Some Structural Dilemmas of World Organization PDF
Some Structural Dilemmas of World Organization PDF
Some Structural Dilemmas of World Organization PDF
weight of numbers, the coherence of the whole and the vitality of the
parts, and interdependence and independence or, stating the issue more
sharply, world order and national sovereignty, now confront us as di-
lemmas at every juncture in the further development of world organiza-
tion.
All three dilemmas are adumbrated, though not fully discussed, in the
Report to the Presidenton the Results of the San FranciscoConference
by the Secretary of State' in terms which reflect the thinking of the time.
The Report stressed that the authors of the Charter intended to contrast
the authority of the Security Council, based on the continued unity of
the great powers, with the role of the General Assembly as "the town
meeting of the world." The basic concept was much simpler than what
proved necessary in actual practice. "In the framework of the United
Nations", the Report reads, "the provisions for the General Assembly
give recognition to the principle of the sovereign equality of all nations.
The provisions for the Security Council recognize the special responsi-
bilities of the great powers for maintaining the peace and the fact that
the maintenance of their unity is the crucial political problem of our
time." 2 None of this has ceased to be true, but it has proved to be much
less than the whole truth. Yet the point of departure stated in the Secre-
tary of State's letter to the President summarizing the Report has lost
none of its cogency. "Men and women who have lived through war are
not ashamed, as other generations sometimes are, to declare the depth
and the idealism of their attachment to the cause of peace. But neither
are they ashamed to recognize the realities of force and power which
3
war has forced them to see and to endure."9
The Report stated with particular clarity the rationale of the decen-
tralized structure of the economic and social functions of the United
Nations system:
The battle of peace has to be fought on two fronts. The first is the
security front where victory spells freedom from fear. The second is
the economic and social front where victory means freedom from
want. Only victory on both fronts can assure the world of an enduring
peace.
In the next twenty-five years the development of the economic and
social foundations of peace will be of paramount importance. If the
United Nations cooperate effectively toward an expanding world econ-
omy, better living conditions for all men and women, and closer under-
'Dep't State Publication No. 2349, Conf. Ser. No. 71 (June 26, 1945).
11d. at 67.
3
id. at 12.
19731 STRUCTURAL DILEMMAS
standing among peoples, they will have gone far toward eliminating in
advance the causes of another world war a generation hence. If they
fail, there will be instead widespread depressions and economic war-
fare which would fatally undermine the world organization. No provi-
sions that can be written into the Charter will enable the Security
Council to make the world secure from war if men and women have
no security in their homes and in their jobs.4
To foster cooperation in all these fields is a vast undertaking ...
'ld. at 109.
5
1d. at 111.
'Id. at 119-120.
GA. J. INT'L & COMP. L. [Vol. 3: 1
The Report discussed the third dilemma, perhaps the most fundamen-
tal of the three, in a more tangential manner:
In the present state, at least, of world opinion, an international legisla-
tive body is out of the question, since the several nations are not willing
to sacrifice their sovereignty to the extent of permitting an interna-
tional legislature to enact laws binding upon them or on their peoples.
At the same time, an assembly with the power to discuss but without
the power to reach conclusions, is not an effective forum for the discus-
sion of real issues or for the focusing of opinion.7
The General Assembly was, therefore, given functions which could be
broadly described as being "to deliberate, to administer, to elect, to
approve budgets and to initiateamendments."' Of the budgeting powers
the Report said:
The allocation to the General Assembly of the task of apportioning the
expenses and approving the budgets of the Organization is an extension
to the international field of the fundamental principle of democratic
government that the purse strings should be held by the most widely
representative organ. 9
In this broad principle lay secreted one of the most sensitive of current
problems.* The broader question of where international action stops and
national freedom of action begins, with its converse, was not, and at the
time could not have been, brought into any clear focus.
The fundamental nature of these dilemmas has been abundantly con-
firmed by the experience of the intervening years; they remain the fun-
damental structural dilemmas of world organization.
The counterpoise of the Security Council and the General Assembly,
the comparable logic of weighted voting in the International Monetary
7
1d. at 54.
11d. at 55; See U.N. CHARTER art. 10-17.
1d. at 57.
*[Editor's Note] As an example of the sensitive nature of this topic, consider the fact that ten
percent of the world's population and five percent of the contributors to the United Nations can
now cast two-thirds of the votes in the General Assembly. This makes it possible for the large
majority of small states to override the wishes of the largest contributors. However, it is significant
to note, that on December 13, 1972, the General Assembly voted 81 to 27 with 22 abstentions to
reduce the United States contribution to the United Nations regular budget from 31.5 percent to
25 percent. This in effect reduces the ceiling on an individual nation's contributions to 25 percent,
on the principle that the United Nations should not be overly dependent on any one nation. This
action was taken despite a strong opposition led by the Soviet Union. The General Assembly's
approval of the reduction avoided a possible internal conflict within the United States since the
Congress has expressed a strong sentiment in favor of reducing United States contributions. See
N.Y. Times, Dec. 14, 1972, at I, col. 1.
