It is clear that advances in science and technology, particularly technology, have wrought major changes in society. The effects of these advances have been felt directly through the development of major new artifacts such as the automobile, the telephone, and nuclear weapons. Major social effects, often of greater importance, have also resulted from the second-order consequences of this new technology: urbanization, mass culture, pollution, industrialization, etc.

In the conclusions of his article on the implications of science and technology for international institutions Eugene B. Skolnikoff advances three provocative propositions: 1) Existing international institutions and governmental attitudes are inadequate to meet the requirements imposed by foreseeable technological developments. 2) These requirements may be better met by creating new international institutions rather than by adding to the functions of those already in existence, especially the United Nations. 3) States with advanced technological development may have to reserve to themselves substantial if not exclusive power in international institutions concerned with technology. With these propositions as guidelines he issues a plea for creative planning for the 1970s and the even more distant future.

The opportunity to comment on Eugene B. Skolnikoff's wide-ranging article cannot easily be resisted. Few people can resist the temptation to make their own predictions about the future. But, quite beyond the general appeal of prediction, Skolnikoff suggests so many ideas and trends to the reader of his stimulating article that the aspiring commenter can hardly fail to find topics to engage him.

The concept of “international politics” which is central to a large sector of political science, indeed its label, is increasingly being called into question. Those processes which can no longer be clearly assigned either to states or—as suggested by the model of “inter-national politics”—to the area between states are gaining in importance in international affairs. Some examples of these processes are the direct horizontal transactions between societal actors of different nation-states, transactions which bypass the institutions of government but strongly affect their margin of maneuver; the various forms of mutual penetration of formally separate entities; and the growing activities of a number of nonstate actors. Many theories which are connected with the model of international politics, above all that of sovereignty but also subordinate constructs such as the doctrine of separation of powers, should likewise be called into question.

Ten years ago Chadwick F. Alger identified a major problem in international organizations research. He decried the tendency to study international organizations primarily in terms of “their accomplishment of their explicit goals through the explicit mechanisms established for this purpose.” In most cases this meant concentration on the passage or defeat of resolutions in public meetings and on the extent to which the problems addressed in these resolutions have been dealt with efficaciously through United Nations bodies. Alger suggested that “this type of inquiry does not produce the only, nor necessarily the most important, impact that the organization has on relations among members.” Instead, we should devote more attention to an examination of how international organizations “affect the broader international system in which they operate even when problems are not resolved within their walls.”

On March 5, 1970, the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) went into effect, having been ratified by 47 states including the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The treaty legally bars these three nuclear powers from transferring atomic weapons to nonnuclear states and formally pledges those nonnuclear states signing the treaty to refrain from developing such weapons or acquiring them from other powers. It thus caps a long effort by the United States to inhibit—so long as it could not preclude—the spread of nuclear weapons and to avoid the potential instabilities associated with that spread.

As they pursue their goals, actors—whether individuals, groups, or states—attempt to consume goods and services of various types. Generally they try to obtain such goods through private action. Thus, individuals clothe and entertain themselves by means of their individual actions in various marketplaces. Similarly, states will attempt to achieve goals and put policies into effect through their own actions. They will trade with other countries, develop defensive capabilities, and produce scientific knowledge substantially through their own efforts. States behave, then, as if they were private consumers in a market economy.

I am happy to respond to the invitation to comment on Bruce Russett's and John Sullivan's most useful and sensible article. The concept of collective goods must play a starring role in any adequate theory of international organization and cooperation so there is every reason to encourage work of this kind. Russett's and Sullivan's article is, moreover, worthy of extension and criticism on many specific points. On some of these points I have minor technical (or in some cases expositional) criticisms. But relevant as such technical issues can be, they attract only a specialized interest and are of far less practical importance than Russett's and Sullivan's central concern with the conditions under which more international collective goods can be obtained. They ask, in effect, how patterns of international organization and cooperation that could help to improve the inefficient, and at times even chaotic and violent, international system could in practice be attained.

International air transport is a microsystem which includes most of the variables of the international macrosystem. As Young W. Kihl has put it, for example, a functional international organization such as the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) operates within the milieu of the larger system, reflects the constraints of that system, and can, therefore, be examined in the context of world politics. The transport system combines political, economic, military, and important technical factors with the often contradictory objectives of international, transnational, national, and subnational actors. It is small wonder that comprehensive studies of the subject are difficult to find. None of these books is all-inclusive, but, of those which are original contributions, the range of disciplines represented in them is formidable: Included are the opinions of a political scientist (Kihl), two professors of law (Thomas Buergenthal and K. G. J. Pillai), one economist (Mahlon R. Straszheim), and a professor of international business (Robert L. Thornton). The latter two are the most policy oriented overall. Pillai concentrates on the International Air Transport Association (IATA), an association of the carriers themselves, and Buergenthal and Kihl focus on ICAO, an association of states and a specialized agency of the United Nations.

Inquiry into the nature and role of international organizations has not been a noticeably cumulative enterprise. Descriptive lacunae have been filled, new and more reliable techniques of observation and measurement have been introduced, and more sophisticated and powerful instruments of analysis have been brought to bear on various problems—all signs of change, even of progress—but the field as a whole remains “notorious for its lack of systematic and testable theory.” This state of affairs has been lamented generally and has been contrasted specifically with the situation which prevails in international organization's “stepfield” of regional integration. Here, previous paradigms and conceptual frameworks have been scrutinized critically and constructively; alternative measures and additional hypotheses have been proposed; originally divergent “perspectives” have acquired convergent properties; and speculative reformalizations have been advanced which seek to build upon past criticisms.

Partly by design, partly by coincidence the twelve months from September 1969 to September 1970 saw an “explosion” of reports about development problems. This article is particularly concerned with one of these, Sir Robert Jackson's A Study of the Capacity of the United Nations Development System. While the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) covers only a minor percentage of total assistance extended to less developed countries, its significance reaches beyond its quantitative development impact It has become the single most important United Nations cooperative effort and, more generally, represents an unprecedented example of intergovernmental and interorganizational cooperation.

Amos Perlmutter has raised an interesting series of points in his commentary on my recent article concerning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). As I understand the crux of his argument, it is as follows. “From the outset UNRWA was a political organization” (p. 307). Despite this fact I have displayed a “low level of political judgment” (p. 306) which has led me to focus neither on the decisions rendered by UNRWA's commissioner-general nor on the future impact of UNRWA and the ways in which it can contribute to stability in the Middle East. Presumably these latter two types of analysis would be “high-level political judgments” (p. 308).

It has often been observed that recent converts to any belief system tend to be among its most zealous adherents, and science (despite its emphasis on objectivity and detachment) has proved no exception. As the canons of scientific inquiry begin to take hold in each field of human knowledge, there have appeared those who seem, as it were, more royalist than the king. For these scholars the rules of scientific inference are not guidelines to be used with care but dogmas to be pursued unswervingly; to them science is not, as someone once expressed it, “attenuated common sense” but a totally different and rather severe regimen of thought.