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Attitudes of diplomats at the United Nations: the effects of organizational participation on the evaluation of the organization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Manfred Ernst
Manfred Ernst
Affiliation:
Received his Ph.D. in political science at Tulane University, 1976, and is currently with the Department of Government at Georgetown University.
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Extract

In the literature which focuses on the participation of individuals in an international organization, two hypotheses are stated. The first rs that the longer a person serves an organization, the more favorable his attitude toward the organization becomes. It is hypothesized that the duration of the diplomatic assignment constitutes a factor influencing the evaluation of the organization.

Type
Research Notes
Information
International Organization , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , Autumn 1978 , pp. 1037 - 1044
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1978

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References

1 Reference to that hypothesis can be found in Alger, Chadwick, “United Nations Participation as a Learning Experience,” Public Opinion Quarterly (Fall 1963): 425Google Scholar. Alger suggests that researchers control for the effects of long and short term service on personnel. See also, Jacobson, Harold, “Deriving Data from Delegates to International Assemblies,” International Organization (Summer 1967): 592–613Google Scholar; and Galtung, Ingrid, “The Status of the Technical Assistance Expert: A Study of U.N. Experts in Latin America,” Journal of Peace Research (1966): 367Google Scholar. Her own analysis did not confirm what she referred to as the “common sense assumption” about the time of service. Best, Gary, “Diplomacy at the United Nations” (unpublished dissertation, Northwestern University, 1960), p. 63Google Scholar, comments on his failure to include a measure controlling for the duration of the diplomatic assignments, implying that it would have been a useful focus. In the context of the European institutions, Lindberg, Leon and Scheingold, Stuart, Europe's Would-Be Polity (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1970), p. 119Google Scholar refer to it as “actor socialization.”

2 Alger attempted this type of analysis with pre- and post-Assembly interviews and got some inconclusive results; see, “United Nations Participation as a Learning Experience,” pp. 411–26.

3 The effects of non-national roles on attitudes are discussed by Alger, Chadwick, “Personal Contact in Intergovernmental Organizations,” in International Behavior: A Social-Psychological Analysis, ed., Kelman, Herbert C. (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1965)Google Scholar. Also, Kelman, Herbert C., “Changing Attitudes through International Activities,” Journal of Social Issues (1962): 67–87Google Scholar. Both analyses are discussed in Wolf, Peter, “International Organization and Attitude Change: A Reexamination of the Functionalist Approach,” International Organization (Summer 1974): 352–53Google Scholar.

4 Alger, , “Personal Contact,” p. 535Google Scholar. Alger's thesis of the effects of nonnational roles was empirically tested by Siverson, Randolph, “Role and Perception in International Crisis: The Cases of Israeli and Egyptian Decision-Makers in National Capitals and the United Nations,” International Organization 28 (Summer 1973): 329–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The statistical analysis, however, suggested that role playing had little or no impact on the decision-makers. The discrepancy can be attributed to the conceptualization of role playing in Siverson's study. His “role players” are not engaged in any formal role in the operation of the United Nations, but remain exclusively national representatives.

5 The feeling thermometer represents a scale ranging from zero (very cold, unfavorable feelings), via 50 (neither cold nor warm, indifferent), to 100 (very warm, favorable feelings). Intermediate intervals for the unfavorable feelings below the 50 mark are: 15 (quite cold), 30 (fairly cold), and 40 (slightly cold). Above the 50 mark, the favorable feelings are arranged in intervals: 60 (slightly warm), 70 (fairly warm), and 85 (quite warm). For a presentation and application of the feeling thermometer, see Weisberg, Herbert F. and Rusk, Jerrold G., “Dimensions of Candidate Evaluation,” American Political Science Review 69 (12 1970): 1185Google Scholar; and Weisberg, Herbert F., and Rusk, Jerrold G., “Perceptions of Presidential Candidates: Implications for Electoral Change,” in Controversy in American Voting Behavior, eds. Niemi, Richard G., and Weisberg, Herbert F. (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Co., 1976)Google Scholar. For our analysis, we said the following: I have something here that looks like a thermometer, which we call a feeling thermometer. This thermometer can be used to indicate a person's feelings toward a particular object or concept. Here's how it works: If you don't feel particularly warm or cold toward an object, then you place it at the 50 mark, the middle of the thermometer. If you have a warm feeling toward the object, or feel favorably toward it, you place it somewhere between 50 and 100 degrees, depending upon how warm your feeling is toward the object. On the other hand, if you don't feel very favorably toward it, that is, if you don't care too much for it, you would place it somewhere between 0 and 50 degrees. Our first object to be rated is the United Nations. Where would you place the United Nations on this thermometer?

