Replication Data for: The Incentives of Leaders in International Organizations: Evidence from the UN General Assembly

Voters and selectorates tend to prioritize domestic policy, so when and why do national political leaders choose to spend their time at international organizations (IOs)? Heads of state only began to address international assemblies such as the UN in recent decades; their appearances are puzzling, considering that leaders only rarely gain direct political benefit from multilateral cooperation. This paper presents a theory of the motivations behind leaders' appearances at IOs. We argue that because multilateralism tends to be incidental to survival in office, heads of state tend to use IOs for prestige, not policy. But prestige is a luxury: both democrats and autocrats tend to prioritize international cooperation only when they can afford to do so domestically. Autocrats and democrats alike face domestic constraints --- namely, the end of a term or gridlock in democracies, or under-institutionalized regimes in autocracies --- when they consider international appearance, although the presence of other leaders amplifies the prestige value of a visit to an IO. Novel data on speakers at the United Nations General Assembly support our argument on leader appearances. We show that for the majority of leaders, domestic constraints temper their ability to appear at the UN, despite the draw of other leaders in recent years. Our findings have important implications for the study of how executives' incentives affect their attention to international cooperation.