Sanctions, Aid, and Voting Patterns in the United Nations General Assembly

This paper investigates the effects of U.S. economic sanctions on UN General Assembly voting patterns. Using panel data for 123 developing countries from 1990–2014, and employing an instrumental variables approach to account for potential endogeneity, we find that U.S.- imposed sanctions generally lead to a decline in voting coincidence between the U.S. and target countries when the sanctioned country receives low U.S. aid. However, in instances where the U.S. sanctions countries dependent on U.S. foreign aid, we find targets are increasingly more likely to vote with the U.S. This is because sanctions send a credible signal of the U.S.’s willingness to carry out punishment and cancel future aid to countries that publicly oppose it. Our research shows how sanctions alone tend to pull countries apart while, together with aid dependence, have the potential to bring countries in line with the U.S.’s position on issues, adding nuance to the sanctions literature.