The Atlantic Community regards itself as the core of the free world and, at least in aspiration, as the leader of all the peoples which have not fallen under the communist spell. The major barriers to the successful assertion of that leadership are the suspicion and hostility generated by the era of Western imperial overlordship of most of the world and the radical divergence in view as to what constitutes the major problem of our times. Although there are marked differences of emphasis within it, the Atlantic Community arms and guards against the threat of communist imperialism, while much of Asia and Africa still see the colonialism of the West as the gravest and most immediate menace to their own freedom and the peace of the world. For the most part they want to abstain from what seems to them the sterile and unrewarding task of holding back communism in order to be able to concentrate on their own immense problems of stabilization, integration, and development. Aware of their pressing needs, and of what the West has to offer, they look to the Atlantic Community for economic and other assistance, even though they may also be ready to accept assistance from the communist states as well. It is probable that most of those in responsible positions in the Atlantic Community have a greater degree of understanding and sympathetic appreciation of the position of the underdeveloped countries than the leaders of the latter have of the West's concern with communism.

Report of the Committee on South West Africa: The report of the Committee on South West Africa to the eleventh session of the General Assembly stated that the Committee had again extended to the government of the Union of South Africa the invitation it had sent in 1954 and 1955 to participate in the Committee's work, but that the Union government had refused the invitation, stating that it had not changed its former position; it still considered the mandate in respect of South West Africa as lapsed and it had no other international commitments in regard to that territory. In view of this unchanged attitude of the Union government, the Committee had continued to apply the alternate procedure contained in its rules of procedure with respect to the examination of reports adopted on February 11, 1954.

The Executive and Liaison Committee of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) met in Berne from May 14 to 23, 1959, under the presidency of Mr. A. Wolstencroft (United Kingdom). In dealing with the agenda, the Committee approved without reservation the report of the activities of UPU for 1958. Several questions on the relation of UPU to the UN were treated at this time with reciprocal understanding. The examination of the reports of the subcommittees on the progress in their respective tasks figured prominently in the discussion; the Committee did not, however, come to a decision on tariff policy, although it did decide that the present scales of transit rates needed to be revised. The subcommittee scheme regarding the eventual issue of an international postage stamp met with serious opposition; at the end of the discussion, it was decided that examination of the problem should be continued, but no decision was taken. The agenda contained also several points of an administrative character concerning the organization and the working of the International Bureau and the examination of various proposals submitted by administrations.

Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, in the introduction to his fourteenth annual report on the work of the Organization, June 16, 1958 to June 15, 1959 observed that the year had been characterized by intense diplomatic activities mainly outside the UN, although in some cases within its precincts or in informal contact with the Organization. The dual significance of this intense diplomatic and political activity, exemplified by the meetings in Geneva on a controlled cessation of nuclear tests and on die problem of the status of Berlin, as well as by die increasing number of exchanges of visits of leading statesmen, lay, on the one hand, in its indication that various international problems had been brought to a point where they called for renewed and urgent efforts to find a solution, and, on die other, in its introduction, through the broadening and deepening of personal contacts on different levels, of a new constructive element which might strengthen the hope that ways to reconciliation and to a reduction of tensions might be found. Although such negotiations were encouraged by the Charter of the UN, the Secretary-General continued, diere would be legitimate reason for concern if such developments outside the Organization were to reflect a neglect of the possibilities offered by the Organization, because of a lapse into bilateralism, disregarding third party interests. Likewise, the situation would be a reason for concern if it reflected a view that the Organization was unable to meet the demands which Member nations were entitled to put on it.

I fully share the conviction expressed by President Kennedy in May 1962 that “Atlantic unity represents the true course of history.” This seems to me inevitable despite the complications, contradictions, and conflicts of national policies which are still very much with us.

