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Who Cares About the General Assembly?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

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Extract

Members of most organizations are involved at different levels of intensity: Some participants pay more attention to the organization than others. Thus the question “Who cares about the organization?” can lead to significant findings about differential levels of involvement. These findings, in turn, suggest members’ policy priorities as well as illuminating Behavioral patterns within the organization.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1969

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References

1 Kotschnig, Walter M., “The United Nations as an Instrument of Economic and Social Development,” International Organization, Winter 1968 (Vol. 22, No. 1), p. 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Thus we make the assumption that number of diplomats sent is a relatively valid indicator of general diplomatic activity for states.

3 Data on diplomats sent is drawn from Alger, Chadwick F. and Brams, Steven J., “Patterns of Representation in National Capitals and Intergovernmental Organizations,” World Politics, 07 1967 (Vol. 19, No. 4)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. £646–663. Delegation sizes were calculated from annual listings of delegations to the United Nations General Assembly.

The same procedure as described above was carried out for no states in the eighteenth session only (1963–1964) with very similar results. Positive relationships significant at the .05 level of confidence or stronger were found for the African states, with and without their Arab component; negative relationships of similar strength appeared for the Asian states, also with and without their Arab component. Slight shifts among the Arab states rendered diat negative relationship insignificant at the .05 level; the addition of Mongolia, with a positive difference score, reduced the Communist chi-square score below this significance level.

Using scores tabulated on a five-year basis eliminates the effects of yearly fluctuations, which are sometimes large; thus, only the 1961–1966 data is presented here.

4 Incidentally, the general level of UN involvement for 57 states represented both from the second to the sixth and the sixteenth to the twentieth sessions has increased only gradually. In sessions two-six these states sent 4880 delegation members to the General Assembly; in sessions eighteen-22 the same states sent 5722 delegates, an increase of 17.25 percent. Five Communist states increased their representation 59.03 percent; fifteen African-Asian-Arab states 27.93 percent; nineteen Latin American states 28.34 percent; and thirteen European and “white Commonwealth” states 6.02 percent.

5 One hundred and four states were represented in the sixteenth session of the General Assembly. Indonesia was not represented continuously at the UN between the sixteenth and the twentieth sessions and is therefore excluded. The Byelorussian and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republics sent no diplomats to states and are therefore excluded. The Mongolian People's Republic, which was admitted to the UN during the sixteenth session, was omitted from the analysis due to a clerical error. Had Mongolia been included, it would have ranked 80th in number of diplomats sent, with a predicted delegation size of 8.6; it would have had a rank of 62.5 in number of UN delegates, with an actual delegation size of 11.0. Its inclusion would have changed the mean difference score of Communist states (Table III) from -2.95 to -2.36. With Mongdlia included the tendency of Communist states to have smaller delegations than predicted would not have been significant at the .05 level.

6 To some extent the low level of diplomatic representation of African states may contribute directly to higher difference scores. Tanganyika-Tanzania, for instance, which ranked last in numbers of diplomats, could not have had a negative score according to our procedure. Yet of the twenty states with the lower diplomatic representation scores, fourteen of the fifteen African states-but only two of the five non-African states-had positive scores. Thus there is an African versus non-African difference, significant at the .01 level, even among the smallest and least well-represented states.

7 Alger and Brams, p. 662.

8 Between the twentieth and the 22nd sessions there were only minor changes in delegation sizes by groups at the UN. The African and the Communist states showed slight increases while the other groups continued to send similar numbers of delegates.