¹ For a general overview of the literature on international law, see Coplin, William D., “Current Studies of the Functions of International Law: Assessments and Suggestions,” in Political Science Annual, II, ed. Robinson, James A. (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), pp. 149–208 Google Scholar. The literature on international organization is surveyed in Riggs, Robert E., Hanson, Karen F., Heinz, Mary, Hughes, Barry B., and Volgy, Thomas J., “Behavioralism in the Study of the United Nations,” World Politics, 22 (01, 1970), 197–237 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Alger, Chadwick F., “Research on Research: A Decade of Quantitative and Field Research on International Organizations,” International Organization, 24 (Summer, 1970), 414–450 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² For example, compare Walter, F. P., A History of the League of Nations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1952)Google Scholar to Niemeyer, Gerhard, “The Balance Sheet of the League Experience,” International Organization, 6 (1952), 537–558 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; or, the various writers discussed in Claude, Inis L. Jr., Power and International Relations (New York: Random House, 1962)Google Scholar; or, Kaplan, Morton A. and deB. Katzenbach, Nicholas, The Political Foundations of International Law (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1961)Google Scholar to Jenks, C. Wilfred, The Common Law of Mankind (New York: Praeger, 1958)Google Scholar.

³ Many of the more systematic studies of the four institutions are discussed in Alger as well as Riggs et al. Those of particular relevance to this study, however, are Wright, Quincy, The Study of War, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 1043–49Google Scholar; Holsti, K. J., “Resolving International Conflicts: A Taxonomy of Behavior and Some Figures on Procedure,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 10 (09, 1966), 272–297 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coplin, William D.. “The World Court in the International Bargaining Process,” in The United Nations System and Its Functions, ed. Gregg, Robert W. and Barkun, Michael (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand, 1968), pp. 317–333 Google Scholar; and Haas, Ernst B., Collective Security and the Future International System (Denver: University of Denver. 1968)Google Scholar. Most systematic studies of the World Court have focused on the question of influences on the voting behavior of the Judges. For example, see Hensley, Thomas, “National Bias and the International Court of Justice,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 12 (11, 1968), 568–586 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Systematic studies of the role of the United Nations in international conflict similar to the Haas study are beginning to appear. For example, see Hensley, Thomas, “Conditions Related to the Conflict Management Activities of the United Nations,” Diss. Iowa 1970 Google Scholar; and Harf, James E., “Inter-Nation Conflict Resolution: Development and Test of a Causal Model,” paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, 1971 (revised mimeo)Google Scholar.

⁴ Alger, “Research on Research …”

⁵ The approach that examines the impact of international institutions on the international bargaining process is outlined in Coplin, “Current Studies of the Functions of International Law,” in Robinson, , Political Science Annual, pp. 178–188 Google Scholar. Rochester's dissertation (presently being completed), “The International System as a Prismatic Polity: Assessing Political Development Through a Comparative Empirical Analysis of the Role of the World Court. League of Nations and United Nations in Dyadic Disputes,” employs the data in a systematic analysis of political development in the international system over the past fifty years. The analysis is based on a theoretical model constructed by synthesizing various developmental models found in the comparative politics literature, and represents an attempt to examine empirically some questions raised by (among others) Alger, Chadwick F. in “Comparison of Intranational and International Politics,” American Political Science Review, 57 (06, 1963), 406–419 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ With regard to the Court, only contentious disputes are included in this study; cases involving advisory opinions are omitted. Lists of cases can be found in Wright, , Study of War, p. 1430 Google Scholar; Haas, , Collective Security, pp 46–47 Google Scholar; and Holsti, , “Resolving International Conflicts …,” 293–296 Google Scholar. More detailed but relatively brief information on the cases can be found in the World Court Reports and The I.C.J. Reports for the two Courts; Walter, History of the League, for the League; and Synopses of United Nations Cases in the Field of Peace and Security, 1946–65 (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1966)Google Scholar, for the United Nations. Empirical data have been collected and analyzed by Ernst Haas and John Ruggie, University of California, Berkeley; Hayward R. Alker, Jr., Massachusetts Institute of Technology; James E. Harf, Ohio State University; and Thomas Hensley, Kent State University.

