Beyond the Autocrats’ Bloc: State power and Autocratizing States’ voting patterns in the UN General Assembly

This paper aims to explore the different voting preferences and sponsorship behavior of autocratizing states with different power positions in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Existing literature expects that autocratizing states reduce their commitment to liberal international norms and increasingly collaborate with established autocracies in international organizations. Nevertheless, in practice, the behavior of autocratizing states in IOs appears more heterogeneous than the theory suggests. Grounded on previous studies about autocratizing states in IOs and middle/small powers' foreign policy, this paper hypothesizes that autocratizing states with different power positions show distinct voting and sponsorship patterns in the UNGA, due to different incentives and resources they possess. Using Bailey et al. (2017) and Seabra & Mesquita (2022)'s datasets on UNGA’s voting and sponsorship records, this paper reveals that more powerful autocratizing states tend to vote more against liberal democracies, have a more consistent voting pattern, and sponsor more resolutions than their less powerful counterparts.