In the introduction to the annual report for 1954–1955 on the work of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) the Director-General of FAO (Cardon) stated that although FAO had many separate projects in the fields of agriculture, economics, fisheries, forestry, and nutrition, the organization had an over-all program, that of improving human well-being by increasing and improving the production, distribution, and utilization of food and other products of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries. He stated that progress had been made in unifying and integrating FAO's work since 1) each division of FAO contributed to the five major aspects of the general program, and 2) the work of direct technical advisory assistance for economic development had been more closely integrated with the regular FAO program. In elaborating on his themes of integration, the Director-General stated that “…the need grows more pressing for the closest integration within each receiving government, within each agency, among agencies, and with the like activities of bilateral and other programs”. During the year under review, considerable progress had been made in the more effective association of FAO's work with that of other international organizations.

Prominent theories of state formation hold that states formed because of warfare and competition on the one hand, or the diffusion of organizational templates and practices through learning and emulation on the other. We propose that the two strands of theory can be linked to more accurately account for mechanisms of state formation. War, we argue, is an important source of social diffusion. War establishes contacts between political elites across borders, generates migratory flows, and establishes new economic networks. We examine the validity of the theory through a comparative case study of Nordic political units from the dawn of the Viking Age to the end of the High Middle Ages (CE 800–1300), finding that raids, settlements, and conquests by Norwegian and Danish rulers in England, Europe's most advanced kingdom, set in motion state formation processes in Norway and Denmark. In these cases, the winners emulated the losers.

How do leaders select their top-level foreign policy appointees? Through a formal model of the domestic and intragovernmental politics surrounding an international crisis, I investigate the trade-offs shaping leaders’ appointment strategies. In the model, a leader selects a foreign policy appointee, anticipating how the appointment will affect the advice he receives in the crisis, the electorate's evaluation of his performance, and ultimately the policies that he and his foreign counterparts pursue as a consequence. The analysis uncovers a fundamental tension in the leader's ability to use appointments to advance his core political and policy objectives of deterring foreign aggression, obtaining accurate advice, and maximizing domestic approval: any appointment that advances one of these objectives invariably comes at the cost of another, and the leader's appointment strategy must balance across these trade-offs. Analyzing cross-national appointment patterns to the offices of ministers of defense and foreign affairs, I find descriptive evidence consistent with the model's predictions: leaders from dovish parties are more than twice as likely as leaders from hawkish parties to select cross-partisan and politically independent appointees, and such appointments are less likely for leaders of either party as they approach re-election.

We analyze the design of an international climate agreement. In particular, we consider two goals of such an agreement: overcoming free-rider problems and adjusting for differences in mitigation costs between countries. Previous work suggests that it is difficult to achieve both of these goals at once under asymmetric information because countries free ride by exaggerating their abatement costs. We argue that independent information collection (investigations) by an international organization can alleviate this problem. In fact, though the best implementable climate agreement without investigations fails to adjust for individual differences even with significant enforcement power, a mechanism with investigations allows adjustment and can enable implementation of the socially optimal agreement. Furthermore, when the organization has significant enforcement power, the optimal agreement is achievable even with minimal investigative resources (and vice versa). The results suggest that discussions about institutions for climate cooperation should focus on information collection as well as enforcement.

This essay is addressed to the issue of the extent to which and the ways in which the United Nations may serve the interest of the United States in the maintenance of world peace during the decade that lies ahead. It rests upon two assumptions, both of which require careful qualification: first, the assumption that the United States has, and recognizes that it has, a fundamental interest in international peace; second, the assumption that the United Nations is in principle an organization dedicated to the promotion of international peace.

Those of us who have lived through the growth of international organizations during the last 45 years have witnessed a remarkable series of transformations in their membership, their procedures, their authority, their effectiveness, and even in their fundamental conception, purposes, and function.

