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.”

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.

Does whataboutism work in global affairs? When states face international criticism, they often respond with whataboutism: accusing their critics of similar faults. Despite its prevalence in policy discussions, whataboutism remains an understudied influence strategy. This study investigates how states use whataboutism to shape American public opinion across various international issues. We find, using survey experiments, that whataboutism mitigates the negative impacts of criticism by reducing public approval of US positions and backing for punitive actions. Whataboutist critiques referencing similar, recent misdeeds have more power to shape opinions. However, the identity of the whataboutist state does not significantly affect effectiveness. US counter-messaging often fails to diminish the effects of whataboutism. These results show that whataboutism can be a potent rhetorical tool in international relations and that it warrants greater attention from international relations scholars.

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.

Canadian anxiety about increasing involvement with the American economy is partly based on a deeply rooted conviction that economic dependence necessarily brings political dependence in its wake. That conviction was at the bottom of the Canadian rejection of proposals of reciprocity with the United States in the general elections of 1891 and 1911. It has also been explicitly recognized as an underlying rationale of Canadian policy toward the United States in the Department of External Affairs's recent paper on Canadian-American relations.

The political challenge to the post-World War II order in shipping has been issued in the context of the North-South debate, but American power and interest are central to current developments. In the bulk and tanker sector the United States retains a strong interest in stability and successfully defends the existing order. In the liner sector, on the other hand, the United States has participated in recent assaults on the postwar order, producing great tension between Europe and America. There is a strong correlation between this growing maritime conflict and the political processes anticipated by the general theory of hegemonic stability. But “hegemony” and “power” are distinct concepts. Instability in international shipping arises neither from America's loss of power in shipping nor from challenges from Europe and the Third World. Rather, instability reflects American attempts to establish a closer identity between the existing regime and short-term national interest.

Evaluation research involves the use of the scientific method to evaluate the impact of public programs. The cross-disciplinary evaluation research literature provides a useful orientation for the examination of activities of international organizations. The primary advantage of this approach is that more dependable cause and effect statements are possible. The major limitations relate to its applicability, vary from case to case, and should not be underestimated. Yet they do not preclude its beneficial use by international organization scholars and policy makers. The smallpox eradication program of the World Health Organization serves as the basis for an illustration of the evaluation research methodology.

In his concluding volume in the Carnegie Endowment's series of National Studies on International Organization, Professor Maclver observes that the International Court of Justice, as set up in 1945, was not so much a new institution as a new promise. It was closely modelled on its predecessor, the Permanent Court of International Justice, and Article 92 of the UN Charter expressly recognized the continuity with the past in affirming that the Statute of the new Court was based upon chat of the old one. The promise lay in the fact that the new Court was declared to be “the principal judicial organ of the United Nations” and thus called upon to play a more significant role than the old Court, which had never been an organic part of the League of Nations structure. Professor Maclver concludes, however, that the promise remains in important respects unfulfilled.

The technology of warfare is in a constant state of flux. In recent years weather modification activities have been employed by military forces and other methods of environmental manipulation have been contemplated for military use. The development of the 1976 Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques and the negotiations in the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament (CCD) which culminated in its adoption are focused upon. To date this treaty has generated little in the way of commentary in either the press or in academic journals. The treaty and the politics surrounding its drafting and adoption are considered and shown to be quite instructive on disarmament politics and the operation of the CCD. Further, they reflect the fact that the North-South polarity found in a number of issue areas in world politics is increasingly evident in the field of disarmament and arms control.

The vast majority of the decisions made in our global society are responses to problems in which cause and effect are closely related in time and in space. When a problem becomes important, its source is usually obvious, and any appropriate response usually becomes effective in time to eliminate the difficulty. For this class of phenomena it is satisfactory to react after a problem is already apparent. Thus, the institutions involved need only monitor the current status of the system; they need not maintain a long planning horizon. It is important to realize that most environmental problems do not fit into this category. The delays associated with most environmental processes will require us to add an explicit consideration of the time dimension in formulating environmental policy.

That the anarchic system generates incentives for states to balance each other's power is conventional wisdom in international relations. As such, the contemporary unipolar system is an anomaly. Observers explain its existence in several ways, including the benevolence of US hegemony and the constraints international institutions impose on the exercise of US power. None of them, however, explain what is perhaps the most puzzling outcome of the Soviet collapse: the decision of the United States to maintain its level of military spending. To explain its choice, we extend the seminal argument Waltz advanced long ago to a dynamic setting. Using a simple model, we show that the interest of the unipole in deterring a challenge to its power can induce it to continue to invest in guns rather than to shift its resources to the production of butter. This strategy can enable the incumbent unipole to pre-empt the balancing process that has long been thought to be central to state survival under anarchy.

