Policy & Politics Journal Blog

by Yael R. Kaplan, Melissa K. Merry and Michael D. Jones

In our recent article published in Policy & Politics, we explore how narratives shape the way countries behave in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), focusing on their voting behaviour. We argue that the big stories a nation tells about itself – termed “macro narratives” – play a crucial role in how that country votes. Essentially, these macro narratives help form a country’s identity and influence its political decisions in the global arena.

Through our analysis, we explain that narratives are not just random tales; they are powerful tools that help people make sense of complex situations. In politics, leaders and interest groups use these stories to shape public opinion and rally support for their goals. Our research emphasises that, while we know a lot about how narratives work at smaller levels – like within groups or communities – there’s still a lot to learn about how these stories operate on a larger, national scale.

To explore this idea, we propose a new way of looking at how macro narratives affect voting behaviour in the UNGA. We suggest that countries with similar narratives are more likely to vote in a similar way. Moreover, we suggest that the content of the story a country tells can affect the way it votes in the UNGA. For example, a country that emphasises human rights in its narrative is more likely to support votes related to human rights. While this might seem obvious, the surprising part is that this pattern can be true even for non-democratic countries – places where you might not expect much support for human rights-related decisions.

Our article also highlights the need for more research into how these narratives can be identified and analysed. We suggest that future studies could look at different types of documents, like speeches given by leaders or even national anthems, to uncover how these macro narratives are constructed and influence decisions. By better understanding these stories, we can get a clearer picture of what drives countries’ actions in international politics.

Alongside these interesting findings, this research makes an important contribution to the policy process theory: the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF). The NPF has been around for a while, focusing on how stories influence public policy, but most of the research has been at the micro and meso levels, addressing individual or group narratives. Here a big leap is taken by applying the NPF to the national level on an international scale, showing how macro narratives shape not just a country’s identity but also its actions on the world stage. This helps fill a gap in the existing research and opens the door for future studies to explore how national identities and narratives can impact policies far beyond voting in the UNGA.

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You can read the original research in Policy & Politics at

Kaplan, Y. R., Merry, M. K., and Jones, M. D. (2025). The relationship between national identity and the United Nations General Assembly voting patterns: a Narrative Policy Framework analysis. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2025), available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000054>

If you enjoyed this blog post, you may also be interested in reading

Liu, L., and Yen, W. (2024). Why do individuals in democratic societies support stringent policies? A narrative policy framework analysis. Policy & Politics 52, 3, 453-476, available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/030557324X17049690476008>

Kuenzler, J., Stauffer, B., Schlaufer, C., Song, G., Smith-Walter, A., and Jones, M. D. (2025). A systematic review of the Narrative Policy Framework: a future research agenda. Policy & Politics 53, 1, 129-151, available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000046>