When political principals send agents to international organizations, those agents are often assumed to speak in a single voice. Yet, various types of country representatives appear on the international stage, including permanent representatives as well as more overtly “political” government officials. We argue that permanent delegates at the United Nations face career incentives that align them with the bureaucracy, setting them apart from political delegates. To that end, they tend to speak more homogeneously than do other types of speakers, while also using relatively more technical, diplomatic rhetoric. In addition, career incentives will make them more reluctant to criticize the United Nations. In other words, permanent representatives speak more like bureaucratic agents than like political principals. We apply text analytics to study differences across agents’ rhetoric at the United Nations General Assembly. We demonstrate marked distinctions between the speech of different types of agents, contradictory to conventional assumptions, with implications for our understandings of the interplay between public administration and agency at international organizations.

Points for practitioners

Delegations to international organizations do not “speak with one voice.” This article illustrates that permanent representatives to the United Nations display more characteristics of bureaucratic culture than do other delegates from the same country. For practitioners, it is important to realize that the manner in which certain classes of international actors “conduct business” can differ markedly. These differences in tone—even among delegates from the same principal—can impact the process of negotiation and debate.

中文翻译：

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委派外交：联合国大会各特工的言论

当政治负责人向国际组织派遣特工时，通常假定这些特工以单一声音发言。然而，国际舞台上出现了各种类型的国家代表，包括常任代表以及更为公开的“政治”政府官员。我们认为，联合国常任代表面临的职业激励是使他们与官僚机构保持一致，从而使他们与政治代表区分开来。为此，与其他类型的演讲者相比，他们的演讲倾向更加统一，同时也使用了相对技术性更高的外交措辞。此外，职业激励将使他们更不愿意批评联合国。换句话说，常任代表的讲话更像是官僚机构，而不是政治负责人。我们在联合国大会上应用文本分析来研究特工言辞之间的差异。我们证明了不同类型的代理人的讲话之间的明显区别，这与传统的假设相抵触，这对我们对国际组织中公共行政与代理之间相互作用的理解产生了影响。

从业人员要点

参加国际组织的代表团不会“讲一个声音”。本文说明，常驻联合国代表比同一个国家的其他代表具有更多的官僚文化特征。对于从业者，重要的是要认识到，某些类别的国际行为者“开展业务”的方式可能会明显不同。这些语气上的差异（即使是来自同一校长的代表之间的差异）也会影响谈判和辩论的过程。