Because of the nature of modern weapons, significant innovations in arms technology have the potential to induce dramatic changes in the international distribution of power. Consider, for example, the “strategic defense initiative” (SDI), a program initiated by the United States in the early 1980s. Had the program been successfully completed, it might have led to a substantial devaluation of Soviet nuclear capabilities and put the United States in a very dominant position. It should not then come as a surprise that interstate rivalry, especially among super powers, often takes the form of a race for technological superiority. Mary Acland-Hood claims that although the United States and the Soviet Union together accounted for roughly half of the world's military expenditures in the early 1980s, their share of world military research and development (R&D) expenditures was about 80 percent. As further proof of the perceived importance of R&D, note that whereas the overall U.S. defense budget increased by 38 percent (from $225.1 billion to $311.6 billion in real terms) from 1981 to 1987, military R&D spending increased by 100 percent (from $20.97 billion to $41.96 billion). Moreover, before World War II military R&D absorbed on average less than 1 percent of the military expenditure of major powers, but since then it has grown to 11–13 percent. The emphasis on military technology is bound to become more pronounced in the future as R&D becomes the main arena for interstate competition.

It is just over a year since General Eisenhower exchanged the academic robes he had donned so shortly before for the uniform with which his name and fame were more closely related. This time, despite the ”US” on his lapels, he became, as he has said, only ”one-twelfth” American. The eleven-twelfths he dedicated to the other nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. To that body, and its goal of European cooperation for defense against aggression, he has devoted a full measure of his time and energy.

“International-Law-and-Organization” has become a hyphenated conception but the implied interrelations are assumed rather than explored. All international organization, of course, may be seen as an aspect of law partaking of its forms and sharing its purposes. Law and organization have in common that, in both, nations eschew laissez-faire and “going it alone” and identify and prefer common interests. Often, on the other hand, one thinks of international organization in contradistinction to law as making different promises, suffering different limitations, evoking different loyalties.

The year 1967 saw two inter-American conferences of major significance for the changing course of the inter-American system. One, the Third Special Inter-American Conference, held in Buenos Aires in February 1967, had as its purpose the revision of the 1948 Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS). The first conference to take such action, it culminated several years of debate over shortcomings in the OAS and ways and means of correcting them. The other principal assemblage of the year was the Meeting of American Chiefs of State at Punta del Este, Uruguay, in April. Although a regional “summit” meeting had been held in 1956, the one at Punta del Este was the first to give serious substantive consideration to major issues.

Suggested from the study of budgeting, the quasi-budgeting framework is used to analyze a certain type of negotiation. Three pre-conditions are spelled out for using this framework. A simple structural equation model to account for how negotiation outcomes are determined on the basis of the Soviet-Japanese salmon catch negotiations in the Northwest Pacific for the 1957–1977 period is presented. The estimation results for the 1957–1976 period as well as the predictive performance for the 1977 negotiations are demonstrated to be fairly good, thereby suggesting that the quasi-budgeting framework is both conceptually powerful and methodologically feasible in the study of various international negotiations.

The market-oriented focus of the global food regime, as it functioned from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, has proved inadequate. Preoccupation with perfecting markets led food policy makers to underemphasize the need for increased production in the Third World. It also led them to exaggerated attention to short-term surplus disposal and too little concern about scarcity. The regime emerged from a context in which unilateral actions and domestic considerations prevailed. This resulted in regime pathologies in which mutually beneficial international food solutions were not reached and multilateral coordination to analyze and solve food problems was discouraged. Such regime inadequacies cumulated over time; while they did not cause the food “crisis” of 1973–74, they blunted international responses to it. Reform of the global food regime is needed to (1) raise priorities accorded to rural modernization in Third World countries, (2) increase attention to malnutrition and chronic hunger, (3) provide resources for development, and (4) structure and stabilize the market so as to provide security of supply and income. The legitimacy of multilateral forums and processes also must be enhanced.

The major difference between Canadians and Americans on the subject of their relationship is in the intensity of their perceptions. There is bound to be conflict between a people who regard the relationship as critical and those who have scarcely noticed the other country. Firmly fixed in the Canadian view is the idea that a special relationship has come to an end. When the British contemplated the end of their special relationship with the United States, they were interested in an alternative—association with the European Economic Community (EEC). The problem for Canadians is that no alternative association seems clear, attractive, or promising. In light of their relative comfort in the energy crisis of 1973, however, the need for any special relationship has seemed less urgent.