In the last decade a number of scholars concerned with patterns of change in the international system have turned to international law for indications of systemic trends. They have assumed that key rules and principles of international law reflect broad characteristics of the system while controversies over and changes in their content and status reflect the rate, extent, and direction of change in the system. For example, Stanley Hoffmann in an early contribution illustrated the transition from the stable international system of the nineteenth century to the revolutionary system of today by reference to changes in the principle of sovereignty. Morton A. Kaplan and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach discussed the same transition—in their terms from a balance of power to a loose bipolar system—by reference to the principle of nonintervention. Somewhat later Wolfgang Friedmann treated the principles of sovereignty and nonintervention together in light of systemic trends over the last century, while Richard A. Falk associated the substantive law relating to civil war with the changing position of the principle of nonintervention. More systematically, an article by William D. Coplin ranged over several critical areas of international law in describing the evolution of the traditional international system to its present form. Finally, in recent but cursory essays, Andrew M. Scott and Oran R. Young have broadened the context in which the principle of nonintervention is related to systemic trends.

Several writers have asked whether there exist among states varying predispositions to support the United Nations. Hayward Alker has answered this question with reference to the voting patterns of member nations in support of increased UN activities particularly in the peacekeeping field. More recently Robert Keohane has ranked states by using a support measure based on delegation size and has suggested that size of national delegations to the United Nations is indicative of support for the organization.

Students and practitioners of international politics have traditionally concentrated their attention on relationships between states. The state, regarded as an actor with purposes and power, is the basic unit of action; its main agents are the diplomat and soldier. The interplay of govern-mental policies yields the pattern of behavior that students of international politics attempt to understand and that practitioners attempt to adjust to or control. Since force, violence, and threats thereof are at the core of this interplay, the struggle for power, whether as end or necessary means, is the distinguishing mark of politics among nations. Most political scientists and many diplomats seem to accept this view of reality, and a state-centric view of world affairs prevails.

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.

It has been suggested that the United Nations may perform any of three general functions in its field operations: peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peaceservicing. The first two functions are more widely recognized than the third, and it is to the third that this article is directed with specific application to the Middle East. Peacekeeping, the termination or containment of violence, has been extensively discussed; in the Middle East such agencies as the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), and the Mixed Armistice Commissions are regarded as peacekeeping units of the parent organization. Increasingly a separate functional category for analysis termed peacemaking has been employed referring to efforts to remove or mollify the substantive issues causing violence. In the Middle East missions such as the Conciliation Commission for Palestine (CCP), its special representatives, and the representatives of the secretary-general such as Gunnar Jarring are generally labeled peacemakers rather than peacekeepers.

In many ways the study of international integration is in what Thomas Kuhn has called the pre-paradigm stage of the development of science. This stage is characterized by disagreement on the entities to be studied and the definitions, concepts, and indicators to be employed. Controversy is widespread even on the simplest of issues and, what is more discouraging, this controversy does not take place in a theoretical-methodological context which facilitates its resolution. There is a general lack of common standards by which to evaluate knowledge, decision-rules to interpret evidence, and criteria to measure progress. Thus, what constitutes advance for one school may mean retreat for another, and efforts to exchange views and harmonize aims frequently only serve to further define existing cleavages. Given this disagreement on broad philosophical issues it should not be surprising that research efforts and presentations of “evidence” have had little compelling impact in altering theoretical convictions. It is also no accident that the two most promising efforts to date are not presentations of data but are attempts to fashion a generally acceptable framework within which to evaluate evidence. Leon Lindberg has urged the adoption of a systems perspective which would harmonize a variety of research efforts and would, as well, make findings roughly comparable. Joseph Nye has suggested that we must “disaggregate” the concept of integration before we can meaningfully answer the important questions facing us. I have already indicated how complementary Lindberg's and Nye's suggestions are, and I feel that implementation of their suggestions would aid in making research findings touch base with one another and thus impart to evidence its proper multiplying effect.

In the conclusions of his article on the implications of science and technology for international institutions Eugene B. Skolnikoff advances three provocative propositions: 1) Existing international institutions and governmental attitudes are inadequate to meet the requirements imposed by foreseeable technological developments. 2) These requirements may be better met by creating new international institutions rather than by adding to the functions of those already in existence, especially the United Nations. 3) States with advanced technological development may have to reserve to themselves substantial if not exclusive power in international institutions concerned with technology. With these propositions as guidelines he issues a plea for creative planning for the 1970s and the even more distant future.

Our introduction has indicated why we are interested in transnational relations and has suggested what some of their effects on world politics may be. But it is surely difficult to evaluate our claims about transnational phenomena until one has some information about their history, scope, and significance. The essays in part I are designed to provide such information as well as to forward a variety of arguments about the causes and future of transnational relations.

Ever since Adolph Hitler's invasion of Poland, American and European interwar diplomacy has, with good reason, been judged a failure. Analyzing what went wrong, American historians have been quick to note their own nation's withdrawal from European affairs following the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Consequently, they have focused great attention on the Senate's rejection of United Statesmembership in the League of Nations, an act which has been seen as both cause and effect of the ensuing years of isolation. Indeed, nonmembership in the Geneva-based international organization came to have—for contemporaries and historians alike—deep symbolic and emotional overtones as well as diplomatic significance, appearing as the quintessence of isolationism itself.

