The student of the United Nations General Assembly faces a “level of analysis” problem of his own. He can concentrate in his research on one of three aspects of the Organization: 1) the results of its deliberations; 2) the voting patterns within the Assembly; or 3) the political process which produces both the results and the voting patterns. Traditional analyses often adopt the first approach; statistically oriented political scientists have recently concentrated on the second. Very little systematic work has been done, however, on the political process: the exercise of political influence in the service of national policies.

Interpretations of patterns and trends in postwar international relations have frequently noted the outmoded position of the nation-state, the shrinking nature of the world, the extension of a single international relations system to global limits, and the rising importance of superpowers and regional organizations. It was then often concluded that the coming unit of international politics was likely to be not the territorial state, as in the past, but new regional groupings of states, where the component members would collectively acquire greater power by individually giving up some of their sovereignty to a bloc or group.

Ethiopia and Liberia instituted litigation in 1960 before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to test the legality of South Africa's administration of the mandated territory of South West Africa. The ICJ received, thereby, an opportunity to deal with a major question of international concern. Hopes were raised that the role of international adjudication would be enhanced by the results of this litigation. The case was also expected to demonstrate to the new states that the procedures and institutions of traditional international law could be used to promote, as well as to retard, their distinctive goals in international life.

The Fifth (Administrative and Budgetary) Committee of the General Assembly has always devoted a considerable amount of time and attention to the problem of the tenure of appointment in the Secretariat of the United Nations. At the 21st (1966) session, however, it went deeper than usual into the question whether and to what extent the international civil service should continue to be organized on a career basis. More specifically, it discussed the ratio of career as compared with noncareer appointments. In the debate the Western countries followed their habitual course: They upheld the career principle and opposed any extension of the practice of using permanent positions for temporary appointments. The Eastern European group similarly took its traditional line against the career system. The Afro-Asian delegates for their part were as usual mainly concerned with pushing their claims for a greater share of posts in the Secretariat; to that end they pressed for an increasing number of fixed-term appointments.

The United Nations is approaching a point where a decision must soon be reached concerning the expansion of its present facilities. Notwithstanding the increases which have been made in delegate seating in the General Assembly Hall, the Council chambers, and the conference rooms in recent years, these are now filled almost to capacity as additional political entities have been accorded membership. The delegates' lounge and dining room are uncomfortably crowded during Assembly sessions. In the Secretariat the staffs of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), and the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) have been moved to rented quarters in order to relieve overcrowding and to obtain adequate working space. The Secretary-General has reported to the General Assembly that the Headquarters buildings are now “completely occupied” and that plans must be made to provide adequate office space for the personnel expected to be on hand in the 1970's, assuming that the United Nations continues to remain an active force in international affairs.

Functional theory in international organization, as James Patrick Sewell has observed, asserts that “the most desirable route to international community-building proceeds gradually from initial transnational cooperation in the solution of common problems.” In restating the theory in a series of operational propositions Sewell formulates three “conditions” of functional “international activities”: 1) They are “specific in their focus,” i.e., organized to attack some concrete problem or set of problems; 2) they are “non-controversial,” i.e., concerned with problems which can in some way be set apart as nonpolitical; and 3) they are organized “separately from each other and from international political organs.”

The transformation of the political environment of Western Europe in the mid-1960's has been only partially completed. On the one hand, in many economic sectors relations among the six members1 of the European economic communities are set within the context of a new process and a new institutional method of community building and are being modified by the notion of a common interest beyond six sets of national interests. But, on the other hand, the relations among the Six in the “political” realm—that is, in the sphere of foreign and defense policy—have not yet been transformed by common institutions. It is in this area that the confrontation between traditional methods of interstate relations and the new community m thod is currently taking place, and it is here that the ultimate validity of the concept of European unification will face its most difficult test. Therefore, a crucial question in Europe today is whether or not the Six will be able to organize their political life on a collective basis as they have done in many economic sectors.

The report of the United Nations Association (UNA) National Policy Panel on China, The United Nations and United States Policy is one of the most thoughtful and responsible documents to emerge from the many discussions of this subject that have been going on all over the country in recent months.