1973] STRUCTURAL DILEMMAS
Fund and the World Bank and its affiliates, and the place of the States
of Chief Industrial Importance in the Governing Body of the Interna-
tional Labor Office, have not provided an accepted solution for the
problem of securing a reasonable balance between weight of influence
and responsibility and weight of numbers. The problem has indeed be-
come increasingly acute with the years, and greatly accentuated by the
weight of an ever-increasing organization membership though this has
not been the only important factor in the situation.
The balance was impaired almost from the outset by the failure to
maintain the unity of the great powers and by the frequent use of vetoes
to paralyze the Security Council. In the Uniting for Peace Resolution
of 1950,11 the General Assembly assumed the power to make recommen-
dations whenever the Security Council fails to come to a decision. This
decisive step was almost inevitable in a process of shifting the center of
gravity of the United Nations from the Security Council to the General
Assembly. As the scope of United Nations action expanded, the budget-
ary authority of the General Assembly became increasingly important.
In the same manner in which the spending power has been a decisive
increment to national authority in federal systems of government, so the
power to finance new international activities has given the General As-
sembly a central role. The General Assembly which now exercises these
powers is a very different body from the General Assembly of 1946. The
membership of the United Nations has more than doubled and reflects
a wholly changed political structure of the world. One state, one vote,
was never more than a rough and ready alternative for the absence of
any more satisfactory formula. It has become an increasingly unsatis-
factory basis of representation as the degree of distortion of representa-
tive quality has grown. The composition of the General Assembly now
reflects a political structure of the world shaped by historical and geo-
graphical accident, artificial by any rational criterion, and wholly an-
achronistic. Where men have established a common form of govern-
ment on a continental or subcontinental scale they are underrepre-
sented. Where men have broken apart into states so small that these
cannot "stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the mod-
ern world" they are overrepresented. In both cases the representation
of men has been lost in the representation of states; respect for the
sovereignty of the state has excluded any consideration of the extent to
which the General Assembly as a whole fairly represents mankind. It
clearly does not. North America, north of the Rio Grande, with a
"G.A. Res. 377, 5 U.N. GAOR Supp. 20, at 10, U.N. Doc. A/1775 (1950).
6 GA. J. INT'L & COMP. L. [Vol. 3: 1
may call for reconsideration. While the function of the General Assem-
bly as the "town meeting of the world" neither can nor should be
abridged, the relationship of this function to the governmental processes
of international society taken as a whole may need thorough review.
The procedures of the General Assembly are its own creation and
remain its creature. The Charter empowers the General Assembly to
"adopt its own rules of procedure,"" and "establish such subsidiary
organs as it deems necessary for the performance of its functions. '"' The
only limitations on the General Assembly's procedural discretion em-
bodied in the Charter are the requirement that "the General Assembly
shall meet in regular annual sessions and in such special sessions as
occasion may require"' 3 and the provisions governing voting. 4 Every-
thing else is governed by rules and practice, which could be changed as
part of a plan for a more effective United Nations. It may be that
because of inertia, vested interests or weight of voting power no changes
will take place except as the outcome of a crisis. But since the potential
exists for a crisis which would jeopardize the entire future of the United
Nations system, it is well to give some thought to the nature of changes
in the procedure of the General Assembly which might help to avert or
resolve such a crisis.
First, there should be some reconsideration of the system whereby the
General Assembly operates through main committees composed of
equal representation from each delegation. This system is a legacy from
League of Nations days when, as the result of the unanimity principle,
it operated quite differently in practice, ensuring that every voice which
might veto a decision in the Assembly was heard in committee. Its
present effect, however, is to build into every successive stage of the
procedure the artificiality of the present distribution of voting power in
the General Assembly itself. It is highly unusual for large deliberative
bodies to do virtually all of their business in committees of the whole.
No major legislative body works in this way. One can conceive of a
compromise between the principle of one state, one vote and the various
alternatives for it which have been suggested. This compromise would
consist essentially of retaining the principle of one state, one vote at
plenary meetings of the General Assembly as required by the Charter,
SC. W. JENKS, THE COMMON LAW OF MANKIND 174 (1958). This presents a reproduction of
an address which the author delivered to the Grotius Society on October 26, 1951.
