”Foundations,” private, nonprofit institutions that make grants for public purposes, depend for their existence on the private accumulation of great wealth and on fiscal and moral incentives for its philanthropic use. Several European foundations, including the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Volkswagen Foundation, the Krupp Foundation, and the Nuffield Foundation, are now comparable in organization and size to the American leaders. But modern foundations, independently directed and professionally staffed, are principally an invention of twentieth-century industrial society in the United States.1 Of 32 foundations with assets exceeding $100 million, 29 are American.

What can explain the decline in incumbent victory in counterinsurgency wars? Political scientists offer a variety of explanations for these trends. Some focus on the structure and doctrine of counterinsurgent forces, while others emphasize the lethality and motivation of insurgent adversaries. I challenge these explanations. Declines in incumbent victory in counterinsurgency wars are not driven by fundamental shifts in the character of these conflicts, but in the political context in which they take place. Nineteenth-century colonial incumbents enjoyed a variety of political advantages—including strong political will, a permissive international environment, access to local collaborators, and flexibility to pick their battles—which granted them the time and resources necessary to meet insurgent challenges. In contrast, twentieth-century colonial incumbents struggled in the face of apathetic publics, hostile superpowers, vanishing collaborators, and constrained options. The decline in incumbent victory in counterinsurgency warfare, therefore, stems not from problems in force structure or strategy, but in political shifts in the profitability and legitimacy of colonial forms of governance.

The history of the creation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) encompasses essentially two international conferences: the Conference of Ministers of Education of the Allied Governments and the French National Committee (CAME) which took pJace in London from 1942 through 1945 and the Conference of the United Nations for the Establishment of an International Organization for Education and Culture, held November 1–16, 1945. The latter conference, called jointly by the governments of France and the United King dom, was partially a result of the former and was also held in London. At this two-week conference UNESCO's constitution was drafted and adopted. In this development a part was played by the founding process of the United Nations whose Charter, adopted at the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco in June 1945, foresaw the advancement of international cooperation in culture and education. The founding conference of UNESCO considered itself the executor of this mandate. This article will show how the idea of international cultural cooperation was developed during the Second World War at the meetings of CAME, how it was modified by the United States aid policy toward Europe, how it was influenced by French traditions of intellectual cooperation manifested within the framework of the League of Nations, and how it led finally to the creation of a new specialized agency of the United Nations.

The chemical industry has produced a pattern of economic development and political change differing from that identified by research on the textile, steel, and automobile sectors. Its capacity for innovation and self-renewal renders inappropriate much of the logic of sectoral decline derived from theories of the product cycle. The postwar record of state-industry relations in France, Britain, West Germany, and the United States suggests that "strong" states can be helpful in bolstering the performance of the chemical industry in an expanding global economy but such states often frustrate the process of adaptation and adjustment during periods of recession. "Weak" states are particularly well suited to strong performance by the industry in both the good times and the bad.

Many commentators have sounded alarms about the alleged dependence of developed, industrialized countries on assured supplies of raw materials from overseas. Their alarms have disturbing implications for the future of these countries' foreign policies and may, for example, be used to justify political or military interventions in the Third World. These commentators, however, frequently proceed from very primitive conceptual foundations. A careful specification of the dangers involved, and of strategies for measuring various aspects of dependence, points up some of the shortcomings of simplistic analysis. It also suggests that the risks of dependence on foreign sources of most raw materials are easily exaggerated, at least for the United States.

Third World economies largely dependent on commodity exports other than oil have been the principal victims of the world recession. Attempts at restructuring international commodities regimes through the creation of the Common Fund have met with little success. Accordingly, the possibility of helping commodity exporters through the provision of compensatory finance has attracted increasing attention. One possible model for a new international compensatory facility is the EEC's STABEX scheme, established as part of the Lome Convention. However, rather than operating automatically and without interfering with market mechanisms, as its proponents suggest, the administration of STABEX has depended on discretionary judgments on the part of the EEC Commission, and the scheme has introduced distortions into trade between the EEC and its partners in the Lome Convention. Transfers under the STABEX scheme have had only a minor impact on the economies of recipient countries, especially on the sectors affected by fluctuations in export earnings. STABEX is an unsatisfactory model for a new compensatory facility: additional finance to compensate LDCs for losses in export earnings might most feasibly be made available through further liberalization of the IMF's Compensatory Financing Facility.

