The Republic of China kept its seat renewed until the end of 1960, when it failed to get a two-thirds majority vote for re-election.
), the United Kingdom and Soviet Union received 2-year initial terms (renewed in 1948, 1951, etc.
[4] Unlike the Security Council, there was no specific agreement between the superpowers on how many ECOSOC seats would go to each of the then-informal United Nations Regional Groups.
Instead, seat arrangements came from "unwritten rules" and "habits" that eventually stabilized into a pattern documented after the fact.
[8][3] The new members gave Africa, Asia, and Latin America together a commanding 66 out of 99 seats on the General Assembly.
Belgium, the Republic of China, and India deadlocked on the Netherlands' outgoing seat for fourteen rounds, which was left vacant for over four months, well into the 1961 term.
After negotiations, all three members withdrew in place of Italy, with an agreement that next year, Spain's outgoing seat would go to a candidate from either Africa or Asia.
[10] A fourteenth round was scheduled for 13 April 1961, but was postponed by the President of the General Assembly with no objections while "the interested delegations and groups" negotiated.
The President then proposed to the General Assembly to draw lots again in order to assign term lengths to the specific members, with no objections.
[8] Unlike on the Security Council, the distribution of ECOSOC seats is not strict, and may change if (for example) a subregion does not receive enough applicants in a given year.
Legend: Western Northern Central Southern Eastern Prior to 1979, there were four subregions.
[20] The Western European and Others Group contains three caucusing subgroups (Benelux, the Nordic countries, and CANZ[a]).
To prevent distorting or stretching the table, special elections resulting in 1-year terms are abbreviated to the country's ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code.