Variations in domestic contention on foreign policy, particularly variations of a cyclical nature within the United States, have been often identified but not explained. Changes in international interactions on global issues affect domestic contention. Such external events as the rise of new global issues, the emergence of crises, moves toward accommodation and resolution, war, and foreign-policy failure are related to the diverse forms that domestic contention can take. U.S. domestic contention, both in the recent past and in the short-term future, illustrates particularly well how hard-liners and accommodationists battle over the lessons of history.

As part of the Marshall Plan, the United States Government developed a state-sponsored program of insurance against currency inconvertibility in Western Europe, which grew slowly into a worldwide program insuring US-based multinational corporations against expropriation, war and revolution as well as inconvertibility. Two hypotheses—one based on corporate preferences, the other on state initiatives—can be used to predict the program's development between 1948 and 1974. While there is some independent scope for state policy, corporate preferences appear to be crucial: state policy on this issue has served corporate interests, and state initiatives on expropriation insurance are constrained by private investment decisions. The basic harmony between private investors and the state on expropriation insurance issues is explained by their shared goal of private capital accumulation.

When Africa emerged with unexpected haste as an independent political force in the world, the Commonwealth was still adjusting itself to revolutionary transformations in Asia. There was no doubt that it had entered on a new phase, but the phase was hard to define. Because the nature of the Commonwealth is implicit, there is always considerable diversity of view on its significance even among its own citizens. There is always a time lag as well. Many people, particularly in the “Old Commonwealth,” had just begun to grasp the significance of “The Commonwealth,” no longer “The British Commonwealth,” no longer a blood relationship; and now they had to cope with its rapid expansion and the imminent prospect that white members would be in a minority. Neither citizens nor foreigners had even made up their minds whether they were viewing the decline and fall of the British Empire or the finest hour of the Commonwealth. The doctrine that the new multiracial Commonwealth was the blessed culmination of the virtues of the Empire, the triumph of its good instincts over its errors, had certainly become the official view celebrated in speeches and communiqués, but public opinion lagged behind—not so much resistant to the new idea as captive of traditional attitudes. Not only the white people's view was anachronistic; Asians and Africans were themselves slow to recognize and accept their new position of equality and of responsibility.

International organizations are involved in the development process in several ways: They transfer real resources, offer technical assistance, give advice on development strategy, and collect and collate information. The specialized agencies and other United Nations bodies do not have a tax base of their own; they must rely on the donations of their members for resources. Most of their subscriptions come from the wealthy nations of the world, and most of their grants benefit the poor nations. The UN system acts as a financial intermediary distributing resources between the developed and the underdeveloped worlds. Human, as well as financial, capital is transferred to the less developed nations (LDC's) by the specialized agencies, which provide skilled personnel or training programs for nationals of the LDC's.

Venezuela's entry into the Andean Common Market (ACM) represents a case of systems transformation. Venezuelan membership has led both to major changes in economic provisions of the Common Market, and to significant alterations in political relations among members. Analysis of these changes depends on an understanding of the political debate in Venezuela, which was prolonged, and which led to membership under favorable terms earned through hard negotiations. Any assessment of the ultimate impact of Venezuelan participation in the ACM must remain guarded. As a wealthy and dynamic member, Venezuela could become an important catalyst for integration in the region. But with its superior economic capacity, Venezuela could also come to dominate the integrative effort, accruing most of the benefits to itself and in the process creating disruptions and dissatisfaction among the other members.

The uninstructed expert has in recent years lost ground to the governmental representative in international organization. One of the most striking indications of this trend is to be found in the decision of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations to establish the principle that its commissions should be composed of persons representing, and instructed by, their governments.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) will probably be remembered in history as an outstanding example of relatively successful intergovernmental cooperation among developing countries. OPEC's achievements in raising the oil export income of members appear remarkable in view of the deep sociopolitical divisions among them—occasionally verging on armed conflicts. Nevertheless, OPEC countries have managed not to let these conflicts wreck their common interest in obtaining substantially better terms from the international companies and from consumer countries. That OPEC countries could obtain better terms is not only the result of member solidarity but also of the relatively inelastic demand for petroleum. Another crucial factor favoring OPEC is that major consumer countries have been moderate in their drive to collectively countervail OPEC, except indirectly by allowing their international oil companies to join forces ostensibly in defense of consumers' interests. Major consumer countries have also declined so far to split forcefully the OPEC coalition. The continued existence of OPEC largely depends on (1) members' perception of gain outweighing sacrifices or frustrations of working together, and (2) the tolerance of major industrial importing countries.

The Governments of the Kingdom of Belgium, the Kingdom of Denmark, the French Republic, the Irish Republic, the Italian Republic, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Kingdom of Norway, the Kingdom of Sweden, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland;

One would not ordinarily think of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as of particular importance to the less developed countries. Nevertheless, in recent years the less developed coun-tries have come to have a very high regard for the IMF; and the IMF, in turn, has become the great defender of the interests of the less developed countries. This entente has evolved out of the course of events. In the current discussions on international monetary reform the IMF has be-come the spokesman for universal participation in reserve creation. This suits the institutional interests of the IMF. At the same time it makes the IMF the advocate of the interests of the less developed countries

The tenth joint meeting of the European Parliament and the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe was held on September 17 and 18, 1963, under the joint presidency of Mr. Pierre Pflimin (French Popular Republican Movement [MRP]), President of the Consultative Assembly, and Mr. Gaetano Martino (Italian Liberal), President of the European Parliament. Mr. Hans Furler (German Christian Democrat) presented the report on the work of the European Parliament and Mr. E. Sassen, member of the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) Commission, reported on Euratom. Mr. Albert Coppé, Vice President of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) High Authority, reviewed ECSC's recent achievements, particularly in social affairs for coal and steel workers.

