It is sometimes instructive, as Holmes long ago pointed out to Watson, to begin by asking a few questions about dogs that do not bark in the night. Suez and the Congo are not the only major crises which have disturbed the United Nations. Yet they are the only ones to which it has responded by creating a true United Nations force. Why?

Two central tenets of dependency theory are supported by the analysis of the causes and consequences of the exchange rate policies of less developed countries (LDCs). First, one critical component—high partner trade concentrations—is recreated by the choice of exchange arrangements. Specifically, nations that havemaintained a dollar peg have significantly increased their concentration of trade with the United States since 1973. This occurs because of the exchange rate risk present in any transaction that involves a dollar-pegged currency and any other major currency against which it floats. Second, such an effect produces incentives for internal and external actors with an interest in the partner composition of future trade to influence the exchange rate policy of LDCs. Various components of the dependence situation that strengthen the role of such actors—partner trade concentrations, treaty arrangements, foreign aid, etc.—are significantly correlated with actual exchange rate practice. Thus, exchange rate policy is a linch-pin mechanism, in that it both manifests distortions produced by dependency and further acts to recreate a vital aspect of the situation that gave rise to the distortions.

This note is intended primarily for graduate students and other researchers without previous field experience in studying international organizations. I do not propose either to summarize or to repeat the many expositions on survey research, interviewing, and the like; radier the focus here will be primarily on a number of the “nuts and bolts” problems not usually treated in the literature that the researcher is likely to face. If the individual is aware of these beforehand he can save himself time and a few mistakes.

At the beginning of the seventeenth session of the General Assembly, there were thirteen Commonwealth countries at the United Nations, constituting one-eighth of the total membership. Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago (which both became independent during August 1962) and Uganda (which received its independence in October) became Members of the UN during the seventeenth session. Kenya and British Guiana are two other Commonwealth countries approaching independence. If there are no other new United Nations Members in the meantime, and if these five remain in the Commonwealth, as they are expected to do, their addition would mean that one-sixth of the Members of the UN were also Commonwealth members.

The fourteenth Congress of the Universal Postal Union was held from August 14 to October 3, 1957, in Ottawa, Canada, under the chairmanship of Mr. W. J. Turnbull (Canada). Work on over 1200 proposals which were submitted to the Congress was distributed among nine committees.

Current discussion about the Atlantic Pact has given a new emphasis and importance to an old controversy. Ever since the creation of the League of Nations men have disputed bitterly about the relationship of lesser groupings of states to an over-all organization. The view of President Wilson and many of his supporters was that the two were directly opposed to each other. It was argued that such limited security organizations were, in effect, alliances, that they would produce counter-alliances, a revival of the “balance of power,” and the destruction of an organization dedicated to the principle of world-wide “collective” security.

The Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO) held its 21st session in Geneva, January 14–28, 1958, under the chairmanship of Sir John Charles. After discussing in detail the Director-General's proposed program of activities and budget estimates for 1959, the Board endorsed the Director-General's effective working budget of$14, 287, 600. It was suggested that in preparing the 1960 budget a greater percentage of the total expenditure should be set aside for strengthening the technical services at headquarters. In pursuance of WHO's policy of complete malaria eradication, the Director-General had drawn up a detailed program covering the operations for the following five years. Noting that the total resources available in the malaria eradication special account amounted to $5,112,000, and that the estimated expenditure for 1958 alone was $5,058,000, the Board expressed the hope that governments able to do so would make voluntary contributions to the account and requested the Director-General to take the necessary steps, including adequate publicity, to obtain additional funds, whether from governmental or from private sources.

The United Nations is now playing a key role in the economic and technical development of the African continent and will undoubtedly be called upon to assume an even greater responsibility in this field during the next ten years. This development was correctly forecast five years ago by the late Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld. For he saw that the transition from the colonial era, which had made the European countries directly responsible for the development of the vast majority of the territories and peoples in Africa, prior to independence, would thrust upon the United Nations a very specific burden. As it happened, the question of the Congo has overshadowedthe other aspects of UN activity in Africa, although one can note a remarkable continuity in the progressive implementation of a coordinated program where all agencies of the United Nations family have to play their part.

The double crisis we witnessed last autumn dates back to six months ago, yet it may already be possible to outline a schematic picture of its repercussions on the international organizations in Europe. I shall describe neither the structures of these organizations nor the way they work, but, rather, the political context, which alone permits us to evaluate their potential for action and influence on the European scene. This paper will therefore deal first with the immediate consequences of the Budapest massacres and with the unsuccessful enterprise of the Anglo-French forces in Suez. It will then try to evaluate the present political motivations of the French, British, and German policies, and this will lead to an examination of the political decay of both NATO in Europe and the Western European Union. A cursory glance at what is usually called the European parliaments—already in existence or in the process of being created—will lead us to conclusions in which the Algerian question and the question of German reunification will figure more predominantly than international organizations whose juridical future seems more certain than their political effectiveness.

When the Soviet Union withdrew recently from the World Health Organization, a somewhat startled world learned that even the prevention of disease can be affected by world politics. The most cursory study of international organizations for other purposes discloses that none is immune to world social and political forces. On the contrary, they are in varying degree shaped and influenced by these forces, and in fact serve as vehicles for their expression.

