Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T00:58:19.059Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Patterns of Representation in National Capitals and Intergovernmental Organizations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Chadwick F. Alger  and
Steven J. Brams
Get access

Extract

Although the first recorded permanent diplomatic mission was established by the Duke of Milan at Genoa over five hundred years ago, knowledge of the structure and functioning of the global diplomatic enterprise is still extremely limited. The often-cited work of Nicolson provides a historical overview of diplomacy, describes some of the norms of recent practice, and enumerates traits of “the ideal diplomatist.” Morgenthau has analyzed the importance of diplomatic style to international peace, and others have offered valuable descriptions of the diplomatic practice of single nations. Yet there exist no systematic studies of the diplomatic behavior of nations, nor even comparative statistics on bilateral and multilateral forms of international representation.

Type
Research Note
Information
World Politics , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , July 1967 , pp. 646 - 663
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1967

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Nicolson, Harold, Diplomacy, 2nd ed. (London 1950)Google Scholar.

2 Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 3rd ed. (New York 1960), 539–72.Google Scholar

3 American practice is described in Elmer Plischke, Conduct of American Diplomacy, 2nd ed. (New York 1961)Google Scholar, and Stuart, Graham H., American Diplomatic and Consular Practice, 2nd ed. (New York 1952).Google Scholar

4 A noteworthy exception to this statement is a recent study comparing over time nations' status rankings based on different categories of diplomatic recognition. See Singer, J. David and Small, Melvin, “The Composition and Status Ordering of the International System: 1815–1940,” World Politics, xviii (January 1966), 236–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Merchant, Livingston, “New Techniques in Diplomacy,” in Johnson, E. A. J., ed., The Dimensions of Diplomacy (Baltimore 1964), 128Google Scholar.

6 Poole, DeWitt C., The Conduct of Foreign Relations Under Modern Democratic Conditions (New Haven 1924), 22Google Scholar.

7 It should be noted, however, that the increase in the number of nations by a factor of about two and one-half produces about a sixfold increase in the number of possible missions that could be exchanged. The fact that the number of missions has not increased by this factor means that die average nation in the world today has proportionately fewer missions in other nations than the average nation forty years ago did. This is mostly explained by the large number of small nations today tfiat receive few permanent missions in dieir capitals and send few abroad.

8 To cite one example in which this reportedly occurred: Ambassador W. Tapley Bennett's telephone conversation with President Johnson from Santo Domingo on April 28, 1965, which was punctuated by die crackle of gunfire in the Dominican capital, was apparently decisive in provoking the President to order a large troop commitment to the Dominican Republic (Newsweek, May 10, 1965, 38).

9 See Keller, Suzanne, “Diplomacy and Communication,” Public Opinion Quarterly, xx (Spring 1956), 176–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 A systemic analysis of die linkages connecting die points for diplomatic exchanges and two other kinds of transaction flows is given in Brams, “Transaction Flows in the International System,” American Political Science Review, LX (December 1966), 880–98.Google Scholar

11 The exceptions are the lists of Albania, Algeria, Guinea, Haiti, Liberia, Malagasy Republic, Mali, Malta, Pakistan, and Togo, which were all issued in early 1965.

12 The diplomatic-exchange data given in this research note are based only on the 104 receiving lists; the sending totals for each nation given in Table II were derived by summing across all the receiving lists the number of each nation's diplomats that were reported by the host nations as stationed in their capitals.

13 Very small nations such as Liechtenstein and Monaco have been excluded from the study.

14 Although we were unable to obtain a Peking diplomatic list, the sending and receiving lists of other nations provided much information on Communist China. As of October 1966, Communist China had missions in forty-eight nations instead of the thirty-eight given in Table II (private correspondence, Donald W. Klein, October 26, 1966).

15 Boulding, Kenneth E. has suggested related indices for measuring friendliness and hostility in the world. See his “National Images and International Systems,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, in (June 1959), 121Google Scholar.

16 International Monetary Fund and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Direction of Trade, Annual 1960–64 (Washington 1965), 3–9Google Scholar. These two balances for all nations have a coefficient of linear correlation of .55, indicating a moderate association between a nation's capability for maintaining favorable balances in the different kinds of international relations.

17 Alger, “Intergovernmental Relations in Organizations and Their Effect on International Conflict,” in McNeil, Elton B., ed., The Nature of Human Conflict (Engle-wood Cliffs 1965), 277–79.Google Scholar

18 Claude, Inis L. Jr., Swords Into Plowshares: The Problems and Progress of International Organization, 3rd ed. (New York 1964), 4.Google Scholar

19 The shared-membership data were computer-calculated from the nation-IGO table given in the Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations: United Nations (New York 1963), 258–65Google Scholar. Only members—not associate members, observers, participating nations, adhering nations, or signatory nations—are included in the IGO figures.

20 This latter figure is not equal to the number of IGO's of which the nation was a member. Although the number of IGO's to which a nation belongs has very high linear correlations with the number of its shared memberships (.97) and the average number of its shared memberships (.96), the number of IGO memberships of a nation cannot be derived from the data in Table VI. For purposes of comparative analysis, the advantage of the shared-membership figure over that of just IGO memberships is the conceptual linkage of shared memberships to diplomatic exchanges: both are direct measures of internation contact. One writer, in fact, has conceptualized shared memberships as an index of a nation's organizational “involvements.” See Angell, Robert C., “An Analysis ot Trends in International Organizations,” Peace Research Society: Papers, III (1965), 189Google Scholar.

21 Another way to think of shared memberships is to consider all IGO's convened. The number of shared memberships of a nation is the total number of delegates with whom all of its IGO representatives sit at the same table (assuming one delegate per nation per IGO); the average number of shared memberships is the average number of times its representatives and delegates from one co-member nation sit at the same table. To illustrate for a world containing only two IGO's and four nations: if one IGO has nations A, B, and C as members and the other IGO has nations A, B, and D as members, nation A has four shared memberships with three nations (one shared membership each with C and D, two with B); the average number of its shared memberships is 4/3 = 1.3.

22 Since the correlation coefficients in Table VIII are based on nearly the universe of nations, tests of significance, as ordinarily applied to determine whether a particular relationship between two variables could occur by chance, are not applicable. However, if we can consider our data for the early logo's to be representative of data chosen randomly from a longer time frame (say, the entire decade of the 1960's), then for an N of 104 a correlation coefficient of .30 would be significant at the .001 level. All coefficients in Table VIII are well above these levels.

23 Russett, Bruce M., Trends in World Politics (New York 1965), 33.Google Scholar

24 Another way of characterizing the differences in the curves is by comparing the skewness coefficients given in Tables II and VI. The right-skewness of the diplomatic-linkage curve is indicated by the coefficient of +0.8, and the even sharper left-skewness of the IGO-linkage curve by the coefficient of —1.1.