The General Assembly of the United Nations fell heir to one of the most vexing and obdurate problems of the postwar diplomatic scene when in September 1948 the big four powers referred to it the problem of the disposition of the Italian colonies. For over three years, the Big Four had wrestled ineffectually with this problem. Despite the deliberations of special deputies of the Council of Foreign Ministers for nearly a year, the efforts of a Four Power Commission of Investigation which visited the colonies, and the advice of nineteen other interested governments, the future of the colonies remained undetermined on September 15, 1948, one year after the coming into force of the treaty of peace with Italy. On that date, the authority of the Big Four to decide the future of the colonies expired according to Annex XI of the Italian peace treaty, which provided that in the event of failure of France, Britain, the USSR and the United States to agree to a solution, the matter was to be referred to the United Nations General Assembly.

The Palestine question has been before the United Nations since April 1947. In the four years which have since elapsed, the General Assembly and the Security Council have created no fewer than ten subsidiary organs to deal with various aspects of the question. Three of the bodies are still actively in existence. The United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine, set up by the General Assembly in December 1948, was directed to assist the parties “to achieve a final settlement of all questions outstanding between them.” The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, established under a General Assembly resolution of December 1949, was intended to shift the emphasis of United Nations-sponsored activities on behalf of the refugees of the Palestine war from relief to rehabilitation. Finally, there is the Security Council's Truce Supervision Organization.

Sovereign states determine the health and safety regulation of nuclear power facilities almost exclusively. Yet the Soviet nuclear power accident at Chernobyl (April 1986) demonstrated that nuclear power can have significant health and political effects transcending state boundaries. Several meetings have been held at the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) since the Chernobyl accident, with delegates seeking to find the proper balance between autonomous state decision-making and international or transboundary interests. This article examines the nuclear safety role of IAEA in the past, and comes to conclusions regarding its likely role in the future. I claim that IAEA is unlikely to become a powerful regulatory “watchdog,” but that incremental changes in the agency could, over time, create a significant international presence.

How does the design of military institutions affect who bears the costs of war? We answer this question by studying the transformative shift from segregated to integrated US military units during the Korean War. Combining new micro-level data on combat fatalities with archival data on the deployment and racial composition of military battalions, we show that Black and white soldiers died at similar rates under segregation. Qualitative and quantitative evidence provides one potential explanation for this counterintuitive null finding: acute battlefield concerns necessitated deploying military units wherever soldiers were needed, regardless of their race. We next argue that the mid-war racial integration of units, which tied the fates of soldiers more closely together, should not alter the relative fatality rates. The evidence is consistent with this expectation. Finally, while aggregate fatality rates were equal across races, segregation enabled short-term casualty discrepancies. Under segregation there were high casualty periods for white units followed by high casualty periods for Black units. Integration eliminated this variability. This research note highlights how enshrining segregationist policies within militaries creates permissive conditions for either commanders' choices, or the dictates and variability of conflict, to shape who bears war's costs.

The Syrian Civil War that began in 2011 killed more than 400,000 civilians. Could a limited intervention motivated by humanitarian concerns have reduced the death toll at an acceptable cost to the intervenors? I distinguish between two approaches to intervention: penalizing atrocities, by raising the cost and lowering the benefit of killing civilians; and fostering a balance of power, to convince the two sides that they cannot win on the battlefield and so must negotiate an end to the war. I show, using a game-theoretic model, that fostering a balance of power causes the government to commit more atrocities and prolongs the war. Penalizing atrocities, while it increases the likelihood of war, can reduce the expected level of atrocities. The model helps account for the failure of US efforts to promote negotiations by aiding Syrian rebels, and the success of efforts to deter Syrian chemical weapons use through threats and limited strikes.

The responses of East European states to changing international economic opportunities and constraints during the 1973–84 period are examined and contrasted with a sample of newly industrializing countries, including Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Mexico, Brazil, and Yugoslavia. The effects of external economic shocks and internal policy choices on balance-of-payments difficulties and borrowing requirements in the mid-1970s are assessed. With the exception of Korea, all the countries that chose to borrow heavily at this time, including all of the East European countries, confronted a debt crisis by the early 1980s and were compelled to introduce austerity measures. Economic performance under austerity is compared in terms of the policy instruments different countries used and their effects on output growth, distributional goals, the balance of payments, and debt levels. Long-term effects of the debt crisis on development strategy and economic and political structure are also considered.

Despite the widespread assumption of terrorism's “terrifying” effect, there has been little systematic testing of the specific emotional microfoundations underlying public opinion about terrorism. While fear is one well-recognized emotional response to terror threats, in societies where terrorism is rare, anger may play a more pivotal role, with distinct consequences for citizens’ downstream political attitudes. To test the impact of these emotional mechanisms on public opinion in the wake of terrorism, I employ a multi-arm mechanism experiment (n = 5,499) in the United States that manipulates both exposure to news about different types of terror attacks and the encouraged emotional response. I supplement this experimental study with observational analyses of the emotional content of social media posts in the wake of sixteen real-world terror attacks in the United States. I find that not only is anger the dominant emotional response to terrorism across both studies, but also that punitive motivations and support for retaliation are both directly shaped by experimentally induced anger after exposure to news about terrorism. These findings illuminate strategic incentives shaping militants’ use of terror tactics, electoral constraints leaders face in formulating counterterror policy, and the emotional mechanisms fueling cycles of political violence.

