Development aid as an economic factor in the United Nations Security Council election: Lessons for Latvia

Latvia has put forward its candidature to the nonpermanent seat of the Security Council for the term 2026–2027 at the election in 2025, and an increase in the amount of Latvia’s development assistance has also been officially mentioned as one of the most important success factors in the elections. This article tests the aforementioned assumption in political behaviour and aims to determine whether the amount of the development aid correlates with success in elections and therefore can be regarded as an economic influence factor. The results of this research suggest that the widely accepted assumption is wrong. Although a candidate country’s activities in providing development aid might be regarded as a factor indicating the country’s level of integration in United Nations’ work and values, development aid does not correlate with the election results in the Security Council and is not a variable having a significant effect on the election results.

The article is published in the Proceedings of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. The journal is available here: Proceedings of LAS, Section A, 3 2021 Archives – LATVIJAS ZINĀTŅU AKADĒMIJAS VĒSTIS (lasproceedings.lv)