81013152

open access

Version of Record

How Major Powers Diverge on Global Governance? Evidence from the United Nations General Debate

Kobe University law review

54

63-80

法学部

2021

2022-03-30

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) is a central arena for countries to express their perspectives on global governance. Most of the existing literature focuses on how nations vote in UNGA but overlooks what they say. This paper examines the divergent views on global governance among major powers by conducting automated content analysis of UNGA speeches. We select key values in global governance through the UN as content categories, which include security, development, human rights, and democracy. Based on the results of automated text classification, we revealed the contrasting structures of discourse made by major powers. We also investigated major powers' attitudes towards global governance norms by conducting sentiment analysis. Our results show evidence contradicting conventional wisdom. For instance, UK, France, and Germany do not deliver more speeches on democracy and human rights than China and Russia at the UNGA, although the EU was argued to be a normative power.

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