The United States' 1890–91 decision to begin building a battleship fleet, an important point in its development as a world power, can illuminate the domestic sources of foreign policy ambition. An analysis of roll-call votes in the House of Representatives indicates that socioeconomic divisions arising from industrialization strongly influenced support and opposition to the battleship fleet. This relationship worked mainly through trade policy interests: members of Congress from import-competing states tended to support the effort, while those from export-oriented states tended to oppose it. The patriotic symbolism of battleships at a time of labor unrest also helped motivate support for the program, though evidence of this pattern is less conclusive. Although party affiliation was crucial, it was also partly a function of economic structure, which shaped the two parties’ electoral fortunes. The impact of trade interests during this period is a mirror image of what previous research has found concerning the post-World War II era, when export-oriented interests tended to support American global activism and import-competing interests to oppose it. The reason for the difference is the Republican Party's commitment to trade protection, which strongly influenced both the goals of the policy and the identity of its supporters.

In October 1975, all twenty-five Latin American and Caribbean nations created a new, exclusively Latin American regional economic organization, the Latin American Economic System (SELA). The organization's two general goals are: (1) to promote regional cooperation for economic development, mainly through the creation of Latin American multinational enterprises; and (2) to establish a system of consultation for the adoption of common economic positions vis-à-vis third countries and international organizations. This paper is an exploratory inquiry into the prospects for SELA. The method of analysis employed is to draw from the literature on Latin American integration five problem areas common to integration efforts (weak institutional structures, an unequal distribution of the benefits of integration, nationalism, competing ideologies, and external pressures) to use in assessing SELA's probable evolution. SELA has the potential to further regional integration, but faces an uphill struggle to gain the active support of key countries; it is more likely to achieve its objective of coordinating the policies of Latin American states on international economic issues.

The global debt problem influences the foreign-policy capabilities of the United States through its impact on the government's “linkage strategies” in foreign affairs. In some circumstances policy makers are forced to make connections between different policy instruments or issues that might not otherwise have been felt necessary; in others, opportunities for connections are created that might not otherwise have been felt possible. The Polish debt crisis of 1981–82, the Latin American debt crisis of 1982–83, and the IMF quota increase in 1983 are suggestive in this regard. Linkage strategies bred by the debt issue are more apt to be successful when the interest shared by the United States with other countries in avoiding default is reinforced by other shared economic or political interests. They will also be more successful to the extent that the government can supplement its own power resources by relating bank decisions to foreign-policy considerations. Power in such situations, however, is a wasting asset, even when employed indirectly through the intermediation of the IMF.

In trade among the members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), prices of raw materials are lower and those of manufactured goods higher than comparable world prices. Because the Soviet Union is a net exporter of raw materials to, and net importer of manufactures from, the other CMEA countries, it benefits less from CMEA trade than it would from trading with the rest of the world, and the other CMEA members benefit more. This redistribution of the gains from trade is generally seen as a form of subsidization. One explanation of these subsidies is that they represent Soviet payments for political and military benefits provided by East European regimes; another is that the subsidies compensate Eastern Europe for the economic burden imposed by central planning and extensive economic ties to the Soviet Union. I argue that neither of these explanations is consistent with the type of economic and political relations that one would expect of the Soviet and East European regimes. In their place I offer an alternative explanation based on the Heckscher-Ohlin model of comparative advantage. The distribution of CMEA subsidies is shown to reflect the distribution of gains from trade that would arise among any group of economies forming a preferential trading scheme. I also argue that the willingness of members to belong to CMEA, even at the expense of paying subsidies, is that CMEA can be viewed as a club that provides benefits to members while imposing costs that may to some extent be unequal and unpredictable.

The Economic Commission for Europe is an organ of the United Nations which deserves to be better known. In a period when public attention has been focused on the Marshall Plan, and on the recurrent crises between the Soviet Union and the west, it has been given, understandably, little public attention in the United States or in Europe. The ECE is an all-European forum where certain major decisions concerning the European economy are regularly made. Among the participants in the ECE are all of the nations snaring in the Marshall Plan, as well as the United States. The chief United States representative to the ECE is Averill Harriman, whose deputy, Paul Porter, is stationed permanently in Geneva.

