Power resources, preferences, and influence at the United Nations General Assembly

This dissertation examines how power resources, preferences, and issue-area affect the United States influence to change its counterparts' voting behavior at the United Nations General Assembly. Classical definitions of power imply that power and preferences should be combined to study political phenomena. When they do not share similar preferences, countries involved in important issues come to be involved in a relationship where power plays a key role. Power definitions lead to an expectation that states try to influence their counterparts' voting behavior on issues important to them at the General Assembly, while they let their counterparts behave freely on issues of less importance. Being negligent of the interaction between preferences and power at the international forum, empirical studies have overrepresented either the effect of preferences or power upon the voting record.; In the first stage, this dissertation tests whether United States power resources help the United States influence its counterpart's voting behavior on important issues, while controlling for the effect of the dyadic preference similarity.; In the second stage, this dissertation examines whether the effect of US power resources upon the US influence is dependent on issue-area. After grouping all roll-call votes from 1950 to 1992 into four issue-clusters (military---political, social---economic, colonial---the Middle East, and UN internal---legal), it assesses the effect of power resources and dimensions of preferences upon the dyadic voting coincidence for each issue-cluster.; This dissertation concludes that (1) power and preferences interact together to determine votes in the General Assembly; (2) the conversion process from power resources into influence is contingent upon issue-area: (3) domestic factors affect interstate interactions at the international organization. This dissertation provides a general implication that studies of political phenomena should combine power and preferences simultaneously. In addition, this dissertation provides a couple of policy implications. First, it may be unlikely that direct uses of power resources (e.g., curtailments of foreign aid) increase the influence at international interactions associated with issues of low intensity. Second, pre-consultations may countervail the lack of power resources that are directly available for the influence on international issues of low intensity. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...