Regionalism has a long history as an important instrument of American foreign policy. Yet such a statement does not do justice to the variations in goals, means, and settings that have affected United States policy toward participation in and cooperation with regional organizations. These differences have been the cause of serious debate in the past and are becoming so again as we approach the 1970's.

Foundational theories of trade politics emphasize a conflict between consumer welfare and protectionist lobbies. But these theories ignore other powerful lobbies that also shape trade policy. We propose a theory of trade distortion arising from conflict between consumer welfare and importer lobbies. We estimate the key parameter of the model—the government's weight on welfare—using original data from Venezuela, where Hugo Chávez used an exchange-rate subsidy to underwrite hundreds of billions of dollars of imports. Whereas estimates from traditional models would make Chávez look like a welfare maximizer, our results indicate that he implemented distortionary commercial policy to the benefit of special interests. Our analysis underscores the importance of tailoring workhorse models to account for differences in interest group configuration. The politics of trade policy is not reducible to the politics of protectionism.

As illustrated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the recent revival of nationalism has triggered a threatening return of revisionist conflict. While the literature on nationalism shows how nationalist narratives are socially constructed, much less is known about their real-world consequences. Taking nationalist narratives seriously, we study how past “golden ages” affect territorial claims and conflict in post-Napoleonic Europe. We expect nationalists to be more likely to mobilize and initiate conflict if they can contrast the status quo to a historical polity with supposedly greater national unity and/or independence. Using data on European state borders going back to 1100, combined with spatial data covering ethnic settlement areas during the past two centuries, we find that the availability of plausible golden ages increases the risk of both domestic and interstate conflict. These findings suggest that specific historical legacies make some modern nationalisms more consequential than others.

The signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4, 1949, gave rise to a number of books and articles on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) the volume of which will probably continue for some time. The treaty and the organization that it created represent the clearest challenge to Soviet expansionism since the end of World War II. Through this action twelve nations of North America and western Europe resolved to consider an armed attack against one member an attack against them all, and to create sufficient stiength within the alliance to deter potential aggressors. But NATO's continuing interest to commentators stems from reasons other than its value as a weapon against the spread of communism. To some writers NATO appears to be a stimulant that would revive a moribund United Nations, to others it is the beginning of a new kind of alliance unprecedented in history, to still others, it is a symbol of America's rejection of isolationism. So vague are some of the treaty's articles and so rapid has been the evolution of the organization that almost any observer could derive whatever meaning he wishes out of NATO's development.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) held its eleventh General Conference in Paris from November 14 to December 15, 1960, under the presidency of Mr. Akale-Work Abte-Wold (Ethiopia). Ninety-eight member states of UNESCO participated in the Conference compared with the 75 that were members in 1958 at the time of the tenth General Conference. The General Conference approved the program of activities for 1961–1962 and unanimously voted a budget of $32,513,228 to finance it; to this amount was added over $12 million provided by the United Nations Technical Assistance Fund to enable UNESCO to carry out many additional educational and scientific projects. UNESCO was also to act as executing agency for seventeen projects concerning higher technical education, for which the UN Special Fund was to provide more than $11 million in 1961–1962. Also allocated by the Conference was $915,000 for the construction of an additional building in Paris, the total cost of which was to be $3,535,000.

The Soviet attack on the United Nations during the Fifteenth General Assembly, along with the Congo operation, has served to dramatize the emergence of the World Organization as a far-flung administrative instrumentality. Initially organized primarily to manage meetings and to provide clearing-house functions, the UN Secretariat has progressively taken on a wide variety of “action research” projects both in New York and in the regional economic commissions. More important still, it has become engaged in a complex congeries of field programs which now absorb roughly half the time of its professional personnel. Not only does it help to plan economic, social, and technical programs of increasing magnitude, but it undertakes to implement such programs around the globe—often in cooperation with one or more of the specialized agencies. Certain of these programs, e.g., the Special Fund and OPEX (Operational, Executive, and Administrative Personnel), owe their design in large part to ideas originating within the UN bureaucracy: spurred by the Secretary-General's leadership the staff has dared to improvise and to innovate as the political climate has permitted.

Readers of this periodical will have been struck with the quantity and the variety of international bodies existing today. Whatever else may be lacking in international organization there is no lack of international organizations.

The fifth South Pacific Conference was held at Utulei village, near Pago Pago, American Samoa, on July 18–27, 1962, under the chairmanship of Mr. Kowles A. Ryerson, Senior Commissioner for the United States on the South Pacific Commission. Topics discussed by the standing committees and in the preliminary sessions of the Conference mainly related to economic and social development and health. Subjects included methods of training Pacific islanders in business methods and practices ways of improving the quality and marketing of agricultural produce and of developing marketing efficiency, the changing role of women in the region, the importance of organized adult eduction schemes, and ways of obtaining a reasonable balance between social advancement and economic development in the South Pacific region. Delegates also reviewed the work of the South Pacific Commission since the last Conference was held in 1959.