How do cognitive biases relevant to foreign policy decision making aggregate in groups? Many tendencies identified in the behavioral decision-making literature—such as reactive devaluation, the intentionality bias, and risk seeking in the domain of losses—have been linked to hawkishness in foreign policy choices, potentially increasing the risk of conflict, but how these “hawkish biases” operate in the small-group contexts in which foreign policy decisions are often made is unknown. We field three large-scale group experiments to test how these biases aggregate in groups. We find that groups are just as susceptible as individuals to these canonical biases, with neither hierarchical nor horizontal group decision-making structures significantly attenuating the magnitude of bias. Moreover, diverse groups perform similarly to more homogeneous ones, exhibiting similar degrees of bias and marginally increased risk of dissension. These results suggest that at least with these types of biases, the “aggregation problem” may be less problematic for psychological theories in international relations than some critics have argued. This has important implications for understanding foreign policy decision making, the role of group processes, and the behavioral revolution in international relations.

Collective responses to technology-related international problems may differ in terms of organizational outcomes (new, modified, or no organizations). Some of this difference may be accounted for by contrasting objectives and capabilities of major actors. Actors may emphasize different dimensions of the policy setting, possess varying amounts of resources and information to affect that setting, and accordingly prefer alternative responses. Possibilities of this sort are examined empirically in two separate, chronological periods of Western European responses to collective R&D problems. In the first period, major actors stressed different dimensions of the policy setting, possessed unequal resources, and responded to the situation by the creation of new organizations (Euratom and ENEA); in the second, they stressed the same dimensions of the policy setting, possessed roughly equal capabilities, and decidedly resisted the creation of new organizations. The different outcomes suggest that stratification of perceptions and capabilities, emphasizing complementarity, may be more conducive to organizational creativity than similarity of perceptions and capabilities, emphasizing competition.

No field of study is more slippery than international relations. The student of government has a clear frame of reference: the state within which occur the developments which he examines. The student of international relations, unhappily, oscillates between the assumption of a world community which does not exist, except as an ideal, and the various units whose decisions and connections form the pattern of world politics—mainly, the nation-states. International organizations therefore tend to be considered either as the first institutions of a world in search of its constitution or as instruments of foreign policies. The scholar who follows the first approach usually blames, correctly enough, the nation-states for the failures of the organization; but he rarely indicates the means which could be used to bring the realities of world society into line with his ideal. The scholar who takes the second approach stresses, accurately enough, how limited the autonomy of international organizations has been and how little they have contributed to the achievement of their objectives; but because he does not discuss his fundamental assumption—the permanence of the nation-state's driving role in world politics—he reaches somewhat too easily the conclusion that the only prospect in international affairs is more of the same.

Contemporary studies of conflict have adopted approaches that minimize the importance of negotiation during war or treat it as a constant and mechanical activity. This is strongly related to the lack of systematic data that track and illustrate the complex nature of wartime diplomacy. I address these issues by creating and exploring a new daily-level data set of negotiations in all interstate wars from 1816 to the present. I find strong indications that post-1945 wars feature more frequent negotiations and that these negotiations are far less predictive of war termination. Evidence suggests that increased international pressures for peace and stability after World War II, especially emanating from nuclear weapons and international alliances, account for this trend. These original data and insights establish a dynamic research agenda that enables a more policy-relevant study of conflict management, highlights a historical angle to conflict resolution, and speaks to the utility of viewing diplomacy as an essential dimension to understanding war.

The Algerian-Moroccan border conflict provided the Organization of African Unity (OAU) with the first test of its machinery and procedures for peacekeeping and for the peaceful settlement of disputes. The following examination of that dispute and of its treatment by the Organization of African Unity is a case study of the operation of a newly founded regional organization. The Organization of African Unity was endowed with no supranational powers which might have enabled it to enforce its will on the disputants in the Algerian-Moroccan case. The Organization had to function on the basis of cooperation among its members. Yet the Organization of African Unity was more than the mere instrument of the foreign policies of its members in the Algerian-Moroccan case. When individual African statesmen were disqualified from acting as mediators by their respective preferences for one or the other of the disputants, the existence of an organization representing all of Africa greatly assisted in the mitigation of the conflict and contributed much to the peace of Africa.