⁷ Space permits us to focus on only a few variables in this paper. Information on these selected variables as well as the complete list of variables employed in our larger data-gathering project is available from the authors upon request. Inquiries should be sent to William D. Coplin, International Relations Program, Syracuse University, Syracuse. New York 13210. The complete data set has been created in machine-readable form and can be obtained from the International Relations Archive of the Inter-University Consortium for Political Research. For those scholars who are also teachers, the data along with a discussion of how analysis in the study of international law and organization in the international bargaining process can be performed is available in inexpensive form. ( Learning Package #3:Dyadic [Two-Party] Disputes Before the World Courts, League and UN: Empirical Materials. [Chicago: Markham Publishing Company, 1971]Google Scholar.)

⁸ The variables on which data were gathered are either nominal or ordinal. Our statistic for dichotomous nominal variables is phi; for non-dichotomous nominal variables, lambda. Wilcoxon's signed-ranks test is used for the ordinal variables. See Freeman, Linton C., Elementary Applied Statistics (New York: John Wiley, 1965)Google Scholar. All three of these statistics are commonly used as measures of association and are employed here as shorthand measures of the degree of difference between the distributions for the different institutions.

⁹ To test the nature of “learning” among users of the institutions would require more microanalysis than is possible given the purposes of this paper. For a discussion of learning effects at the international system level see Hayward R. Alker, Jr., “On the Regulation of International Disputes: Toward a Stochastic Model of Directive Behavior,” paper delivered at the 1969 APSA Annual Convention (mimeo).

¹⁰ The original coding categories for the PCIJ and ICJ were: (1) Mutual submission, (2) Compulsory jurisdiction accepted by respondent, (3) Compulsory jurisdiction challenged by respondent but overruled by the Court, (4) Compulsory jurisdiction challenged by the respondent and upheld by the Court, (5) Application accepted by the second party and (6) Application refused by the second party. For the League and UN, the categories were (1) Joint submission, (2) Unilateral submission by one participant. (3) Unilateral submission by third party. (4) Multilateral by third parties without participants, (5) Multilateral by third parties with one of the participants and (6) Multilateral by third party with both participants.

¹¹ The sixfold categories were collapsed into dichotomies by including the first category for Court and League-UN as well as the sixth for League-UN in the joint category, and excluding categories three, four, and five for the League-UN. All of the rest were classified as nonjoint submissions.

¹² Miller, Lynn H., “The Kashmir Dispute,” in International Law and Political Crisis: An Analytic Casebook, ed. Scheinman, Lawrence and Wilkinson, David (Boston: Little, Brown, 1968), p. 49 Google Scholar.

¹³ The evidence for the sharp difference between the PCIJ and ICJ is even more substantial if one counts the four unilateral applications that were immediately accepted by the respondent parties in the interwar period as joint submissions. There were none of that type in the ICJ period.

¹⁴ The “O” weighting was applied to those states that refused to respond to a unilateral application in the World Court. In addition, the four cases in the PCIJ period in which the responding states accepted application were weighted as if they were joint submissions. This weighting decision was made because it appears that there had been previous tacit if not overt agreement between both states.

¹⁵ A particularly popular argument is that international institutions serve the Western developed states. In terms of the comparative study of foreign policy, participation in international institutions might be viewed as a foreign policy behavior “determined” by such variable clusters as Rosenau's idiosyncratic, societal, role, governmental, and systemic variables. See Rosenau, James N., “Pre-Theories and Theories of Foreign Policy,” in Approaches to Comparative and International Politics, ed. Farrell, R. Barry (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966). pp. 27–93 Google Scholar.

¹⁶ von der Mehden, Fred R., Politics of the Developing Nations (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1964), pp. 53–64 Google Scholar. For an extensive discussion of the open-closed continuum applied to political systems, see Coplin, William D., Introduction to International Politics (Chicago: Markham Publishing Co., 1971), Chap. 3Google Scholar.