The existence of regional arrangements rests on two assumptions: First, the recognition that world unity, based on a common way of life and common values, is still very distant; and second, the increasingly inescapable conviction that, in our time, the great majority of national states are political and economic units illequipped to develop fully and even survive on solely national bases. Politically, most states have lost ground in a world which has had its centers of power radically diminished in the course of a generation. Economically, they are units too small to develop fully their natural resources and overcome their poverty unless they work together. The modern world needs to create regional units as a bridge between the isolated national state and a sufficiently integrated world collectivity of the future.

On July 10, 1950 the Interim Committee of the General Assembly met to consider the following items: 1) the report of the Subcommittee on International Cooperation in the Political Field; 2) the report of the United Nations Commission for Eritrea; and 3) the study of procedure to delimit the boundaries of the former Italian Colonies. Before these matters could be discussed, however, the committee had to elect a new vice-chairman as Abdur Rahim Khan (Pakistan) had submitted his resignation from that position following his appointment as representative of Pakistan on the United Nations Advisory Council for Libya.

The notion of the “world as a whole” is becoming increasingly prominent in the thinking and pronouncements of international prog-nosticators. Yet “globalism”, its functional expression, is a relatively new approach in the United Nations. In fact, it has hardly arrived. This statement is not paradoxical or even surprising. Globalism is not the same thing as internationalism as we have known it up to the present. There is more involved here than a matter of semantics. Traditional internationalism is derived from the dictates of political wisdom and a sense of human solidarity in a world of growing interdependence but of unlimited horizons opened up by tech nology. Globalism is associated today with the ambivalence of technology, its negative effects on the degradation of the environment, the destruction of ecological balances, the limited capacity of the biosphere, the possible depletion of natural resources, the population explosion, the finiteness of the planet, and perhaps even the finiteness of knowledge.

The 41st (Maritime) session of the International Labor Conference was held in Geneva from April 29 to May 14, 1958, under the presidency of Mr. I. Kawasaki (Japanese government delegate). It was attended by 370 delegates, advisers, and observers, representing the governments, shipowners, and seafarers of 46 member countries. The Conference took note of reports from its credentials committee, declaring that the objections lodged against the nomination of the Chinese delegation and the Indian workers' delegation were irreceivable.

The sixteenth session of the Trusteeship Council was held at UN Headquarters from v June 8 to July 22, 1955. At the opening meeting Mason Sears (United States) was elected president and Max Dorsinville (Haiti) vice-president. An agenda of 20 items was adopted by the Council, which devoted the greater part of the session to examination of the annual reports on the administration of the trust territories of Somaliland, the Pacific Islands, Western Samoa, New Guinea and Nauru. The Council also made arrangements for visiting missions for 1955, and dealt with a number of questions referred to it by the General Assembly. Before concluding its sixteenth session, the Council adopted the report of the Secretary-General on credentials, and elected R. M. Urquía (El Salvador) temporary president for the fifth special session of the Council, which was to be held at UN Headquarters in October or November, 1955 for the purpose of considering the special report of the 1955 visiting mission to the trust territories of Togoland under British administration and Togoland under French administration.

The eighth session of the General Assembly, which had recessed on December 9, 1953, to be reconvened if necessary by the President of the Assembly with the concurrence of a majority of United Nations Members to consider the problem of Korea, was formally adjourned at a brief meeting on September 20, 1954.

International technical aid programs, under the impetus of the Point Four idea, have now been functioning for three years. The time has perhaps come to review program operations in terms of some of the practical problems that have confronted the managers of the United Nations and United States programs. Such an evaluation, however tentative in character, may throw light on the potentialities and difficulties of the multilateral versus the bilateral framework for technical assistance. Exaggerated claims and counter-claims have been advanced with respect to the two processes. What does the record to date appear to reveal?

From its 865th through its 868th meetings, the Security Council considered the claim of Argentina that its sovereign rights had been violated by the illicit and clandestine transfer of Adolf Eichmann from Argentine territory to the territory of the state of Israel. After the representative of Israel had been invited to participate without vote in the deliberations of the Council, Mr. Amadeo (Argentina), opened the discussion by reviewing the history of cordial relations between the two countries, noting in addition Argentina's traditional attitude of opposition to racial and religious discrimination and persecution. Argentina had brought the case to the UN, he said, only after exhausting all the possibilities of direct bilateral negotiation. While Argentina did not defend the crimes of which Eichmann had been accused, nor did it seek immunity for him, it could not allow a crime to be judged as a direct result of the violation of Argentina's rights; thus this was not the case of Adolf Eichmann and his crimes against humanity, but rather the case of a country claiming justice after an act which, if it were to be repeated, might shake the very foundations of international order. It was in this light that the Argentine delegate presented a draft resolution to the Security Council whereby the Council would, inter alia, request the government of Israel to proceed to an appropriate reparation in conformity with the Charter of the UN and the rules of international law.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations. By definition it is concerned with the atmosphere and atmospheric processes and, hence, with the human environment, for whatever definition of the human environment may be adopted, the atmosphere is clearly one of its essential elements. Many atmospheric processes are intimately, indeed inextricably, related to processes and phenomena the study of which falls within the compass of other geophysical disciplines — notably hydrology and oceanography. The WMO has therefore certain responsibilities in these fields also, and as a result its interest in the human environment is somewhat wider than its title may suggest.