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Policy-Making and Secretariat Influence in the U. N. General Assembly: The Case of Public Information

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Leon Gordenker
Leon Gordenker*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

During the annual sessions of the General Assembly of the United Nations the policy and budget of the Office of Public Information (OPI) of the organization have been the perennial center of a complex debate. Instructions first given the Secretariat in 1946 provide some elements of this debate, while others depend on the professional expertise of the international civil service and on its influence and support in a General Assembly divided several ways. As a whole, the outcome demonstrates once more both the durable force of an attractive idea and the truth of the maxim that secretariats have great weight in the policy processes of international, as of other, organizations. For despite repeated debate and attack OPI has proved enduring and resilient.

During the last 15 years the many-faceted program of the agency has shrunk somewhat, to be sure, under the economizer's knife. In particular, it was under unusually severe criticism in 1957, when the General Assembly established an expert committee to investigate UN public information activities, and also in 1958, when the results of the inquiry were discussed. This committee, appointed with the unenthusiastic concurrence of the Secretary General, and made up of six governmental nominees not all of whom had experience with public information, directly challenged some of the working assumptions of OPI and called attention to difficulties with others. Their report struck a blow, too, at the internal balance of OPI, accused it of substantive failures and urged it to design new programs.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , June 1960 , pp. 359 - 373
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1960

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References

1 UN General Assembly Resolution 13 (I).

2 For a comment on the development of the program, see Cory, Robert H. Jr., “Forging a Public Information Policy for the United Nations,” International Organization, Vol. VII, No. 2 (05 1953), pp. 229–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Each of the Annual Reports of the Secretary-General, published as Supplement No. 1 to the Official Records of each session of the General Assembly, includes a descriptive and analytical section on public information and public opinion.

3 United Nations, Official Records, General Assembly: Twelfth Session, Annexes, Agenda Item 41, p. 34 (hereafter cited as GA: 12th sess., etc.). The committee was established under General assembly Resolution 1177 (XII). Its report, dated Sept. 20, 1958, is UN Document A/3928, “Report of the Expert Committee on United Nations Public Information.” The committee members were: Robert A. O. Bevan, a British advertising man; Ahmed M. El-Messiri, an Egyptian lawyer and representative at UN meetings since 1948; Enrique Rodriguez-Fabregat, lead of the Uruguayan mission to the UN since 1947; P. N. Haksar, director of the External Publicity Division of the Indian foreign office and a lawyer; Louis P. Lochner, veteran American foreign correspondent; and Alexey F. Sokirkin, a Soviet diplomat. UN Press Release ORG/364, March 13, 1958.

4 UN Document A/4122.

5 These and subsequent quotations of public information principles are from General Assembly Resolution 13 (I). The resolution itself is brief, containing only the cited material and the remark that the recommendations of the Technical Advisory Committee on Information, which reported to the Preparatory Commission, constitute a sound foundation for the UN public information program. These recommendations were attached to Resolution 13 (I) as an annex and thus adopted by the General Assembly. Establishment of the Technical Advisory Committee had been favored by the Executive Committee of the Preparatory Commission. It was established and its report was adopted by the Preparatory Commission and submitted textually to the General Assembly. Thus, information policy was a concern of the United Nations from its early days. See Report of the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations (London, 1945), pp. 89, 102–103.

6 GA: 6th sess., Annexes, Agenda Item 41, p. 53.

7 For a comment on this body, see Singer, J. David, “The United Nations Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions,” Public Administration, Vol. XXXV (Winter 1957), pp. 395–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 GA: 4th sess., Suppl. No. 7, Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, Second Report of 1949 to the GA, p. 22.

9 See GA: 3d sess., Part I, Fifth Committee, Summary Records, pp. 300 ff.

10 Loc. cit., note 8 above, p. 22.

11 GA: 6th sess., Suppl. No. 7, Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, Second Report of 1951 to the GA, pp. 28–37.

12 GA: 6th sess., Fifth Committee, Summary Records, p. 86.

13 Subcommittee 8 of the Fifth Committee was established under a resolution contained in United Nations Document A/C.5/L.117, Rev. 1.

14 GA: 6th sess., Annexes, Agenda Item 41, pp. 52–56. This Annex reprints United Nations Document A/C.5/L.172 and includes the complete text of the revised “Basic Principles Underlying the Public Information Activities of the United Nations.” Subsequent discussion of Subcommittee 8 in this article is based on it.

15 GA: 6th sess., Fifth Committee, Summary Records, p. 330.

16 GA: 10th sess., Suppl. No. 7, Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, First Report to the Tenth Session of the GA, p. 21.

17 Ibid.; and GA: 10th sess., Suppl. No. 1, Annual Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization, p. 115.

18 Loc. cit., note 16 above, p. 21.

19 GA: 10th sess., Fifth Committee, Summary Records, p. 147.

20 GA: 9th sess., Annexes, Agenda Item 53, pp. 1–3, 16, 28.

21 GA: 10th sess., Annexes, Agenda Items 38 and 47, p. 7.

22 GA: 11th sess., Suppl. No. 7, Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, Second Report to the Eleventh Session of the General Assembly, p. 24.

