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The UN Goldstone Report and retraction: an empirical investigation

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Abstract

The Goldstone Report is unique among United Nations reports in having been eventually repudiated by its principal author. The Report criminalized self-defense against state-sponsored or state-perpetrated terror. We use voting on the two UN General Assembly resolutions relating to the Goldstone Report to study whether support for the Goldstone principle of criminalization of self-defense against terror was influenced by countries’ political institutions. Our results, using different measures of political institutions, reveal systematic differences in voting by democracies and autocracies: as an example, based on the Chief-in-Executive measure of political institutions, a country with the highest democracy score was some 55 % points less likely to vote in favor of the second of the two UN Goldstone resolutions and some 55 % points more likely to abstain than a country with the highest autocratic score. The differences between democracies and autocracies in willingness to initiate symmetric warfare are therefore also reflected in differences in sensitivities to loss of life and harm in asymmetric warfare, through broad support by democracies, but not by autocracies, for legitimacy of self-defense against state-supported or state-perpetrated terror.

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Notes

  1. On terror, see for example, Shughart (2006), Enders and Sandler (2012) and Kis-Katos et al. (2011, 2014). On state-sponsored terrorism, see Byman (2005).

  2. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter also disallows defensive preemptive attacks. See Glennon (2001/2002).

  3. Bernholz (2004) describes the supreme-value system that promises high reward to perpetrators of terror. Suicide terrorism has been studied by Wintrobe (2006), Horowitz (2010), and Filote et al. (2015).

  4. Examples of asymmetric warfare are Islamic terror attacks that include Argentina (17 March, 1992 and July 18, 1994), the United States (September 11, 2001), Bali (October 12, 2002), Madrid (March 11, 2004), Baslan (September 1, 2004), London (July 7, 2005), Bombay (March 12, 1993 and November 26, 2008), Tanzania (August 7 1998), Kenya (August 7 1998 and 21 September 2013), France (7–9 January 2015), and the various attacks over time against Israeli civilians. Some of these attacks have been concluded to have involved state-supported or state-perpetrated terror, or state-acquiesced terror. See for example The Guardian (2015).

  5. In the colonial era European democracies engaged in asymmetric warfare in attempts to keep their hold on their colonies.

  6. For the Goldstone Report, see United Nations (2009).

  7. An Internet search (Google) on “Goldstone Report” (accessed August 27, 2014) returned over 3,770,000 results.

  8. For the Goldstone retraction, see Goldstone (2011).

  9. On the full United States list, see for example United States Department of State, Bureau of Counterterrorism (2014).

  10. See Expatica (2010).

  11. For the complete Hamas Charter, see Hamas Covenant (1988). On Hamas and radical Islam as a security threat, see the studies in Frisch and Inbar (2008).

  12. See for example Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (2009).

  13. For a general analysis of the role of third parties in conflict, see, for example, Siqueira (2003) and Amegashie and Kutsoati (2007).

  14. Use by Hamas of its civilian population as human shields and the seeking of sympathy through disproportionality in casualties were repeated in July–August 2014 in a replay of the previous conflict. At the time of our study, no UN resolutions regarding the second Gaza war had been voted upon.

  15. The Goldstone Report originated in the 47 member United Nations Human Rights Council. We consider voting in the UNGA, which includes all UN member countries. For a study of voting in the Human Rights Council, see Hug and Lukács (2014).

  16. Evans (2009).

  17. See, for example, Jeffrey White (2010).

  18. Washington Post (2009).

  19. Bolton (2009).

  20. Morgan (2009).

  21. See, for example, Blank (2011), Berkowitz (2012a, b) and Samson (2012).

  22. For defenses of the Goldstone Report, see Sterio (2011) and Schabas (2011).

  23. For a discussion of treatment of abstentions in voting in the UNGA, see Boockmann and Dreher (2011).

  24. See Glazer (2008) on voting to anger or to please others.

  25. The extent of democracy and autocracy frequently have been measured using the Freedom House and the POLITY IV indices. Several problems have, however, been noted with these measures (Munck and Verkuilen 2002, Vreeland 2008, and Cheibub et al. 2010). The POLITY IV index is useful because of the components of the dataset (Cheibub et al. 2010, p. 76). The five components of the POLITY index are XCONST (Constraints on Chief Executive), XRCOMP (Competiveness of executive recruitment), XROPEN (Openness of executive recruitment), PARCOMP (Competiveness of political participation), and PAREG (Regulation of political participation). Cheibub et al. (2010) describe the Chief Executive variable as providing “useful information about whether the Chief Executive has unlimited authority, whether there is a legislature with slight or moderate ability to check the power of the executive, whether the legislature has substantial ability to check the executive, or whether the executive has parity with or is subordinate to the legislature”.