Among the striking developments of modern history the growth of nationalism and the proliferation of nation-states must surely take high place. To numerous peoples in the post-Napoleonic era the possibility of modeling themselves on England and France seemed both desirable and feasible in a time when language groupings, the reach of political and economic control systems, and the capabilities of armaments appeared roughly to coincide. Together with patriotisms reinforced by popular education and increasing literacy these phenomena emphasized the defensibility of both the spiritual and the military frontiers. The result, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, was a series of wars of national unification which were followed in the twentieth century by great efforts to defend the nationality thus gained, socially, through such devices as immigration restriction, economically, by tariffs and various autarchic experiments, and militarily, in two great wars.

The opportunity to comment on Eugene B. Skolnikoff's wide-ranging article cannot easily be resisted. Few people can resist the temptation to make their own predictions about the future. But, quite beyond the general appeal of prediction, Skolnikoff suggests so many ideas and trends to the reader of his stimulating article that the aspiring commenter can hardly fail to find topics to engage him.

The nature of political relationships in the United Nations is of considerable interest to students of international organization and, to a lesser degree, to students of international politics. One important aspect of this question concerns the extent to which Western states as a group and the United States in particular dominate the organization. In their examination of this issue many authors contend that the United States prevailed over the United Nations General Assembly during the assembly's earliest years but progressively lost its control as the membership of the organization increased. Their findings, with some variations in detail, indicate that prior to the first significant membership increase in 1955 the United States, with an automatic two-thirds majority in the General Assembly, was dominant. In their view the United States position from 1955 through 1959 was considerably weakened but remained strong enough to ensure favorable decisions by the organization. With further increases in membership during and after 1960, however, they suggest that United States predominance came to an end. Now the newer, less developed, and nonaligned states determine the character and concerns of the UN.

The concept of “international politics” which is central to a large sector of political science, indeed its label, is increasingly being called into question. Those processes which can no longer be clearly assigned either to states or—as suggested by the model of “inter-national politics”—to the area between states are gaining in importance in international affairs. Some examples of these processes are the direct horizontal transactions between societal actors of different nation-states, transactions which bypass the institutions of government but strongly affect their margin of maneuver; the various forms of mutual penetration of formally separate entities; and the growing activities of a number of nonstate actors. Many theories which are connected with the model of international politics, above all that of sovereignty but also subordinate constructs such as the doctrine of separation of powers, should likewise be called into question.

Changes in the structure of the global economy have resulted in a withering of governmental control of certain activities presumed to be de jure within the domain of governments. The international monetary crises of the 1960s have demonstrated the emergence of financial markets that seem to operate beyond the jurisdiction of even the most advanced industrialized states of the West and outside their individual or collective control. The flourishing of multinational corporations has affected the national science and economic growth policies of highly developed and less developed states alike by restricting the freedom of those governments to establish social priorities. Tariff reductions carefully and arduously negotiated on a multilateral basis through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), through bilateral arrangements, or through emergent regional economic organizations have similarly increased the number of relatively nonmanipulable and unknown factors which must be accounted for in planning a wide spectrum of domestic and foreign economic policies—from regional development policy or anti-inflationary efforts on the domestic side to the international exchange rate of a state's currency.

Ten years ago Chadwick F. Alger identified a major problem in international organizations research. He decried the tendency to study international organizations primarily in terms of “their accomplishment of their explicit goals through the explicit mechanisms established for this purpose.” In most cases this meant concentration on the passage or defeat of resolutions in public meetings and on the extent to which the problems addressed in these resolutions have been dealt with efficaciously through United Nations bodies. Alger suggested that “this type of inquiry does not produce the only, nor necessarily the most important, impact that the organization has on relations among members.” Instead, we should devote more attention to an examination of how international organizations “affect the broader international system in which they operate even when problems are not resolved within their walls.”

These two statements—the first by a Canadian nationalist, the second by a former United States undersecretary of state—express a dominant theme of contemporary wrïtings on international relations. International society, we are told, is increasingly rent between its economic and its political organization. On the one hand, powerful economic and technical forces are creating a highly integrated transnational economy, blurring the traditional significance of national boundaries. On the other hand, the nationstate continues to command men's loyalties and to be the basic unit of political decision. As one writer has put the issue, “The conflict of our era is between ethnocentric nationalism and geocentric technology.”

Students of integration place their money on different beasts. Some working with the neo-functionalist model bet on the hare, while others using the cybernetic model elect the tortoise. The difference arises in part from their disparate perspectives of the racetrack: Neo-functionalists, with their assumption of a short-cycle process, view only a segment of the track and sight the rabbit sprinting; students of the cybernetic model, assuming a long-cycle process, insist that the whole race be watched and that the runners be clocked at different stages. As bets are still being taken, we might reconsider the basis on which odds are set.