UROP Project

The Question of Palestine in the UN General Debate

Text anlaysis, Ideology, Foreign Policy, United Nations, Middle East, UN speeches, International Law

Research Mentor: Hashim Malallah,
Department, College, Affiliation: Political Sceince, Social Sciences and Public Policy
Contact Email: hm22o@fsu.edu
Research Assistant Supervisor (if different from mentor):
Research Assistant Supervisor Email:
Faculty Collaborators:
Faculty Collaborators Email:

Looking for Research Assistants: Yes
Number of Research Assistants: 3
Relevant Majors: Political science and pre-law are preferred, but not required.
Project Location: On FSU Main Campus
Research Assistant Transportation Required:
Remote or In-person: Fully Remote
Approximate Weekly Hours: 5, Flexible schedule (Combination of business and outside of business. TBD between student and research mentor.)
Roundtable Times and Zoom Link:
Not participating in the roundtable

Project Description

When and why do leaders with different ideological orientations publicly support or criticize parties involved in conflict? I examine how left and right leaders differ in their UN General Debate discourse when they address global audiences using the Question of Palestine as a case study. While existing literature use the corpus of UNGD speeches in a variety of applications, relatively few studies classify political stance or sentiment on any global issue using speech data. To address this gap, I use a Transformer-based deep learning model to classify UNGD speeches based on their targeted stance and sentiment towards Israel and Palestine. I propose and test competing theoretical expectations about the effect of leaders’ ideology on rhetorical support for Israel and Palestine from 1947 to 2023. Using panel matching with difference-in-differences, I show that shifts to non-left governments increase attention to the Question of Palestine, whereas shifts to left governments reduce references to Israel’s right to exist and increase negative sentiment toward Israel. The findings are not solely driven by issue salience or selection into agenda topics, as they hold even in sessions when the question of Palestine is not on the agenda. The results imply that ideology shapes not only foreign policy preferences but also the attention to and expression of those preferences.

In the next step of this project, I expand my classification scheme on UNGD speeches to evaluate causal mechanisms underlying support for Israel or Palestine. I will create a new handbook for hand coding that involves the following dimensions: human rights, colonialism, economic development, arms control.

Research Tasks: Hand coding UN General Debate speeches based on a handbook that include specific instructions. Students will read through speeches, learn patterns, and classify speeches based on the 4 dimensions: human rights, colonialism, economic development, arms control.

Skills that research assistant(s) may need: Attention to detail, interest in International law and international organizations!