Designed to supplement the inherited and traditional political structure of the world, the League of Nations was to consist primarily of new arrangements for avoiding any repetition of the breakdown in the conduct of international relations represented by the outbreak of war in 1914. The United Nations, as originally conceived, was designed to be a central element in a political structure of a world which was recognized to be changing. But there was little appreciation, when the Charter was drafted, of how sudden, far-reaching, and decisive the changes would prove to be.

In this article I develop a new theory of how globalization in the form of increasing potential foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows affects democratization. As the level of potential FDI inflows increases, workers become more willing to support democratization because of the large wage benefits from liberalizing FDI under democracy, while capitalists become less willing to support democratization because of their increasing need for protection from the dictator in the form of FDI restrictions. Increased demand for protection allows dictators to extract larger share of rents from capitalists. The effect of increasing potential FDI on democratization is ambiguous because it increases both workers’ incentive to revolt and dictators’ resistance to democratization.

International organization is not a new concept in the minds of men, but the creation of most of the international organizations now in existence has occurred within the memory of many who are by no means our oldest citizens. Before the last war, it was not too difficult for the interested layman, the scholar, the government official, or the teacher to keep abreast of new ideas and new philosophies. He watched the League of Nations, the Pan American Union, and a handful of specialized organizations like the Postal Union or the International Institute of Agriculture, and felt reasonably safe in his conviction that he could qualify as an intelligent citizen or even, at times, a teacher.

The postwar tempo of political change in Africa has carried the “dark continent” from the diplomatic backwaters to a central position in world affairs in but a decade. The pace is likely to accelerate rather than abate in the next few years. A crucial question is whether this swift passage from tribal and colonial societies to independent national states can be achieved in a non-violent and orderly way. The stakes for the future are considerable. A peaceful and rational accommodation of the interests and aspirations of the European metropolitan countries with those of the dependent African territories is likely to preserve and enhance vital Eurafrican economic ties to the mutual benefit of both sides of the present colonial equation.

Despite the fact that the Ninth International Conference of American States was overshadowed in press and popular mind by the dramatic explosion that rocked the conference city of Bogota in April, there can be little doubt that the outstanding achievement of the conference was not the largely sterile anti-Communist resolution, but rather the new Charter of the Americas. With their signature to this Charter the delegates of the twenty-oneindependent republics have completed a reorganization of the inter-American framework which was begun at least fifteen years ago

The Annual Report of the Executive Directors of the International Monetary Fund for the fiscal year ended April 30, 1957, was transmitted to the Chairman of the Board of Governors on June 28, 1957. The report stated that boom conditions had continued throughout 1956, sustained by an undercurrent of private business investment sufficiently strong to compensate for weaknesses in individual sectors. The increase in the demand for capital, due largely to new production techniques, changes in agricultural and manufacturing methods, and growth in population, had been accompanied by a great volume of economic activity and an increased demand for public and private investment in social services and amenities. Although there had been no further significant extension of restrictions, inflationary tendencies had constituted a primary problem.

This article examines the United States-Canadian defense issue area from a transnational and transgovernmental perspective, and attempts to develop conceptually the transgovernmental dimension through empirical application. The first part delineates those factors that encourage transnational and transgovernmental activity in the defense issue area. The second part considers pure intergovernmental transactions, referring to United States-Canadian dealings in which there is no transnational or transgovernmental activity. Because we know so little about how these dealings occur, this section examines pure intergovernmental transactions as a three-stage issue flow: preprocess, process, and postprocess. The third section identifies and examines the dynamics of mixed transactions, referring to intergovernmental flows having transnational or transgovernmental activity that does not essentially alter the outcomes of the flows. The fourth part identifies transformative transactions, referring to intergovernmental flows that become transnational or transgovernmental flows (or the reverse) through the involvement of new actors that significantly alter the outcomes of the flows. In summation, the fifth section considers those factors militating against transnational and transgovernmental activity in the defense area.

The tenth session of the Assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) was held in Caracas from June 19 to July 16, 1956, under the presidency of Dr. Santiago Pérez Pérez (Venezuela).