National Attitudes and International Order: The National Studies on International Organization

In 1952 the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace initiated a series of national studies on international organization which were to be carried out by private groups and individuals in more than twenty countries. They were to provide an appraisal of the national experience of these countries in international organizations, especially the United Nations, ten years after the San Francisco conference. Fourteen volumes in the series have now been published. Three more will be published soon, including the two final volumes which summarize and discuss the conclusions of the individual studies. These two works have been written, respectively, by Maurice Bourquin, Professor of International Public Law at the University of Geneva, and by Robert MacIver, Lieber Professor Emeritus of Political Philosophy and Sociology at Columbia University. Other national studies have been completed and were available to Professors Bourquin and MacIver, but they have not been published yet; this reviewer has not seen them and will therefore limit his own remarks to the reports which have been or are soon to be published. I will examine first the questions which the national studies were supposed to answer and the way in which the various authors have tried to answer them; then I will present some general comments about the national attitudes toward international organization, as they emerge from the series; finally I will discuss the role of the UN in present world politics, as it can be interpreted on the basis of the national reports.