Consensual knowledge can produce widely varying levels of impact on different international negotiations. In the case of negotiations over UNCTAD's Integrated Program for Commodities, consensual knowledge developed among the experts involved. This consensus tended to support the position taken by the developed countries, thus pointing in a direction already taken for other reasons. Consensus in this case facilitated an agreement, but empirical and theoretical analysis both suggest it may prove to be an incorrect or unstable agreement. The outcome of the commodity negotiations implies that the interaction of key variables, such as uncertainty and the degree of acceptance of the knowledge, might yield different results in other cases. Various specific means might be used more effectively to diffuse expert knowledge among policy makers.

Events of and since 11 September 2001 have renewed interest in age-old questions about liberal-democratic governance in the shadow of insecurity, crisis, and war. Academic lawyers in particular have engaged in a vigorous debate about how liberal polities can confront security threats while maintaining their commitment to the rule of law. Yet few empirical political scientists, and even fewer scholars of international relations, have weighed in. The short- and especially long-run effects of international conflict on liberal-democratic institutions and processes remain an underexplored aspect of the second-image-reversed. Prompted by recent research in law, this article finds that prominent arguments often rest on shaky theoretical and empirical foundations. It argues that the two most notable traditions of thought on war and democracy are complementary, not competing; that small wars may also have substantial consequences; and that analysts must distinguish clearly among three distinct causal phenomena—threat, mobilization, and warfare—when considering conflict's impact on democracy. The article critically reviews the effects of conflict on both participation and contestation; identifies the salient outstanding questions and suggests hypotheses addressing them; and explores the implications for contemporary normative debates over executive authority and emergency powers.

This article examines the factors that led to the end of the Cold War from the perspective of the most important U.S. decision makers in both the Reagan and Bush presidencies. The centerpiece of the analysis is a longitudinal study that compares the timing of U.S. decision makers' assessments of the nature of the Soviet threat with changes in Soviet power, foreign policies, and domestic ideology and institutions. This research design allows one to determine if America's key leaders were basing their foreign policies primarily in response to reductions in Soviet power (as realists assert), to more cooperative international policies (as systemic-constructivist and costly signals arguments claim), or to changes in Soviet domestic politics (as democratic peace theories argue). I find that American leaders' beliefs that the Cold War was ending corresponded most closely with Soviet domestic-ideological and institutional changes. As soon as America's most important leaders believed both that Gorbachev was dedicated to core tenets of liberal ideology, and that these values would likely be protected by liberal institutions, they believed the Cold War was ending. These findings help to both illustrate the key determinants of leaders' perceptions of international threats and explain why outstanding Cold War disputes were resolved so smoothly, with the Americans primarily attempting to reassure the Soviets rather than coercing them with America's power superiority.I wish to thank the following people for their helpful comments on previous versions of this article and related projects that led to it: Cliff Bob, Steve Brooks, Dale Copeland, Robert Jervis, Mark Kramer, Jeff Legro, Jack Levy, Allen Lynch, Sean Lynn-Jones, Kimberly Marten, Rose McDermott, Steve Miller, Kevin Narizny, John Owen, Steve Rosen, John Sawicki, Monica Duffy Toft, Steve Walt, and especially Lisa Martin and two anonymous reviewers at International Organization. I also thank the participants in the seminars on international security at the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, both at Harvard University, and the Center for International Studies at Princeton University. For generous financial and institutional support, I remain grateful to the Olin Institute and the Belfer Center.

How do international observers decide whether to criticize or condone electoral fraud in a country? We argue that this decision depends on the identity of the victims of electoral fraud. A monitoring organization is more likely to overlook fraud committed against groups that are deemed dangerous by its sponsor. Based on this insight, we hypothesize that in the post-Cold War era election monitors are more tolerant of fraud against Islamic challengers, especially when Islamic movements are perceived as a threat to political stability. In support of our hypothesis, we find that outside monitors are more likely to endorse an election in countries with an Islamic opposition party and an ongoing Islamist terrorist campaign. Furthermore, we find that the effect is driven by Western monitoring organizations and becomes stronger after the September 11 attacks. Our findings provide a simple yet powerful insight: the calculus of outside observers depends not only on who they wish to see in power, but also who they want to keep from power.