A range of literature has argued that countries use the United Nations (UN) to communicate their interests and coordinate their foreign policies. However, a core behavior at the UN--public-facing speeches--have remained understudied. While negotiation often takes place in private, the puzzle remains of why countries would then turn to a public forum to communicate--given the always-present option of a private one. In this dissertation, I expect that public forums serve a distinct purpose as compared to private negotiations: rather than being persuasive in nature, these public communications serve as being political in nature. I expect that the countries who benefit most from this broadcasting capability will be those who benefit most from communicating their position to a large audience, be those audiences international or domestic. In order to isolate the purely political nature of these public-facing speeches, I draw on the text of speeches delivered at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) for the years 1984-2014.
Read
