Measuring regional actorness at the UN security council: The EU as a paragon of complexity

Abstract

Scholars studying regional actorness at the United Nations (UN) often rely on voting records to prove their point, in particular in relation to the performance of the European Union (EU) and its member states at the UN General Assembly (UNGA).1 Voting information has been used frequently for evaluating the implementation of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), with cohesion being seen as a proxy for success. That is hardly surprising: not only are those records publicly accessible, they are consistent over time and thus well suited for statistical analysis (Kissack 2007: 7).