Domestic political regime changes and Third World voting realignments in the United Nations, 1946–84

Abstract

This article presents a cross-national analysis of the relationship between domestic political regime changes and voting realignments of Third World nations in the United Nations (UN). It seeks to move beyond existing research that has assumed that foreign policy is rooted in political and economic structures and changes only when a political revolution occurs. It argues that a wider variety of regime changes—ranging from those involving mainstream political parties to milder ones such as factional shifts in single-party regimes—can also provoke major realignments. Using a new data set on Third World regimes, the article examines the impact of regime changes for eighty-seven nations on their UN voting patterns during the period from 1946 to 1984. Although the findings indicate that revolutions are most likely to provoke major voting realignments, they also show that the more frequent, nonrevolutionary types of regime change are associated with many voting realignments. A major implication of these findings is that foreign policy changes reflect a complex set of domestic regime factors, including leadership belief systems and internal political constraints, as well as aspects of political structure.