A visitor from another, more advanced, planet would find many extraordinary paradoxes on earth, but surely the most extraordinary would be the fantastic destructive potential of nuclear weapons which contrasts starkly with the primitive and near-impotent institutions of global peacekeeping. He might marvel that a breed capable of producing the wealth for a $185 billion armory of lethal devices, let alone the technology for killing several hundred million humans in a single exchange of nuclear weapons, had not also produced a workable international order capable of regulating such apocalyptic man-made power.

“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.

Toward the end of the Administration of Lyndon Johnson it became briefly popular to talk about programs for eliminating poverty at home versus programs for mitigating poverty abroad. But it can also be argued that the two are sides of the proverbial coin and that the experience of rhe one has meaning for the other. The present troubles of the domestic “war on poverty” do not diminish the value of the comparison. If anything, they enhance the need to consider the programs together.

Members of most organizations are involved at different levels of intensity: Some participants pay more attention to the organization than others. Thus the question “Who cares about the organization?” can lead to significant findings about differential levels of involvement. These findings, in turn, suggest members’ policy priorities as well as illuminating Behavioral patterns within the organization.

There appears to be a growing consensus among those engaged in research in the international organization field that regional integration has been the most stimulating area of research for the last ten years because of the conscious efforts of the major theorists in this area to develop and test hypotheses concerning the dynamics of organizational development. There is consensus also that the rest of the field could profit by developing a more conscious concern with the dynamics of organizational development. Robert O. Keohane’s “Institutionalization in the United Nations General Assembly” represents a substantial attempt to provide the framework for a model of organizational development applicable to the United Nations.

Listed below is the membership of United Nations bodies for 1969. Unless otherwise noted, membership expires on December 31 of the year indicated in parenthesis. Where names of individuals are listed, the members serve in their personal capacities and not as representatives of states; their nationalities are given for information only.

Peaceable relations between states require that each nation affected by another's acts be induced to acquiesce in all those acts, but this acquiescence may take many forms. It may be quite positive, involving affirmation and, at times, concerted action, or it may be negative, involving mere silence or pro forma protest and, most importantly, total abstinence from countervailing acts. Economic and financial relations between states display all forms of acquiescence and too often demonstrate the sad results of failure to obtain consent. Their history, however, manifests gradual progress from an erratic reliance on tacit consent to a wide-ranging reliance on positive, explicit undertakings frequently accompanied by concerted action. Increasingly, moreover, that concerted action has been multilateral, not just bilateral. The tariff warfare of the twenties and earlier decades has now given way to the formal regulation of tariff policies, and the bilateral trade agreements of the 1930's, covering exclusively tariff reductions, have been replaced by a single comprehensive multilateral arrangement, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) dealing with all aspects of commercial policy. The competitive exchange-rate depreciations of the thirties have likewise given way to formal regulation, beginning with the Tripartite Declaration of 1936 involving the United Kingdom, France, and the United States and culminating in the Articles of Agreement adopted by the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 establishing the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

To be criticized for not laboring the obvious should perhaps be regarded as a compliment. As careful readers of my article will undoubtedly be aware, I do not assume that governments enter into the United Nations political process “only as objects or implementors of United Nations action after the outputs have been determined by the Organization.” (Kay, p. 952.) My point is quite different: that outcomes in international organizations such as the General Assembly depend not only on governmental interaction but also on the context within which such interaction takes place. Organizational variables help to define that context. Since so many writers have ignored organizational variables in analyzing international organizations, I have attempted, as I said, to “redress the balance”—”without denying the less-onesided formulations of realist theory.” (Keohane, footnote 3.)

Regionalism has a long history as an important instrument of American foreign policy. Yet such a statement does not do justice to the variations in goals, means, and settings that have affected United States policy toward participation in and cooperation with regional organizations. These differences have been the cause of serious debate in the past and are becoming so again as we approach the 1970's.

The General Assembly held its 23rd session, comprising the 1674th–1752nd plenary meetings, at UN Headquarters from September 24 to December 21, 1968, during which time it took action on 94 agenda items and adopted 117 resolutions. During the session the Assembly unanimously admitted Swaziland to UN membership on September 24, 1968, and Equatorial Guinea to membership on November 12, 1968, thereby bringing the Organization's total membership to 126.

As common markets, free trade associations, and limited-purpose regional arrangements continue to proliferate in many corners of the globe, the basic question of the relevance of these efforts to the process of building political communities also continues to be posed for theorist and practitioner alike. One approach for linking these two phenomena is the intensive and comparative study of common markets and free trade associations in terms of their capacity to transform member states into a political union. In principle, at least, the careful and comparative study of key variables in the process of achieving and perfecting economic unity at the regional level could yield propositions which might have predictive value for assessing the chances of success of various discrete efforts at regional unification. In methodological terms such an approach would combine case studies with the use of aggregate data.