The oratory of the General Assembly and the Security Council and the resolutions adopted by these organs are the most obvious activities of the United Nations in the field of human rights and the features usually studied. They alone, however, give little indication of the effectiveness and the effects of the UN's actions. To investigate this one needs to go beyond New York to the national capitals. How do governments whose policies are severely criticized in the UN respond? On one level the questions can be simply answered. The alternatives are reasonably clear. They include token and substantive compliance, indifference, and defiance. But how is one alternative chosen over the others and does what goes on in New York have any impact on the political dynamics within the national framework? This article is an attempt to investigate a limited aspect of this question. It is an analysis of both the reactions within the parliaments of Rhodesia and the Republic of South Africa to UN actions concerning these territories and the possible importance of these reactions in parliamentary elections.

The fifteenth session of the General Assembly of the United Nations which convened in New York in September 1960 marked an important turning point in the history of the Organization. The United Nations had been created primarily through the efforts of states with a European or European-derived political and social culture possessing a common history of political involvement at the international level. During its first ten years the Organization was dominated by the problems and conflicts of these same states. However, by 1955 the process of decolonization which has marked the post-1945 political arena began to be reflected in the membership of the United Nations. In the ten years preceding the end of 1955 ten new nations devoid of experience in the contemporary international arena and struggling with the multitudinous problems of fashioning coherent national entities in the face of both internal and external pressures joined the Organization. By 1960 the rising tide of decolonization had reached flood crest with the entry in that one year of seventeen new Members—sixteen of which were from Africa.

Whether it is called an assembly, a conference, or something else, there is in most if not all international organizations an organ, for which the United Nations General Assembly is the prototype, in which the entire membership is represented. The importance of these bodies is generally acknowledged. Constitutionally, they usually have final authority in such matters as the appointment of the executive officer, the election of smaller organs, the adoption of the budget, and the determination of overall policy. Few studies of an international organization or of the interaction between a state or a group of states and an international organization can neglect the assembly of the organization under scrutiny.

The nineteenth (1964–1965) session of the General Assembly was virtually deadlocked over the financial crisis, a crisis which arose as a result of disagreement between the Members about how the United Nations peacekeeping operations were to be financed. Three years earlier, in 1961, the General Assembly, having been informed of the substantial arrears in the payment of assessments, mainly for the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) and the United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC), adopted on December 20, a resolution asking the International Court of Justice to give an advisory opinion as to whether the expenditures authorized for the UNEF and ONUC operations constituted “expenses of the Organization” within the meaning of Article 17, paragraph 2, of the United Nations Charter. On December 19, 1962, the Assembly voted to accept the advisory opinion of the Court to the effect that the expenditures of these operations constituted “expenses of the Organization” within the meaning of Article 17 (2) of the Charter. However, attempts to extract the arrears from the defaulting states, the largest of which were the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union) and France, on the strength of the Court's advisory opinion, largely failed; and the matter came to a head at the nineteenth session of the General Assembly when some Members, notably the United States, proposed that sanctions under Article 19 of the Charter be taken against the defaulting states. The crisis was finally averted toward the end of the nineteenth session when the United States decided not to pursue the question of sanctions.

If the United Nations system is to outlaw the unilateral use of force, except in cases of self-defense, it is clear that some provision must be made for the peaceful settlement of disputes and for peaceful change. In the past, peacekeeping operations have often succeeded in restoring a fragile peace. Yet collective actionall too frequently has been limited to a restoration of the status quo ante. Indeed, states have usuallyfailed to accept any collective responsibility to deal with the grievances that initially led to the outbreak of hostilities. If peace is to be maintained over any extended period of time, peacekeeping operations must not, asAmbassador Arthur J. Goldberg recently warned, “be a sofa to provide a comfortable respite from efforts atpeaceful settlement” but instead should “be a springboard for accelerated efforts to eliminate the root causes of conflict.”

The salary, allowance, and benefits system common in its broad lines to the United Nations and to a number of specialized agencies (the “common system”) has its origin in the relationship agreements concluded between the UN and the agencies concerned in pursuance of Articles 57 and 63 of the UN Charter. Some of these agreements were made nearly twenty years ago, a long period in the life of rapidly growing and rapidly changing international organizations. A critical examination of the present-day validity of the common system and its justification today in light of the reality of the international organization may be timely. In the present article such an examination of this major facet of administrative and budgetary coordination of the UN with the specialized agencies is attempted.

