Description
This paper discusses the constraints and goals of the autonomy of Latin American small states' foreign policy in the twenty-first century. We employ the concepts of dependency and autonomy to look at small states’ behavior in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) since 2010. Using their level of trade with China and the United States (US) as an independent variable, we aim to explain the voting behavior of the LASS on issues of foreign policy interests either of the United States or China. The paper suggests that economic dependency, in terms of the level of trade with a strong power, like China or the US, explains their behavior in the UNGA. This also shows the level of autonomy of LASS's foreign policy. To support this argument, the research combines a statistical analysis with a process tracing approach.