¹⁷ This kind of assumption is more typical of “Wilsonian type thinking” (see Osgood, Robert E., Ideals and Self-interest in America's Foreign Relations [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953], pp. 172–195)Google Scholar, based on the now discredited view that democracies are somehow morally superior to autocracies and that “world public opinion” is alive and well. Nevertheless, there is still reason to assume that political systems in which foreign policy issues are openly debated are more prone to employ international institutions if only to appease certain political factions within the country. For a list of other variables that measure political systems see Banks, Arthur S. and Textor, Robert B., The Cross-Polity Survey (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1963)Google ScholarPubMed.

¹⁸ For example, see Kaplan, and Katzenbach, , Political Foundations, p. 281 Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Post-World War II data was obtained from Russett, Bruce M., Alker, Hayward R. Jr., Deutsch, Karl W., and Lasswell, Harold, World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), pp. 294–298 Google Scholar. Pre-World War II status was based on the postwar standings in addition to economic reports in the Statesman's Yearbook.

²⁰ Bozeman, Adda B., Politics and Culture in International History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960)Google Scholar. Also see Coplin, William D., The Functions of International Law (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966), Chap. 5Google Scholar.

²¹ Russett, Bruce M., International Regions and the International System: A Study in Political Ecology (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967), pp. 14–33 Google Scholar. The Russett groupings include both geographical and sociocultural considerations. Although a large number of classifications can be predicted by geography, a few cannot (e.g., Japan is in the Western group).

²² Russett, pp. 24–25. Russett actually has six categories (Afro-Asia, Western Community, Latin America. Semi-Developed Latins, Eastern Europe, and Unclassifiable). The Semi-Developed Latins were grouped under Latin America, and the five unclassifiable states under Afro-Asia.

²³ Although Lipset, Seymour Martin, in Political Man (New York: Doubleday, 1963), pp. 64–70 Google Scholar, tries to distinguish between legitimacy and effectiveness, learning theory suggests that the former is generated by the latter. See Merelman, Richard M., “Learning and Legitimacy,” The American Political Science Review, 60 (09, 1966), 548–561 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Almond, Gabriel A. and Powell, G. Bingham Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966), pp. 199–203 Google Scholar.

²⁵ More than 50 per cent of the states that used the Courts had open political systems, had developed economies, and belonged to the Western Community.

²⁶ Kaplan, and Katzenbach, , Political Foundations, pp. 265–283 Google Scholar.

²⁷ The assumption that the Courts support the status quo and the League and UN are more open to peaceful change is at the basis of the political-legal distinction and is common in the international law and organization literature. See, for example, Report of a Study Group on the Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes (London: David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies, 1966), pp. 4–6 Google Scholar.

²⁸ Deutsch, Karl W., “The Probability of International Law,” in The Relevance of International Law, ed. Deutsch, Karl W. and Hoffmann, Stanley (Cambridge: Schenkman Publishing Co., 1968), p. 57 Google Scholar.

²⁹ Wright's most systematic presentation of the concept of distance and the related framework of field theory can be found in The Study of International Relations (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955), pp. 531–567 Google Scholar. Also see Wright's, The Study of War, pp. 1466–1472 Google Scholar. For a systematic discussion of a large number of similarities as well as interdependence, see Cobb, Roger W. and Elder, Charles, International Community: A Regional and Global Study (New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1970), pp. 23–55 Google Scholar.

³⁰ See Cobb, and Elder, , International Community. pp. 22–132 Google Scholar for a discussion and operationalization of the concept of mutual relevance. Also, the book suggests a variety of approaches to measuring interdependence among states.

³¹ Russett, Bruce M., Community and Contention: Britain and America in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1963), pp. 26–33 Google Scholar.

³² The data on military alliance were taken from Singer, J. David and Small, Melvin, “Formal Alliances, 1815–1939: A Quantitative Description,” Journal of Peace Research, 3. No. 1 (1966), 1–32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³³ The following criteria were employed in classifying the dyads. The dyad was coded as having no economic interdependence if neither country was mentioned as a principal trading partner of the other in the Statesmen's Yearbook for the year of submission of the case. High interdependence was coded if both states were mentioned in each other's descriptions as principal trading partners, while moderate interdependence was assigned to those dyads in which only one state was mentioned in the two descriptions as a principal trading partner. The measure is exceedingly rough, but the lack of available data for the interwar period prevented the use of the “Direction of Trade” statistics now available for the postwar period.