Economic interdependence complicates domestic policymaking by interposing the decisions of foreigners in the loop that links policy instrument settings to economic outcomes. Nowhere was this vulnerability to external decisions demonstrated more forcefully—even for the world's major economies—than by the energy supply shocks of 1973 and 1979. The oil shocks posed challenges that offer unusual insight into the way nations choose policies: their severity forced a policy response; their unpredictable timing and (at least in 1973) unprecedented nature ruled out conventional formulas and brought to the fore explicit policy trade-offs. This article seeks to explain how policymakers in the world's two major economies responded to these external shocks. The analysis successively employs three vantage points—system, society, and state—in tracing the sources of domestic adjustment policies. It focuses specifically on the extent to which policies accommodated or extinguished each shock's inflationary impulses and on the coherence and consistency with which the executive in each government formulated and pursued particular policy goals. A comparison of these four cases illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of increasingly detailed theoretical frameworks for explaining policy choice. Although the research does not contradict the depiction of the United States and Japan in terms of state strength, it does underscore the importance of looking beyond formal institutional arrangements to consider how elite policy preferences, ambitions, and capacities can define the way constraints influence policy.

In 1955 the General Assembly of the United Nations will have to consider the revision of the Charter, and there are reasons for believing that a number of governments are already giving thought to this question.

Since 1975, the United Nations has undertaken major deliberations to consider institutional reform of the UN system. Such restructuring activities have sprung from widespread dissatisfaction with the United Nations' capacity to deal with problems of economic development and relations between industrialized and developing countries. UN reform efforts have focused on two broad areas: reshaping the deliberative and policy-making operations of central UN institutions in order to reach more coherent global policies on international economic and social affairs; and reorganizing the planning, coordination, and implementation of UN programs to achieve these policy goals more effectively. In 1977, the General Assembly adopted the report of an intergovernmental Ad Hoc Committee, which provided detailed guidelines for prospective UN restructuring, and assigned its recommendations to relevant units within the UN system for the purpose of implementing these reforms. Major themes emphasized in these guidelines include an increased centralization and integration of the UN system in dealing with international economic and social affairs and improved efficiency and coordination of UN operations and activities in these areas. Fundamental to the course of UN restructuring deliberations—and to the extent and significance of eventual institutional reforms—has been the linkage between UN reorganization and the disposition of substantive North-South issues, as the restructuring exercise remains tied to the pace and direction of negotiations concerning “a new international economic order.”

Virtually eveyone reconizes the existence on an environmental crisis in the world today, but may uncertianties remain concerning the precise nature of this cirsis and its domestic and interational implications. This much is clear: The world's popu;lation is continuing to grow at an alarming pace; finite resources are being utilized at exponential rates; and technological advances are contributing to negative ecological outcomes. These trends have been documented extensively. Their political significance, however, has received little attention if only because the visibility of the problem is such a recent phenomenon. This article is addressed to some of the political consequences and international implications of the environmental crisis.

In this essay I suggest a newcomer to the list of types of transnational relationship discussed in this volume. This is the relationship that arises from the use of a common-property natural environment. These relations are not new, of course, and have led to conflict and accommodations at various levels for centuries, as Innis's work on the codfisheries testifies. As world population grows and technology broadens, both demand and capacity to exploit these international common property resources in ways that will harm other users have also increased. Yet international law has not been able to devise rights of tenure for international property as efficient as those for, say, agricultural land. This resulting lack of suitable concepts of ownership (or sovereignty) has, therefore, been one source of the loss of control by central governments that is frequently mentioned in the transnational relations literature.

It is a commonplace that the world in which we live has changed more rapidly and more drastically in the last hundred years than perhaps at any other stage of its history. So evident is this fact, and so familiar are the forces that have made for change, that by a curious paradox the mere repetition of arguments about “the shrinking globe,” “the increased speed of travel,” “the growth of communications,” and so on has tended to deaden our awareness of what they mean. From the earliest years of the century, we have become accustomed to hearing that the invention of automobiles, of aircraft, of telephones, and of radio would radically transform our world. If, now, we once more hear the same, or similar statements, made about space travel, ballistic missiles, atomic energy, and television, our immediate reflex is probably a shrug, denoting the understandable feeling that we have met it all before.