  26. The DD measure is available only until 2008. We thus use the average over the nine-year period, 2000–2008.

  27. Muslim-majority countries persistently vote to criticize Israel in the United Nations. Muslim-majority countries (not distinguishing between Sunni or Shiite majorities) are also less likely to be democracies (Borooah and Paldam 2007; Potrafke 2012, 2013).

  28. The results in column (1), fourth cell indicate that, when the POLITY IV variable increases by one point (on a scale from −10 to 10), the probability of voting in favor of the Goldstone Report decreases by about 3.5 percentage points.

  29. The results in column (1), fifth cell indicate that, when the Chief-in-Executive variable increases by one point (on a scale from 1 to 7), the probability of voting in favor of the Goldstone Report decreases by about 7.9 percentage points.

  30. Our study differs from other studies of voting in the UNGA in that we investigate voting on (two) particular resolutions. Other studies have investigated the general pattern of voting across many more resolutions. See, for example, Voeten (2000; 2014), Dreher, Nunnenkamp, and Thiele (2008), Potrafke (2009), Boockmann and Dreher (2011), Dreher and Sturm (2012), Dreher and Jensen (2013), and Becker et al. (2015).

  31. Berkowitz (2012a, b). For an introduction to international law relating to armed conflict, see Blank and Noone (2013).

  32. Voting by individuals is described as expressive when individual votes are not decisive and therefore a motivation of additional benefit such as expressive confirmation of identity (Hillman 2010) is required for individuals to vote, given a positive cost of voting. Brennan and Brooks (2013) review the literature on expressive voting. In the case of the UNGA, individual countries are not decisive, but, because the resolutions are non-binding, even the decisiveness of an automatic-majority bloc does not make voting “instrumental”. For more on expressive voting in the UNGA, see Becker et al (2015).

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Acknowledgments

Michael Beenstock, Paula Castro, Axel Dreher, Francesco Forte, Raphäel Franck, Carsten Hefeker, Simon Hug, Jean-Dominique Lafay, Pierre Kopp, Daniel Levy, Mickaël Melki, George Tridimas, Heinrich W. Ursprung and Avi Weiss and participants at conferences and seminars in Australia, Europe, Israel and the United States provided helpful comments. We also thank William F. Shughart II and two reviewers. Carl Maier, Daniel Mannfeld, Myriam Piser, Julia Riechenhagen, and Leonard Thielmann provided excellent research assistance.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Bar-Ilan University, 5290002, Ramat Gan, Israel

    Arye L. Hillman

  2. CESifo, Munich, Germany

    Arye L. Hillman

  3. LMU Munich, 80539, Munich, Germany

    Niklas Potrafke

  4. Ifo Institute, Poschingerstr. 5, 81679, Munich, Germany

    Niklas Potrafke

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Correspondence to Niklas Potrafke.

Appendices

Appendix: Voting by countries in the resolutions in Table 1

Democracies as measured by the DD variable over the period 2000–2008 in bold.

1st Resolution

2.1 Against (18)

Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Netherlands, Palau, Panama, Poland, Slovakia, Macedonia, Ukraine, United States.

2.2 Abstentions (44)

Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Georgia, Greece, Iceland, Japan, Kenya, Latvia, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Monaco, Montenegro, New Zealand, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Samoa, San Marino, Spain, Swaziland, Sweden, Tonga, Uganda, United Kingdom, Uruguay.

2.3 In favor (114)

Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Comoros, Congo, Cuba, Cyprus, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Republic of Tanzania, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

2.4 Absent (16)

Bhutan, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Honduras, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, Togo, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Vanuatu.

2nd Resolution

3.1 Against (9)

Australia, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia (Federated States of), Nauru, Palau, Panama, United States

3.2 Abstentions (74)

Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Austria, Bahamas, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cameroon, Colombia, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Mexico, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Samoa, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Vanuatu.

3.3 In favor (92)

Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, China, Comoros, Congo, Cuba, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Eritrea, Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Syria, Tajikistan, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, United Republic of Tanzania, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

3.4 Countries absent (17)

Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Haiti, Kiribati, Madagascar, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, Tuvalu, Uganda.

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Hillman, A.L., Potrafke, N. The UN Goldstone Report and retraction: an empirical investigation. Public Choice 163, 247–266 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-015-0247-x

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