³⁴ Geography is probably the oldest and most multifaceted relationship discussed in the international relations literature. Concern for the interaction of geography and relationships between states is not just a product of a geopolitical outlook (e.g., Sypkman) but is also evidenced by students of integration (e.g., Cobb, and Elder, , International Community, pp. 84–92)Google Scholar and power politics (e.g., Morganthau, Hans, Politics Among Nations, 3rd ed. [New York: Alfred Knopf, 1967], pp. 106–109)Google Scholar.

³⁵ For example, Deutsch, , “The Probability of International Law,” in Relevance of International Law, p. 57 Google Scholar; and Cobb and Elder, pp. 9–11.

³⁶ For a general discussion of the distinction between collective and private benefits see Olson, Mancur Jr., The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965)Google Scholar. The distinction is applied to the study of international alliances by Burgess, Philip M. and Robinson, James A., “Alliances and the Theory of Collective Action: Simulation of Coalition Processes,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 13 (05, 1969), 194–218 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁷ It appears that neither the power nor the rank tradition as applied to international relations has confronted the fact that different sources of influence operate in (1) different time periods, (2) for different states and (3) in different issue areas. Instead, it is assumed that power is a product of military and economic capability even though the writers might argue that other factors such as willingness to make commitments are involved. For a discussion of the problems in the literature see Coplin, Introduction to International Politics, Chap. 4.

³⁸ Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, and Organski, A. F. K., World Politics, 2nd ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968). pp. 338–377 Google Scholar.

³⁹ Jarvad, Ib Martin, “Power versus Equality: An Attempt at a Systematic Analysis of the Role and Function of the International Court of Justice, 1945–1966,” paper presented at the Second Conference of International Peace Research Association (IPRA), 1967 (revised mimeo)Google Scholar. Jarvad suggests that the sociological literature relevant to the study of rank and international politics is identified in Galtung, Johan, “International Relations and International Conflicts: A Sociological Approach,” Transactions of the Sixth World Congress of Sociology, 1 (1966), 121–161 Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Jarvad has applied this framework only to the ICJ, but it can be applied with equal usefulness to the other three institutions.

⁴¹ See Russett, Bruce M., Trends in World Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1965)Google Scholar for a discussion of the use of GNP as a measure of power. Jarvad, p. 4, employs six variables, all of which are related to economic development. Again, the choice of operational indicators of rank as well as power shows the dependence on a simplistic notion of influence.

⁴² Data for GNP for dyads after the Second World War were taken from the United Nations Statistical Yearbook. For interwar data, rough approximations were made based in part on national income data in sources such as the Statesmen's Yearbook. Given the theoretical question and the choice of a rather arbitrary cutoff point, however, the reliability of the data seems adequate. Little difference would have resulted from raising or lowering the cutoff point ten percentage points.

⁴³ This point is related to the findings reported above, indicative that a large percentage of the cases before the Courts involved the developed states.

⁴⁴ For a clear statement on this point see Report of a Study Group on the Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes, pp. 4–6.

⁴⁵ Future attempts at determining the salience of an issue in this area might borrow on the work of a number of scholars in collecting data and measuring international interactions. McClelland's World Event Interaction Series Project at the University of Southern California, or Rudolph Rummel's Dimensionality of Nations Project at the University of Hawaii might provide data on the more recent cases relevant to levels of hostility surrounding the relationships of states involved in a particular dispute. In a recent paper by William D. Coplin and Michael K. O'Leary, “A Simulation Model for the Analysis and Explanation of International Interactions” (delivered at the 1971 ISA National Convention), a different way of operationalizing and in fact conceptualizing the concept of salience was presented. Briefly, that method assumes that the broader the awareness of an issue within the political system of a state, the more salient the issue.

⁴⁶ The issue-area concept has been developed outside the international politics field. See Dahl, Robert, Who Governs?: Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961)Google Scholar. Rosenau, James N., “Pre-Theories and Theories of Foreign Policy.” in Farrell, , Approaches to Comparative and International Politics, pp. 77–93 Google Scholar, has suggested how the concept might be applied to the study of international politics.

⁴⁷ See Coplin. Introduction to International Politics, Chap. 3, for a discussion of the relationship between issue-area and domestic political pressure.