6 This maximum disagreement among the respondents occurs if 50 percent score zero and 50 percent score 100.

7 The reported level of homogeneity (the actual variance is not overwhelming) also implies that the tests of statistical significance later reported in this paper are not necessarily persuasive.

8 Best, , “Diplomacy at the United Nations,” p. 75Google Scholar.

9 Of all nations included in Best's study (70), twenty-one had been admitted to the UN after December 1955 or later. None of these delegates could have had much more than four years of experience.

10 The relationship between personnel stability and institutionalization is mentioned by Keohane, Robert O., “Institutionalization of the United Nations General Assembly,” International Organization (Autumn 1969): 870–77Google Scholar. Also, Polsby, Nelson, “The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives,” American Political Science Review (03 1968): 145Google Scholar.

11 Algeralso considered informal roles in his conceptualization, such as intellectual leaders, facilitators of agreements, and leaders of a group of nations. See, “Personal Contact,” p. 535.

12 For a listing of all office holders in the last eight years, see Annotated Preliminary List of Items to be Included in the Provisional Agenda of the Twenty-Ninth Session of the General Assembly, Annex 2; and General Assembly of the United Nations XXIX Session (Public Information Inquiries Unit, United Nations, 09 1974)Google Scholar.

13 See, e.g., Volgy, Thomas and Quistgard, Jon E., “Correlates of Organizational Rewards at the United Nations: An Analysis of Environmental and Legislative Variables,” International Organization 28 (Spring 1974): 186CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Singer, Marshall and III, Barton Sensing, “Elections Within the United Nations: An Experimental Study Utilizing Statistical Analysis,” International Organization 17 (Autumn 1963): 906–907CrossRefGoogle Scholar; they divide the office into two groups, important and other. Gregg, Robert, “The Latin-American Bloc in United Nations Elections,” Social Science Quarterly 46 (09 1965): 149–54Google Scholar, uses a numerical scale for eight offices he included in his study.

15 United Nations, Permanent Missions to the United Nations (New York: 08 1974)Google Scholar.

16 The rationale for geographical stratification was based on the assumption that a major source of sampling error would come from a neglect of “between” strata differences rather than from “within” strata differences.

17 The universe of role players was identified through cross-reference of past office holding and present availability at the permanent missions.

18 The chi-square test for the differences between the two groups indicated no significant difference at the.05 level of confidence (X2 = 9.16, with 7 degrees of freedom).

19 The absence of longitudinal data, however, should remind us that there is a possibility that only delegates who already have a highly positive attitude toward the organization get elected to the nonnational roles.

20 In an earlier analysis, Keohane also found that length of service did not guarantee election to office. His observation, however, led him to conclude that “few signs of seniority are visible.” In contrast, our comment about seniority not leading automatically to office holding implies only that seniority cannot be considered a sufficient condition. Since we do find an empirical relationship between length of service and office holding, we do not reject the idea that this might suggest the rudiments of a seniority system. For Keohane's, findings, see “Institutionalization of the General Assembly,” pp. 883–884Google Scholar.

21 See, e.g., Keohane, “Institutionalization of the General Assembly,” and Polsby “The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives.” Also, Huntington, Samuel, “Political Development and Political Decay,” World Politics (04 1965): 386–430Google Scholar.