The great hope for United Nations peace forces is that they may become a ready means of pacifying small wars in underdeveloped areas—civil wars and border quarrels which inevitably will flare up out of the tensions of national development—in order to keep violence and the issues behind it from spreading beyond local bounds. The nightmare of Vietnam as well as the recent eruption in the Middle East bear out the awful truth that a conflict without great international significance, if unsolved and uncontrolled too long, can easily become a stake in big-power politics, producing even at best a rising level of international tension and at worst a terrifying increase in the level of violence. Crucial to the preservation of peace, then, is the settlement of small conflicts before they get bigger. This is not because the danger to peace comes, as it did in the 1930's, from an aggressor with an insatiable appetite which has to be stopped before it gets too strong but because each of the Great Powers, the United States, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and, increasingly, the People's Republic of China, is concerned that the others may take advantage of local conflict to extend their influence into the disturbed area. Therefore, even disputes of no great concern to any of them are indirectly a concern to all. The strengths of the Great Powers are so delicately balanced, the stakes of the competition so great, and the war potential of each so fearful that none is willing to allow another any new advantage.

The fourteenth General Conference, held in Paris in November 1966, marked the twentieth anniversary of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The thirteenth General Conference (Paris, 1964), anticipating this occasion, was fully aware of the need for self-evaluation, self-criticism, and renewed self-definition. It passed a special resolution concerning the commemoration of the twentieth anniversary which authorized the Director-General to take appropriate measures to ensure wide publicity of the constitutional principles and actual achievements of UNESCO; to stimulate discussion at different levels of the relevance and effectiveness of the previous and present work of the Organization; and to give thought to the future orientation of the program of UNESCO. Six months prior to the fourteenth General Conference the Director-General convened in Bellagio, Italy, a round table of “wise men” from different geographical regions of the world. Here free and full discussion focused on UNESCO, its limitations, and potential in the perspective of the total setting in which it has to operate. The deliberations of these men, it was hoped, would be of use to the grand ensemble of national delegates at the forthcoming anniversary session.

Meeting at the request of the representatives of Canada and Denmark, the Security Council discussed the situation in the Middle East at its 1341st-1361st meetings, held on May 24-June 14, 1967.

Opening the debate on the adoption of the agenda, Nikolai T. Fedorenko (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) declared that his delegation did not believe there were sufficient grounds for a hasty convening of the Security Council in what he termed an artificially dramatic climate fostered by the representatives of certain Western powers. He observed that two members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), rather than any of the parties directly concerned, had asked for a meeting of the Council. To his delegation this indicated a desire to interfere in the affairs of other countries rather than a true concern for the peace and security of the Middle East.

“To maintain international peace and security …” is the first purpose listed in Article I of the United Nations Charter, and it is generally conceded to be the Organization's most important one. Although the United Nations Charter provides procedures for both peaceful settlement and peacekeeping, the peacekeeping role has been more active and more contentious. Indeed, without an authoritative organ for interpreting the Charter each Member has been left to determine for itself the meaning of such fluid phrases as “enforcement action,” “national sovereignty,” and “primary responsibility,” to mention only a few. The result has been a divergence of views which surprises all but that consummate logician—the reasonable man.

The General Assembly held its 21st session, comprising the 1409th–1501st plenary meetings, at UN Headquarters from September 20 to December 20, 1966, during which time it took action on 98 agenda items and adopted 115 resolutions. Part of the Assembly's proceedings were summarized in the Spring 1967 issue of International Organization and the remainder follows below.

Anaversion to the international borders drawn by the colonial powers, if not their complete rejection, has been a consistent theme of anticolonial nationalism in Africa. The borders are blamed for the disappearance of a unity which supposedly existed in Africa in precolonial times; they are regarded as arbitrarily imposed, artificial barriers separating people of the same stock, and they are said to have balkanized Africa. The borders are considered to be one of the humiliating legacies of colonialism which, according to this view, independent Africa ought to abolish.