Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia on 24 February 2022 and the enmity that has ensued between the West and Russia, the position of the Global South in this war and its implications for the current and future world order has been the object of ample and sometimes acrimonious debate. This study makes a contribution through an analysis of the voting behaviours of the G77 countries, the largest representative organisation of the Global South at the United Nations (UN) on the first six resolutions of the UN General Assembly Special Emergency Session on the war. It shows that the character of a state, liberal or illiberal, is a strong predictor of its voting attitude, with liberal countries mostly supporting Ukraine and authoritarian countries backing Russia ? even stronger than its identity as a country of the Global South. Also, Southern democratic countries are more supportive of peace negotiations and less dogmatic in their voting posture, leading to a more qualified support of the West. Conversely, authoritarian support for other authoritarian countries appears to be less qualified, arguably due to their preoccupation with regime survival. This evinces the centrality of the democratic question in countries' ability to act cohesively.

Nordic countries are similar when it comes to migratory trends. However, when the ‘multicultural question’ erupted in the 1970s, they opted for different policies. In the early 2000s, some scholars analysed a retreat from multiculturalism policies and a civic integrationist turn. Yet, our knowledge of the processes of convergence or divergence per se of these policies is still limited. Using the comparative method, this article shows that, during that period of time, the five Nordic countries were divided into two camps, with little mixing in terms of policy content: multiculturalist (Sweden and Norway) and assimilationist (Denmark and Iceland). Finland shifted its policy from assimilation to multiculturalism in the 1990s, when it became a country of immigration. It adopted the same range of multicultural policies as Sweden and Norway; Sweden was the leader on this and Denmark was the least multiculturalist. Negative feedback was the most recurrent mechanism of policy reproduction.