FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS
Let’s say that I have a friend who buys me lunch twice a week and gives me a ride home on a daily basis and by chance, I get to work in this prestigious company that is looking for someone who has the same qualifications as my friend to hire. The obvious choice is that I would put in a good word for her/him to my boss. That is the same way countries work and also the same way voting happens.
To understand how public perception influences voting, we need to understand how voting works in the General Assembly. There is roll call voting and bloc voting. In both, voting only involves either of the three responses, yes, no or abstain. This is what is referred to as the s-score 3 method. Roll-call voting is where each member state is called upon to cast their vote on the matter being discussed similar to how parliaments work. Bloc voting on the other hand involves a group of countries placed into a bloc e.g. Communist East and Capitalist West voting is done based on the ideologies they accommodate. This type of voting was witnessed in 1946 when the original disputes of the cold war arose.
Like always attracts like, that is the law of attraction. In the General Assembly, this is described as soft power, this is where the attractiveness of a country has an influence on foreign public perception. Therefore, the more attractive your laws, policies and actions are the more likely you are to draw the foreign public opinion towards your country and eventually get a vote from them. The public forms an opinion of other countries in the same way they do for their own countries foreign policies.
During the United States of America 2016 elections, Russia was accused of tampering with the election outcome, however, America refused to acknowledge the allegations, therefore, Russia’s public opinion towards U.S.A increased in a positive manner. However, this is a two-way situation and the U.S.A was on the losing side where the public opinion of its traditional allies dropped since it was moving away from the political and cultural ideals it had championed. This in turn has led to a drop in the number of votes America receives on any resolution it brings forward as from the onset of Trump administration.
Going back to my earlier example, let us say I did not put in a good word for my friend and she/ he came to learn about it, all the privileges that came with the friendship would disappear. That is how public perception and voting in the General Assembly work. It is a relationship based on benefits therefore friends with benefits.
~Sharon Nyaga
