needed to cover regional groupings in South America and
Africa to explore further whether the voting cohesion in Pacific Asia is exceptional.
In general the evidence of regional group voting behaviour in the GA apart from by
the EU has been surprisingly neglected.
Finally, a caveat: converging voting patterns do not necessarily mean comprehensively close foreign relations, still less coordinated political action. Votes in the GA
are not binding. They do not necessarily commit states to particular actions afterwards, although states may be embarrassed if they are shown subsequently to have
behaved in a contradictory fashion. Other factors, especially conflicting interests
often intrude, sometimes exacerbated by nationalist passion. For example, the
recent resurgence of tensions over competing territorial claims in the South China
Sea between China, Vietnam and the Philippines, or in the East China Sea between
China, Japan and South Korea, as well as the diplomatic impasse that prevented the
most recent ARF meeting from issuing a communiqu on its conclusion, are a
reminder of enduring potential conflicts as well as cooperation in the region.
Foreign policy is conducted at various levels: global, regional and local. The pres 2013 The Author. British Journal of Politics and International Relations 2013 Political Studies Association
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PETER FERDINAND

sures and priorities at one level may conflict with those at another. However great
the common orientation towards global issues shared by most states in Pacific Asia,
a number of intractable disagreements still persist, viz. the example mentioned
above of China and ASEAN states voting opposite ways over the 1997 Convention
on the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses. They necessarily
weaken Chinas potential leadership within the region. To quote Zhou Enlai:
Distant waters cannot quell fire (Andelman 1979, 71). Nothing in this analysis
detracts from the conclusions of the voluminous literature on intra-regional relations in Pacific Asia, as well as their relations with other regions and individual
partners in the world. However, it is important also to recognize this extra-regional
dimension of international relations there, for it is a reality and it is a constant and
under-considered element in foreign policy-making. It establishes parameters for
cooperation inside as well as outside the region. It can counterbalance the nationalist excesses. It shows that there is more common ground on broad foreign policy
between the states in Pacific Asia, and therefore the basis for closer potential
cooperation, than accounts of the territorial disputes usually allow.

About the Author

Peter Ferdinand, Department of Politics and International Studies, Warwick University, Coventry
CV4 7AL, UK, email: peter.ferdinand@warwick.ac.uk

Note
1. gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Michael Tourville in preparing the data for this article.

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