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Richard Falk's Future World: A Critique of WOMP—USA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Extract

Richard Falk's Study of Future Worlds is the most comprehensive world order scheme to appear since the Clark-Sohn plan of the late 1950's. In fact, in terms of scope, function, plan and organization, Falk's 506-page work is probably the most comprehensive proposal in the history of world order literature.

A Study of Future Worlds is an outgrowth of the World Order Models Project (WOMP) that was created by Saul Mendlovitz in 1966. Under Mendlovitz's leadership, a series of national teams have produced several volumes, each offering a complete alternative world order model for criticism, comment and, hopefully, support as a serious political proposal. Falk's book is the American contribution to this series and is often referred to as WOMP-USA in the literature of the World Order Models Project.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1980

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References

1 Falk, Richard, A Study of Future Worlds (New York, 1975) (hereafter citations to Falk are in parentheses with pages only)Google Scholar.

2 Clark, Grenville and Sohn, Louis B., World Peace Through World Law (Cambridge, 1967)Google Scholar.

3 The most concise and comprehensive survey of past proposals to transform the Westphalian system is, of course, F. H. Hinsley's Power and the Pursuit of Peace.

4 An overview of these volumes may be found in Mendlovitz, Saul, On the Creation of a Just World Order (New York, 1975)Google Scholar. See also Falk, Study of Future Worlds; Kothari, Rajni, Footsteps into the Future (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; Lagos, Gustavo and Godoy, Horacio H., Revolution of Being (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; and Mazuri, Ali A., A World Federation of Cultures (New York, 1976)Google Scholar.

5 For a detailed discussion of this transition process, see Falk, Study of Future Worlds, chap. 5 (“The Transition Process”).

6 Mendlovitz, , Creation of a Just World Order, pp. 221–22Google Scholar.

7 Leontief, Wassily et al. , The Future of the World Economy (New York, 1977), p. 11 (italics added)Google Scholar.

8 Falk spells out these and other concrete proposals to achieve his four basic values in chap. 1.

9 See, for example, Osgood, Charles, An Alternative to War or Surrender (Urbana, Illinois, 1962)Google Scholar.

10 Hinsley, , Power and Pursuit of Peace, p. 86Google Scholar.

11 Shaw, George Bernard, Everybody's Political What's What (London, 1944), p. 5Google Scholar.