The broad question posed here is how authority is distributed in the world and what shifts may be occurring in its pattern of distribution. Mainly, of course, authority is today allocated according to the Western State System, characterized in its legal mechanics by territorial rule among equals and in its political philosophy by consent of the governed. Conveniently dated from the Treaty of Westphalia and the French Revolution, the system is now more widespread than ever before.

Among the laws that rule human societies,” de Tocqueville said, “there is one which seems to be more precise and clear than all others. If men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.”1 In much of the world today, equality of political participation is growing much more rapidly than is the “art of associating together.” The rates of mobilization and participation are high; the rates of organization and institutionalization are low. De Tocqueville's precondition for civilized society is in danger, if it is not already undermined. In these societies, the conflict between mobilization and institutionalization is the crux of politics. Yet in the fast-growing literature on the politics of the developing areas, political institutionalization usually receives scant treatment. Writers on political development emphasize the processes of modernization and the closely related phenomena of social mobilization and increasing political participation. A balanced view of the politics of contemporary Asia, Africa, and Latin America requires more attention to the “art of associating together” and the growth of political institutions. For this purpose, it is useful to distinguish political development from modernization and to identify political development with the institutionalization of political organizations and procedures. Rapid increases in mobilization and participation, the principal political aspects of modernization, undermine political institutions. Rapid modernization, in brief, produces not political development, but political decay.

The human population is the base of human existence. This, when considered, seems an inescapable proposition. But in the minds of most men it must have an absurd remoteness. The process of population has seemed like primordial creation itself, hardly a thing to be touched by mere scruple. Beyond the scope of any deliberation, the peopling of the earth has, for mankind as a whole, remained unquestioned as the earth, an axiom behind which there was no going and from which all proceeded. But according to a relentless gathering of awareness, as witnessed in an abundance of recent writings, it appears that history has marched to a new point. The condition of the world is being modified by a constellation of emergencies, and any observation and reflection on them, any rough glance at the outlines of trends in the life of the world, points to the swelling flood of population as the central reality in every perspective on the future.

Private investment in Latin America by citizens of the United States, as well as in other less-developed areas of the world, is widely regarded as a valuable—if not an indispensable—component of the overall U.S. foreign assistance program. By quickly identifying and exploring promising new business opportunities, and by providing financial resources and human skills required to translate them into going ventures, U.S. investment activities can make a vital contribution to economic development. Recognizing the role of private investment in furthering its national interests, the U.S. government has for a number of years sought to promote the flow of new investment: a rapidly growing investment guarantee program, direct government loans to eligible private investors, and investment information services are some of the instruments employed by the government in pursuing this objective. To provide additional incentives, a bill currently before Congress stipulates that U.S. investors making certain kinds of new investments in eligible, less-developed countries would be permitted to deduct 30 per cent of the cost of the investment from their total federal income-tax obligations.

On June 15, 1964, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development adopted its Final Act. General Principle 10 of this Act contains the following recommendation: “Regional economic groupings, integration or other forms of economic co-operation should be promoted among developing countries as a means of expanding their intra-regional and extra-regional trade and encouraging their economic growth and their industrial and agricultural diversification."1 The Act expresses the discontent of the developing nations with the existing state of affairs and their readiness to experiment with new forms of regional economic cooperation.

In recent years the parlous state of public order in the world community has become an irresistible goad to creative energy by legal scholars. Unfortunately, the significance of many potentially valuable contributions to an improved order has been diluted by the tendency of writers to approach their thesis from the limited perspective of their own discipline as a more or less closed system, or to develop their views while suffering from what Harold Lasswell has referred to as the “syndrome of parochialism.”1 In an era characterized by intensive professional specialization and mounting chauvinism, the international lawyer who can surmount the parochialism of his own profession and his own cultural predispositions is a rarity indeed; the paragon who can do so consistently is even rarer.

International, the flooding stream of words from national governmental representatives in international organizations has been accompanied by only a trickle of scholarly studies. These include the Carnegie Endowment's valuable series of studies of national policies in the UN, most of which are now outdated. The series does not have a volume on the USSR. The most extended and valuable recent attempt to fathom Soviet policy in the United Nations is Alexander Dallin's The Soviet Union at the United Nations (New York 1962). It deals with broader subject matter than the two books discussed here and gives much consideration to Soviet policy in relation to the maintenance of peace and security.

For some time it has been common knowledge that it is in traditional agriculture that most of the world's agricultural producers are engaged. It has also been known since FAO began publishing its annual reports on the world agricultural situation, if not before, that the rate of progress of agriculture in the advanced countries of the world differs from that in the less-developed countries. In the advanced countries, where agriculture is a minor industry in terms of the number of people engaged or in its contribution to the GNP, it has been making progress and has been producing more per person or per unit of land. In the less-developed countries, where it is a major industry, it has been registering little, if any, advance. People with experience in less-developed countries know that such increase as there has been has occurred principally in the more or less commercialized large-farm sector; and that the traditional sector, composed chiefly of small farms, has had little share in it. Considering all this, and the fact that the development of the poor countries has become of international concern, it is rather surprising that so many years have had to pass before a leading agricultural economist published a book dealing with one of the major problems of these countries: the transformation of traditional agriculture.

However much men differ about what constitutes good government, they agree that it is conducive to economic development. It is sometimes taken for granted that the first step on the road to economic development is the establishment of an effective government that is determined to achieve such development. Thus Dr. Nkrumah enjoined his followers: “Seek ye first the kingdom of politics and all else shall be added unto you.” Students of economic development might not think the matter is as simple as that, but they still spend most of their time in search of government policies conducive to economic growth; they ask how economic plans can be improved, when governments can best rely on private initiative, and so on.