Who is against the world?
Defining the “Against the World” Index
I credit the index to the NGA forum for this idea, but I cannot locate the post nor the original contributor now. Many thanks and much admiration!
The voting history of countries in the United Nations General Assembly is an excellent data source for identifying countries concealed under the cover of universal value but imposing their will upon—or against—the world. The R package "unvotes" provides voting data of each roll call from 1946 to 2019 (Robinson, 2021).
The index is calculated in the following steps:
Count the number of "yes," "no," and "abstain" votes of each roll call, denoted by $y$, $n$, $a$, respectively.
Calculate the participation rate: $p=\frac{y+n}{y+n+a}$.
Calculate the degree of one-sidedness of each roll call: $s=\frac{y}{n}-1 \text{ if $y>n$}; \frac{n}{y}-1 \text{ if $y \leq n$}$
Calculate the Against the World score of each roll call: $r=ps$
Sum the score of each roll call in which the country's yes/no vote is against the majority.
Now, let's find out which country has been standing against the world.
Total Score and Cumulative Score
Figure 1. The Total "Against the World" Score
Top ten: the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, India, France, North Korea, Marshall Islands, Palau, Canada, and Micronesia.
The United States and Israel! You two! Way ahead of others!
China: 33rd.
Figure 2. The Cumulative "Against the World" Score
The United States and Israel seemed to be increasingly deviant from the rest of the world since the 1980s. The slope of the increase has been, visually, increasingly steeper.
Could it be that these two countries stood against the world for a few issues (e.g., Palestinian conflicts) but still represented the universal value for most issues? Let's find out by breaking down the score by issue.
Total and Cumulative Scores by Issue
Roll calls are categorized into the following six issue.
Arm control and disarmament
Colonialism
Economic development
Human rights
Nuclear weapons and nuclear material
Palestinian conflicts
Figure 3. The Total "Against the World" Score by Issue
Figure 4. The Cumulative "Against the World" Score by Issue
As shown in the graphs, the U.S. and Israel stand against the word with regard to all issues, including human rights.
I think the answers to the opening questions are loud and clear.