Though the United Nations has succeeded to only a limited extent in bringing about the actual settlement or adjustment of disputes and threatening situations that have been brought to its attention, it has achieved a considerable measure of success in its efforts to bring fighting to an end and to assist the parties in maintaining the cessation of hostilities to which they have agreed. In Indonesia, the United Nations was able to follow up its success in inducing the parties to agree to a cease-fire with a valuable assist in the negotiation of a final political settlement. In Palestine, however, the United Nations contribution has been largely limited to getting the states directly involved in the fighting to agree to a cease-fire, and then to armistice agreements. The political issues involved seem as far from resolution as ever. In dealing with the dispute between India and Pakistan over the State of Jammu and Kashmir, the United Nations has likewise found itself unable to get the parties to agree on a political settlement. Nevertheless, fighting has been brought to an end, and the United; Nations has played an important part in achieving that result.

With the great spread and intensification of marine fisheries exploitation, the traditional fisheries regime of free and open access (part of traditional “freedom of the seas”) has been modified by many regional or stock-related management arrangements, and is now undergoing drastic change through a radical extension of coastal state jurisdictions. This article deals mostly with the development of various regional and stock-related arrangements. After sketching the overall purposes of management, the aiticle details some of the differences among competing states which have delayed or limited management arrangements, or otherwise complicated their development. Issues of allocation may be uppermost for competing interests, discussed here in the context of shifts from undivided to divided catch limits. The regulatory powers of intergovernmental fisheries commissions have generally been quite limited. While fisheries scientists have in some cases performed vital roles in encouraging regional arrangements, their information and advice has been of limited scope and influence in securing more restrictive regulatory regimes. FAO's Committee on Fisheries (COFI) might be called a global fisheries commission, though much of its most important work has related to amimating and supporting arrangements of a regional character. The radical shift outward of national jurisdictions is rearranging fisheries exploitation in most parts of the world. Given the nature of the resource, however, some forms of regional or stock arrangements will still be needed if the overall purposes of management are to be realized.

The proof for “War Is in the Error Term,” a piece that appeared in the Summer 1999 issue of International Organization, contains a subtle error. Once the correction is made, there are broader implications for testing theories of war using quantitative studies. Large-n tests to verify the incomplete information explanation for war will be more difficult to perform than originally anticipated.

The nineteenth (1964–1965) session of the General Assembly was virtually deadlocked over the financial crisis, a crisis which arose as a result of disagreement between the Members about how the United Nations peacekeeping operations were to be financed. Three years earlier, in 1961, the General Assembly, having been informed of the substantial arrears in the payment of assessments, mainly for the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) and the United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC), adopted on December 20, a resolution asking the International Court of Justice to give an advisory opinion as to whether the expenditures authorized for the UNEF and ONUC operations constituted “expenses of the Organization” within the meaning of Article 17, paragraph 2, of the United Nations Charter. On December 19, 1962, the Assembly voted to accept the advisory opinion of the Court to the effect that the expenditures of these operations constituted “expenses of the Organization” within the meaning of Article 17 (2) of the Charter. However, attempts to extract the arrears from the defaulting states, the largest of which were the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union) and France, on the strength of the Court's advisory opinion, largely failed; and the matter came to a head at the nineteenth session of the General Assembly when some Members, notably the United States, proposed that sanctions under Article 19 of the Charter be taken against the defaulting states. The crisis was finally averted toward the end of the nineteenth session when the United States decided not to pursue the question of sanctions.

The attempts which have been undertaken, primarily by specialists in international law, to define an international organization emphasize a variety of features which distinguish that social phenomenon. Some of the characteristics that have been mentioned include creation on the basis of an international agreement, the existence of a distinct personality of the organization separate from its individual members, the exhibition of a relative autonomy of will by the organs of the agency as compared with the will of the total of its members, etc. There is general agreement that an essential feature of an international organization is the possession of permanent organs; otherwise, there has so far been no consensus on the necessity for an international organization to possess any specific feature. For example, it can be demonstrated that there are no bases for particularly stressing, as a supposedly indispensable feature of such an organization, its possessing a separate personality and an autonomy of will, as is done by certain French authors.

Resuming its 22nd session at United Nations Headquarters on April 24, 1968, the General Assembly held its 1643rd–1672nd plenary meetings drought June 12, 1968. The session was formally closed at the 1673rd plenary meeting, held on September 23, 1968. The Assembly agreed without objection to a procedure outlined by its President, Cornelia Manes cu (Rumania), under which the First (Political and Security) Committee would discuss the report submitted by the Conference of the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament (ENDC) concerning its negotiations on a nonproliferation treaty while the plenary considered the question of South West Africa. Also on the agenda was the situation in the Middle East.

It is clear that advances in science and technology, particularly technology, have wrought major changes in society. The effects of these advances have been felt directly through the development of major new artifacts such as the automobile, the telephone, and nuclear weapons. Major social effects, often of greater importance, have also resulted from the second-order consequences of this new technology: urbanization, mass culture, pollution, industrialization, etc.

A new generation of advanced conventional arms developed during the late 1960s and 1970s, ranging from antitank guided missiles to scatterable land mines, promises to buttress the defensive capabilities of their possessors. Selective transfer of such new weapons in certain cases may be a useful nonproliferation tactic. However, the fungibility of selective arms transfers with other security related nonproliferation measures, and particularly with security guarantees, appears limited. Moreover, not only would that tactic have little impact on other compelling proliferation incentives, but it would incur important risks. Nonetheless, those risks may be less than the risks and costs of nuclear proliferation in conflict-prone regions. And they may be minimized by suitable policies. The dilemma of having to choose between so using arms transfers for nonproliferation purposes and continued pursuit of global conventional arms sales restraint has been overdrawn. In contrast with recent efforts to restrain the spread of nuclear weapons, efforts to foster multilateral conventional arms restraint have proved unavailing. Various factors explain that pattern of success and failure, not least of all the different international norms in the respective areas.