23 A fuller account of these incidents may be found in GA: 11th sess., Annexes, Agenda Item A3, pp. 89–92.

24 GA: 11th sess., Fifth Committee, Summary Records, p. 117.

25 GA: 12th sess., Suppl. No. 7, Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, Fifth Report to the General Assembly, p. 5.

26 Ibid., pp. 5–6, 24.

27 GA: 12th sess., Annexes, Agenda Item 41, p. 34.

28 Ibid., p. 38.

29 This and the subsequent account is based on GA: 12th sess., Fifth Committee, Summary Records, pp. 31–65, 69–72.

30 Ibid., p. 59.

31 Ibid., p. 72.

32 United Nations Document A/3928, p. 18.

33 Ibid., Annex I, passim.

34 Ibid., p. 104.

35 Ibid., pp. 82–83.

36 Ibid., p. 83.

37 Ibid., p. 87.

38 Ibid., p. 88.

39 Ibid., pp. 90–91.

40 Ibid., pp. 92–105.

41 See above, note 27.

42 Oct. 17, 1958.

43 Oct. 20, 1958.

44 UN Document A/C.5/757.

45 This account is based on UN Document A/3945.

46 UN Document A/C.5/764.

47 Japan, Sweden and the Netherlands. GA: 13th sess., Fifth Committee, Summary Records, pp. 183, 188, 193. There is no reason to think that some OPI officials might not have encouraged correspondents to see a threat to services and facilities in the suggestions made by the experts.

48 For a fuller summary of the debate, see UN Document A/4062, pp. 9–14.

49 Loc. cit. above, note 47, p. 195.

50 Ibid., pp. 177–178, and UN Document A/C.5/L.527.

51 UN Documents A/C.5/L.529; A/C.5/L.530; A/C.5/L.533; A/C.5/L.540; and A/C.5/L.541.

52 UN Document A/AC.5/L.539; GA: 13th sess., Fifth Committee, Summary Records, pp. 328–329.

53 UN Document A/4122.

54 Since this article was written, the General Assembly has again wrestled with the subject. As anticipated here, its debates did not deal with the principles of public information but rather took up details of the Secretary-General's proposals and his effort to apply as much as possible of the report of the Expert Committee. Views virtually identical with those of the past appeared again. The General Assembly this time, however, adopted a resolution [A/RES/1405 (XIV)] on public information by 79 favorable votes and no dissent. The size of the majority indicates that no radical changes were attempted. The resolution does contain three new features. One of them, based on an offer by the Secretary-General to try to stabilize the expenditure for OPI, requests him to plan a budget of about $5 million for 1960; thus, the General Assembly placed no ceiling on future expenditure, despite the usual move to do So. The second asks him to appoint a consultative panel of experts from the main cultures and geographical areas of the world; he had accepted a similar idea at the outset of the 1957 discussion and such panels had been employed on the initiative of the Secretariat before then. The third asks him to submit an outline of the policy and programs of OPI in a report to the General Assembly; in effect, OPI has always provided some information of this nature but not in such a formal manner. For the rest, the resolution echoes the wishes of both the underdeveloped countries and the economy bloc by urging him to continue with efforts to apply the ideas of the Expert Committee, to consider the importance of “adequate regional representation” in policy-making and field posts, and to establish new Information Centers, preferably by decentralizing headquarters staff.

55 My calculations, based on actual expenditures as computed from the annual General Assembly resolution which includes supplementary appropriations, indicate that OPI from 1949 through 1957 never spent less than approximately six percent nor more than approximately eight percent of the total UN appropriation. The budgets, but not the actual amounts spent, indicated that in 1957 and 1958, OPI would spend about nine percent of the total, but unforeseen items elsewhere have lowered this proportion in the past. Delegates frequently have spoken of a 10 percent portion of the UN budget going to public information. This is true only of the estimate: the actual proportion has always been less. See General Assembly Resolutions 252 (III); 356 (IV); 471 (V); 583 (VI); 674 (VII); 786 (VIII); 890 (IX); 979 (X); 1083 (XI); and Documents A/3600, p. 83, and A/3825, p. 83. Personnel statistics are somewhat more difficult to obtain and compare. But relying on the annual budget submitted by the Secretary-General (always published as Supplement No. 5 to the Official Records of the General Assembly), a reasonably accurate comparison can be made for the years 1948 to 1956. Taking the Radio and Press and Publications Divisions, the structures of which remained fairly stable, as an index and adding to their personnel numbers those of the Information Centers, the following appears: in 1948, the two divisions and the centers employed 254 persons; in 1956, they included 226 persons.

56 The territories or regions: North Africa, Central Africa, Central America, Afghanistan, Austria, Burma, Ceylon. Offices in them were urged by Afghanistan, Austria, Burma, El Salvador, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iraq and Tunisia. GA: 13th sess., Fifth Committee, Summary Records, pp. 175 ff.

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