GA. J. INT'L & COMP. L. [Vol. 3: 1
"6Jenks, Unanimity, The Veto, Weighted Voting, Special and Simple Majorities and Consensus
as Modes of Decision in International Organisation, in CAMBRIDGE ESSAYS IN INTERNATIONAL
LAW 48, 63 (1965).
"See A. DICEY, INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE LAW OF THE CONSTITUTION (10th ed.
1959).
19731 STRUCTURAL DILEMMAS
evolving general policy, but as the life of the community becomes more
complex, and the machinery and procedures of government are in-
creasingly adapted to its changing needs, these arrangements seek es-
sentially a coordinated diffusion of responsibility. World organisation
is evolving in the same direction and manner. Twentieth-century world
affairs cannot be conducted by foreign offices and treasuries; they
embrace too broad a spectrum of human affairs and interests. To be
practically effective contemporary world organisation must interlock
at innumerable different points with national arrangements with a
continuing responsibility for policy and action; it must actively involve
in continuous international cooperation all the major departments of
government with substantive responsibility for the increasing range of
questions with important international aspects and leave them the free-
dom of action necessary to enable them to conduct their collective
business successfully and implement their decisions by action within
the scope of their recognised departmental responsibilities.
These are fundamentals of policy and political structure which out-
weigh the admitted inconveniences of the decentralised system.,'
The upshot is that we must continue to live with the second as with
the first of our three dilemmas and recognize that the only solution for
otherwise insoluble problems lies once more in a firm respect for certain
accepted conventions of responsibility.
The third dilemma is the institutional equivalent of the classical prob-
lem of the relationship of international and municipal law. Much of the
discussion of it revolves around the purport, scope, and effect of the
principle set forth in the Charter that the United Nations shall not
"intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdic-
tion of any state."" ° While controversy concerning this principle contin-
ues to weigh upon political psychology, the real issues lie elsewhere. The
Permanent Court of International Justice declared as long ago as 1923
that "the question whether a certain matter is or is not solely within the
jurisdiction of a State is an essentially relative question" and "depends
upon the development of international relations."2 1 In the United Na-
tions period the development of international relations has brought vir-
tually everything within the scope of international discussion and there
is now little inhibition on the discussion of anything in the United Na-
tions. As irritating, unfair, irresponsible, and far from impartial as
discussion may sometimes be, there is a balance of advantage in the full
22
See, e.g., Zimmern, et al., The InternationalAspect of the Indian Constitution, in I INDIA
ANALYZED 125-184 (1933).
'United Nations Participation Act of 1945, 22 U.S.C. § 287 (1964).
19731 STRUCTURAL DILEMMAS
of the matter is that only the executive can act for the state internation-
ally and participate in international decisions assessing contributions on
member states. Thus, the international representative body that assesses
contributions upon member states is, in the eyes of national representa-
tive bodies, composed of appointees from a governmental branch that
possesses no taxing power. The answer in law is, of course, simple and
conclusive. The Charter of the United Nations and constitutions of the
other international organizations have been fully accepted by, and
thereby become legal obligations of member states, each acting by its
appropriate constitutional procedure. These obligations bind the state
and all its organs, including the legislature in its capacity as the appro-
priating authority. In law there is nothing more to be said. There re-
mains the political problem.
There is no neat solution for this complex of problems. They involve
a major structural dilemma: that of the difficulty of reconciling the
effectiveness of the world system with the continued freedom of the
participating nations. In respect of this, as of our first and second dilem-
mas, the only solution in sight for otherwise insoluble problems lies in
a firm respect for certain accepted conventions of responsibility.
This may well appear a disappointing conclusion to an apparently
promising line of inquiry. The fundamental structural dilemmas which
the Charter was an attempt to resolve remain fundamental dilemmas
still far from resolution. Is this a conclusion to be dismissed as disap-
pointing or does it suggest that the Charter was well conceived and gives
us as good an instrument as we can hope to have to shape future policy
wisely? Does not the answer to most of our problems lie in a much
higher sense of responsibility in international and national bodies alike?
There is neither justification nor cure for irresponsibility in international
or national bodies. The escalation of irresponsibility is one of the gravest
dangers in the contemporary outlook for world organization. Irrespon-
sibility at either the national or the international level tends to prompt
and aggravate further irresponsibility at the other. There is no solution
for any of our structural dilemmas except in a broader sanity, a calmer
deliberateness, a more consistent loyalty to principle, a cooler courage.
Let that be the tone and temper of our common resolve to grapple
firmly with our otherwise insoluble problems. We live in a world with a
new scale of things, a new system of things, and a new complexity of
things; we must match these with a new and much higher standard of
responsibility.