⁴⁸ Coplin, “Current Studies of the Functions of International Law,” in Robinson, Political Science Annual; and Coplin, , “International Organizations in the Future International Bargaining Process,” Journal of International Affairs, 25 (Summer, 1971), 287–301 Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Young, Oran R., The Politics of Force: Bargaining During International Crisis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 169 Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Stanley Hoffman has criticized this view of international law and organization in his essay “International Law and the Control of Force,” in The Relevance of International Law, ed. Deutsch, and Hoffmann, , pp. 21–47 Google Scholar. His criticism that it is necessary to look at international law as a coercive order even though it fails to approximate such a view is directed at those writers who view international law as part of the international environment. He does not deny that international law may be approached from such a view-point but rather that it must be viewed also in other terms.

⁵¹ See, for example, the discussions of the activities of the UN in the yearly International Conciliation volume published on issues before the General Assembly.

⁵² Claude, Inis L. Jr., Swords into Plowshares: The Problems and Progress of International Organization, 3rd ed. (New York: Random House, 1964), pp. 385–404 Google Scholar.

⁵³ Claude, pp. 223–258.

⁵⁴ Falk, Richard A., “Confrontation Diplomacy: Indonesia's Campaign to Crush Malaysia,” in International Law and Political Crisis, ed. Scheinman, and Wilkinson, , p. 162 Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Almost all writers impute the dispute-settling function to the League or UN or both. See, for example, Claude, , Swords Into Plowshares, pp. 193–222 Google Scholar, and Hanrieder, Wolfram F., “International Organizations and International Systems,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 10 (09, 1966). 297–313 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hanrieder cites three tasks of international organization, two of which—peaceful change and the peaceful settlement of disputes—might be considered distributive. Although this function was emphasized more strongly in the interwar period than the postwar period (see, for example, Coplin, Functions of International Law, ch. 3), the dispute-settling function is still emphasized today.

⁵⁶ Compare discussions of the UN in Young, , The Politics of Force, pp. 146–171 Google Scholar, to discussions of the UN in Young, , The Intermediaries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁷ Compare Scheinman, Lawrence, “The Berlin Blockade,” pp. 1–41 Google Scholar, to Friedmann, Wolfgang and Collins, Lawrence A., “The Suez Canal Crisis of 1956,” pp. 91–126 Google Scholar, both in Scheinman and Wilkinson.

⁵⁸ One might even posit an efficiency rating for these institutions, based on the relationship between the length of time in which the institutions handle the dispute and the salience of the dispute. For high salience disputes, the longer the dispute remains in the institutions, the less efficient the institution. If this were true, the UN is clearly a more efficient institution than the League.

⁵⁹ These categories have been adapted from those supplied by Haas, , Collective Security, pp. 38–39 Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Haas, p. 44.

⁶¹ This point is developed in greater detail in Coplin, “International Organizations in Future International Bargaining Process.”

⁶² Haas, Collective Security and Haas, , “Dynamic Environment and Static System: Revolutionary Regimes in the United Nations,” in The United Nations System, ed. Gregg, and Barkun, , pp. 162–197 Google Scholar.

⁶³ See Rosenau, “Pre-Theories and Theories …,” in Approaches to Comparative and International Politics, ed. Farrell.

⁶⁴ Coplin and O'Leary, “A Simulation Model …”

⁶⁵ See, for example, Alger, Chadwick F., “Interaction in a Committee of the United Nations General Assembly,” in Quantitative International Politics, ed. Singer, J. David (New York: Free Press, 1968), pp. 51–84 Google Scholar; Alker, Hayward R. Jr., and Russett, Bruce M., World Politics in the General Assembly (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Hadwen, John and Kaufmann, Johan, How United Nations Decisions Are Made (Leyden: A. W. Sythoff, 1962)Google Scholar; Hovet, Thomas Jr., Bloc Politics in the United Nations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gordenker, Leon, “Policy-Making and Secretariat Influence in the UN General Assembly: The Case of Public Information,” in The United Nations System, ed. Gregg, and Barkun, , 136–155 Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ See Coplin, , Introduction to International Politics, pp. 136–155 Google Scholar.