The United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea marks the threshold of a major transition in regimes governing the use of ocean fisheries. After 200 years of operation, the principle of the freedom of the seas for fishing is being abruptly dismantled and replaced by extended zones of national jurisdiction. The new acquisition of authority by coastal states will, in many situations, greatly facilitate the adoption of improved management techniques. But in most regions throughout the world, the authority over numerous stocks of fish will continue to be diffused among neighboring countries because of the migratory patterns of the stocks. Arrangements for the distribution of yields from these shared stocks, for the provision of information, the adoption of regulations, and enforcement will be extremely difficult to achieve and may become significant sources of conflict and waste for many years into the future.

According to our constitutional conception, modern democracy is multidimensional: it incorporates the values of faction control, minority rights protection, and informed deliberation, as well as political accountability. The impact of multilateral organizations (MLOs) on democracy is often not straightforward: it requires careful analysis of how particular MLOs interact with preexisting domestic political institutions within specific issue-areas. Thus we reject the conventional wisdom that MLOs are necessarily democracy-degrading simply because they are not directly participatory. Gartzke and Naoi's critique misstates our views on some fundamental issues. We clarify our analyses of the multidimensional nature of constitutional democracy; the relationship between democracy and multilateralism; the Madisonian distinction between interest groups that support the general interest and those that do not; and our understanding of the current state of research. We suggest possibilities for further elaborating our argument, theoretically and empirically.

Increasingly, technological decisions are entering into the political arena. They alter the environment in which policy must operate. It is claimed that British foreign policy since the Second World War has been dominated by unrealizable goals. Britain has been preoccupied by the debate about her world-role, a debate which was in itself the product of anachronistic values and assumptions. The Concorde project was the manifestation of a desire to maintain Britain's position as a leading aeronautical power. The aircraft industry faithfully reflects the pattern of government interests and influence. But Concorde was also intended to emphasize what the British government felt to be changing relationships with the United States and Europe. However, in “modernized” states, the boundaries between foreign and domestic policies are increasingly blurred. Although this phenomenon may result in interdependence at an international level, the formation of transnational links can restrict the power of sovereign states. It can also inhibit the domestic process of democratic control. While international burden-sharing may place unforeseen pressures on the structures of government, the momentum for technological development is often so strong that it becomes impossible to resist. While visible technology can be a potent instrument of prestige, it must also respond to needs at a market level in order to be successful. Concorde has conspicuously failed to do this.

During the first twenty years of the United Nations' existence the patterns of its activities changed significantly. One of the most important changes took place in the practices of the Secretary-General. While the most noticeable development was his assumption of the position of executive agent for peacekeeping forces, a less noticeable but equally important one occurred in his activities as an agent of peaceful settlement. The importance of the latter change was that not only did a single official of the United Nations assume new functions and become instrumental in the settlement of a number of international conflicts, but the Organization as a body gained a more influential role in international politics.

We address a debate over the effects of private versus customary property rights on external investment. Despite political economists’ claims that external investors favor private property rights, other experts argue that customary systems enable large-scale “land grabs.” We organize these competing claims, highlighting trade-offs due to differences in legibility versus the ability to displace existing landholders under both systems. We study a natural experiment in Liberia, where law codifies parallel private and customary property rights systems. We use this institutional boundary and difference-in-differences methods to isolate differential changes in external investment under the different property rights systems following the global food crisis of 2007–08. We find a larger increase in land clearing where private property rights prevailed, with such clearing related to more concession activity. Qualitative study of a palm oil concession reveals challenges external investors confront when navigating customary systems.

Despite the approaching universality of the United Nations, Switzerland continues to be a non-member. Her traditional policy of permanent neutrality, which is theoretically incompatible with the United Nations collective security system, and an unsatisfactory experience as a member of the League of Nations largely explain this absence. Ironically enough, however, Switzerland has played in effect as active a role in the United Nations as have many actual members. Switzerland belongs to most of the specialized agencies and many of the Organization's ancillary organs. She has even involved herself in numerous peacekeeping activities. Geneva serves as the Organization's European headquarters. Thus, the Swiss freely participate in what they refer to as the “technical,” as distinguished from the “political” United Nations. The increased prestige of neutrality and neutral Austria's successful membership, approaching universality, the waning of collective security, and a desire to participate fully in international relations are encouraging a gradual reorientation towards the United Nations which may some day lead to formal Swiss membership.

Why have advanced industrial countries responded with different types of protectionist policy to postwar international competition and the resulting societal pressure for state action? In contrast to the across-the-board tariff wars of the 1930s, postwar protectionism is a patchwork of tariffs, unilateral and nonunilateral quotas, administrative restrictions, state subsidies, and production cartels. Arguments based on international economic structure, international regimes, statist approaches, and domestic structure all appear to have difficulty in accounting for divergent trade policy choices. This article introduces a more nuanced identification and integration of the international and domestic sources of the new protectionism. An examination of textile trade policy in the United States and Japan reveals that when state policymakers face conflicting international constraints and domestic pressure over the use of overt types of protectionist policy, the greater the domestic pressure, the more overt the policy response.