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French Elite Perspectives on the United Nations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Daniel Lerner ,
Marguerite N. Kramer  and
Marguerite N. Kramer
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Extract

The purpose of this paper is to identify the perspectives which govern the opinions of French leaders toward the United Nations. Having identified these perspectives, we shall seek to characterize the differences between them in terms of their motivation, content, and outcome. Our objective is to qualify conventional stereotypes that have been more repeated than investigated, such as that “the French” are hostile to the UN because they are “nationalists”. While traditional nationalism is still a powerful political emotion in France, it is expressed in various ways among contemporary Frenchmen. The varieties of French nationalism today include—and the paradox is more apparent than real—both commitments to internationalism and loyalties to supranationalism.

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , Winter 1963 , pp. 54 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1963

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References

page 55 note 1 See Daniel Lerner and Morton Gorden, “European Leaders Look at World Security” (M.I.T. CENIS Document C/60–7, 1960).

page 56 note 2 This was done to conserve our dwindling research funds. It was justified by a sequential sampling analysis in 1956, which demonstrated that the statistical distribution exhibited by our first 100 respondents varied little with the addition of largernumbers.

apge 57 note 3 Cf. the doctoral dissertations being prepared at M.I.T. by Marguerite N. Kramer and Morton Gorden.

page 62 note 4 Both French and English versions are given here to illustrate the maximum degree of liberty I shall take in translating subsequent quotations from the interviews.

page 64 note 5 In an observation on an earlier version of this article, Inis L. Claude commented: Is it not possible that much French coolness toward the United Nations stems, not from the view that it is weak and ineffective, but from the view that it has been too effective in doing things of which Frenchmen tend to disapprove. Perhaps they consider the United Nations effective only when it is effectively controlled by forces favorable to French policy and interests. The major French grievances (e.g., Suez, Algeria, anticolonialism in general) are cases involving United Nations action (not inaction) deemed by Frenchmen to be abusive and perverted. A study might well reveal that there is widespread and influential French discontent with the United Nations on the ground of disapproval of its playing a role in support of the anticolonial movement and dismay concerning the relatively high political effectiveness of its performance of that role.

page 67 note 6 Inis Claude commented: “Clearly, majority rule does not paralyze the United Nations; the objection must be that it enables the United Nations to do things of which the minority disapproves. On this score, the French are critical not of the paralysis but of the hyper-activity of the United Nations.”

page 67 note 7 For an account of this sentiment, see France Defeats EDC, edited by Lerner, Daniel and Aron, Raymond (New York: Praeger, 1957), pp. 208 ff.Google Scholar