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Abstract
This article applies main path analysis to UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions as a novel way to identify what documents and themes have mattered most in the evolution of the organization. Three successive corpora containing all resolutions adopted by the UNGA during its first fifteen, thirty-five, and seventy-three years were analyzed. Results show that the theme of the main path of the first fifteen sessions was Palestine, and peacekeeping/budget for the other two corpora. Three concluding hypotheses are proposed as possible explanations for this finding. Main paths in networks of international norms might be understood as indicators of ongoing issues, as a sign of groundedness, or as residue from preferential attachment. This paper trail reconstructs relevant chapters of the UN's institutional development and reveals that texts of little fame can nonetheless be at the origin of large bodies of later works, and that jurisprudential density varies across UNGA topics.

This article investigates whether there is evidence of a "rise and fall" of emerging powers over the past 20 years in the eyes of public opinion. We compared several national and regional surveys on the foreign policies of South Africa, Brazil, and Turkey in search of signs of endorsement or disapproval of the more assertive foreign policies exercised by these countries. The results suggest a pronounced rise and decline for Ankara and some decline for Brasília; however, the results are inconclusive for Pretoria. The present work seeks to contribute to the debate on status and regional leadership by adding a public opinion and comparative regionalism perspective, in addition to offering a convenient summary of diplomatic surveys for countries of the Global South.

Over the last twenty years, Brazil has staked successive claims to regional leadership, with varying explicitness and unclear success. What factors explain the acceptance or rejection of such claims by South American countries? This article summarises the literature on regional powers and frames regional powerhood as arising from geographical belonging, resources, and will to lead; and leadership/followership as stemming from exclusivity, hierarchy/influence, consensus, and provision. By analysing panel data on Brazil and South America from 1995 to 2015, the study concludes that Brasilia enjoyed higher followership in situations characterised by high exclusivity and consensus, and low hierarchy and provision. These conditions were present in South America in the 1990s, thus rendering that decade more receptive to Brazilian leadership.

This article introduces the Rising Powers Diplomatic Network (RPDN) dataset, which monitors the distribution of the diplomatic apparatus of emerging powers across the globe. RPDN's release version contains data on two countries, Brazil and Turkey, covering mainly the 1995-2015 timespan, thus providing a comprehensive portrait of the evolution of their diplomatic capacity and patterns of interstate interactions. Specifically, RPDN contains information on two items: presidential diplomacy (i.e.: number of official visits) and diplomatic presence (number and size of diplomatic representations abroad). Data for Turkey also list visits by the prime minister in addition to the president's. Data for Brazil also report: size of staff at each diplomatic post, post ranking/grade and number of military attachés abroad. The article concludes demonstrating RPDN's applicability, by addressing a central question in the regional powers literature: do regional powers emphasize their regions in their diplomacy in comparison to other destinations? It is expected that this dataset makes a contribution to quantitative research on rising powers and their diplomacy.

O artigo apresenta uma introdução didática sobre desenhos de pesquisa, inferência e causalidade em Ciência Política e Relações Internacionais. Destina-se, portanto, a familiarizar estudantes do campo com o ferramental desta atividade científica, bem como introduzi-los aos principais debates que perpassam a disciplina. Para tanto, revisamos os elementos centrais do livro Designing Social Inquiry e as publicações que responderam a ele, endossando ou contestando as suas concepções sobre as melhores práticas científicas. Com este artigo esperamos equipar os alunos de Ciência Política e Relações Internacionais para o pensamento crítico sobre as escolhas envolvidas na elaboração e execução de um desenho de pesquisa.

Pela maior parte de sua história moderna, a identidade internacional do Brasil foi a de um país subdesenvolvido. A recente ascensão nacional motivou uma política externa que busca afirmar uma nova identidade internacional para o país como potência emergente, assumindo um maior protagonismo em várias frentes. O presente trabalho investigou quais tensões surgem, aos olhos dos observadores internos e externos, conforme a nova identidade tenta se sobrepor à anterior, considerando a premissa construtivista segundo a qual a formação de uma identidade é um processo intersubjetivo, cujo êxito depende de interpretação e legitimação da parte dos agentes. Para tanto, foram analisadas quais visões sobre o lugar do Brasil no mundo são mobilizadas pelo discurso oficial do Estado e pelas instituições formadoras de opinião (imprensa nacional e estrangeira) para interpretar um episódio controverso da diplomacia brasileira, representativo desse novo projeto identitário: o Acordo Nuclear assinado com o Irã em maio de 2010. Para avaliar quais visões de mundo são evocadas, o discurso oficial do Estado foi contrastado ao de dois periódicos estrangeiros e dois nacionais no período. A metodologia de análise empregada foi a Análise de Discurso Francesa.

This article introduces a novel corpus containing all resolutions adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) from 1946 to 2019, the network of citations between them, and an online tool for exploring them. Resolutions adopted by the organization provide a valuable record of the evolution of multilateralism and political ideas on the global stage. Given that resolutions typically cite past ones, the resulting network of references offers a wealth of information on the UNGA's most relevant themes over time. This article applies network analysis to the corpus of approximately 18,000 resolutions and 77,000 citations, aiming to answer questions such as: What are the most cited resolutions of all? Are there thematic clusters? And can we delineate historic patterns based on themes prioritized? Our findings show that leading resolutions, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, stemmed from the early years of the UNGA and created cores around which thematic clusters emerged. We conclude by listing highly cited resolutions and prominent clusters, while also conducting a descriptive exploration of how some of the largest clusters formed. The dominant clusters addressed human rights, development, decolonization and peace and security, and by monitoring their evolution we offer a new, data-intensive account of the interaction between these topics since 1946.

Abstract
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has passed over eighteen thousand resolutions since its foundation. It is a very heterogeneous collection, containing at once landmark documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and scores of less important and even controversial pieces. Hence, scholarship for the past 75 years has been divided on the actual relevance of UNGA resolutions and on member states' motivations in engaging with their drafting. We propose a novel theoretical typology to organize prevailing views on the role of UNGA resolutions. Relying on the dimensions of effect and consensus, that is, whether or not resolutions are deemed to have a real-world impact and to what extent they represent world opinion, we sort the literature into four ideal types: resolutions can be regarded as the fruit of deliberation, dispute, diversion, or drama. We discuss the rationale of each view and indicate proposals within the UNGA that exemplify these perspectives. Our typology contributes to scholarship by both tidying previous debates and highlighting unnoticed commonalities between the UNGA and topics from the political representation literature.

Research on the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has often privileged analyses on voting patterns, that is, how countries position themselves whenever a resolution is brought to a vote in each plenary session. However, voted resolutions comprise only a fraction of UNGA output, and much is still unknown about how countries behave before casting any votes. What takes place prior to and leading up to the adoption of resolutions? Even though the study of draft sponsorship remains underdeveloped, it can comprise a more valid empirical strategy to infer state preferences. This research note introduces the UN General Assembly Sponsorship Dataset, which encompasses the sponsorship behavior of every UNGA member from 2009 to 2019. We develop two novel empirical indices, priority and ownership, in order to ascertain draft relevance for each member state. We also use the new data to test longstanding arguments over vote-buying and North versus South coalitions in the UNGA. Our findings confirm mainstream conclusions for the former but challenge prevailing assumptions on the latter.