A new kind of “DP” plagued the conscience of the west after the Displaced Person of World War II had become an historical phenomenon. It was the “Disinherited Person”, the national of overcrowded western Europe who was surplus to the economy in which he lived but who, with international planning and assistance, might become a “plus” person in less densely settled areas overseas. In an effort to alleviate this problem of over-population in western Europe a new agency, the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM), was created and began operations on February I, 1952. Since that time, more than 570,000 Europeans who needed assistance in migrating have been moved to new homelands by the 27-nation ICEM, representing 36 percent of the total emigration from the main European emigration countries (Austria, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands). Apart from numbers moved directly, the Committee's efforts have stimulated spontaneous emigration by opening or widening new areas of resettlement.

In any discussion of transnational relations the nuclear energy field can best be studied within the framework of the statecentered model of international politics. Although in most fields private activities precede governmental regulation (which follows in response to social and other considerations), the opposite is true in the nuclear energy field. Because the first development of nuclear energy so intimately involved national security, government immediately assumed a preeminent role. This role is now being modified—but still only slightly—by nascent private undertakings of an occasionally transnational nature. Nevertheless, there is already sufficient evidence of growing transnational trends to make an exploration eminently worthwhile in the context of this volume.

The United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have put forward a Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons beyond those five nations which currently possess them: France, the People's Republic of China (Communist China), the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The treaty requires that signatories already possessing such weapons not give them to other countries and that signatories not yet posses-sing nuclear weapons forego accepting them or manufacturing them indigenously. To reinforce the latter restraint the treaty obligates states renouncing weapons to accept inspection safeguards on their peaceful nuclear activities, inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

US food policy is a product of four legitimate but competing concerns: (1)farm policy; (2) domestic economic policy; (3) foreign policy; and (4) global welfare and development policy. Five major policy episodes in 1972–76 illustrate their interplay: the Soviet grain sales of 1972; the soybean embargo of 1973; the food aid debate of 1974; the food reserves proposal of 1975; and the Soviet grain sales of 1974 and 1975. Competing policy concerns were more explicitly and effectively balanced in 1974 and 1975 than in 1972 and 1973, and policy tended to shift toward protecting domestic food prices in 1973, and meeting world food needs in 1974. But it shifted too late to salvage important policy concerns. The 1972–75 experience suggests that the State Department cannot be the lead international food policy agency because domestic farm and economic concerns are too deeply engaged. But interagency committees based in the Executive Office of the President (EOP) lost their effectiveness as crises waned and their members' attention turned to other things. The best organizational strategy for food would therefore be to accept the day-to-day predominance of the Department of Agriculture and seek to broaden the orientation of the secretary and his staff. Reciprocal State sensitivity to non-foreign policy concerns can help protect international economic and political interests; so can monitoring and intermittent intervention by EOP staffs.

The United Nations has patendy not fulfilled the high hopes which some of its sponsors had for it. A major share of responsibility for this failure has commonly been assigned to the Soviet Union, and not widiout reason. Yet the Soviet view and Soviet conduct have not been products of perversity or malice. They follow logically, first, from the world view held by the communist leadership, which sees the United Nations as another arena in the struggle between the two “world systems” of our age, and, second, from the Soviet experience as a minority power seeking to frustrate the efforts of the hostile majority “in control” of the UN.

The experience of participating in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in several different capacities, has acquainted me with the many management problems that faced the Organization in its first dozen years. The present article deals with some of these problems under four headings of unequal importance: UNESCO's functions, 2) the organization of its secretariat, 3) the relations of the Director-General with the legislative organs, and 4) personnel administration.

Despite the widespread assumption that tariffs reduce trade volume in the short term, it is conceivable that long-term expansion and contractions in trade actually drive tariff levels. A Granger causality analysis performed on British, U.S., French, German, Japanese, and a systematic aggregate data on GDP-tariff levels encompassing the 1854–1990 period finds mixed support for both the short- and long-term interpretations. In general, the antecedence of trade on protectionism predominates over the antecedence of protectionism on trade. One implication is that the long-term context should not be ignored in analyzing short-term dynamics.

The nature of political relationships in the United Nations is of considerable interest to students of international organization and, to a lesser degree, to students of international politics. One important aspect of this question concerns the extent to which Western states as a group and the United States in particular dominate the organization. In their examination of this issue many authors contend that the United States prevailed over the United Nations General Assembly during the assembly's earliest years but progressively lost its control as the membership of the organization increased. Their findings, with some variations in detail, indicate that prior to the first significant membership increase in 1955 the United States, with an automatic two-thirds majority in the General Assembly, was dominant. In their view the United States position from 1955 through 1959 was considerably weakened but remained strong enough to ensure favorable decisions by the organization. With further increases in membership during and after 1960, however, they suggest that United States predominance came to an end. Now the newer, less developed, and nonaligned states determine the character and concerns of the UN.

For the purposes of this discussion, the political role of the Secretary General is defined in somewhat narrow terms. It is not intended to discuss his role in the development of policy generally, which would be a possible way of viewing the subject. Rather, attention will be given to the role of the Secretary-General in the discharge of one of the major responsibilities of the United Nations—the maintenance of international peace and security. Consequently, the role of the Secretary-General in developing and executing policies and programs of economic and social development, which has come to be one of the major fields of activity of the Organization, will not be touched upon, except incidentally.