The Historical Origins of UN System Budgeting

Author(s):  
Ronny Patz ◽  
Klaus H. Goetz

Chapter 3 introduces many of the topics of the book by tracing the evolution of UN system budgeting from the mid-nineteenth-century international unions, several of which are predecessor organizations of today’s UN specialized agencies, through the interwar League of Nations to the main geopolitical changes after World War II. This historical perspective demonstrates the continuity in some of the budgeting dynamics throughout more than a century. It shows how principal and agency complexity in the UN are based on early design decisions in the League of Nations. It highlights how voluntary funding of the League of Nation’s Health Organization looked similar to today’s financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, suggesting that principal complexity has always included actors beyond states. And the chapter explores how the complexity of the IO bureaucracy responsible for managing money and discord evolved from small, host-state supervised bureaucratic units to today’s major administrative operations.

Author(s):  
Leonard V. Smith

We have long known that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 “failed” in the sense that it did not prevent the outbreak of World War II. This book investigates not whether the conference succeeded or failed, but the historically specific international system it created. It explores the rules under which that system operated, and the kinds of states and empires that inhabited it. Deepening the dialogue between history and international relations theory makes it possible to think about sovereignty at the conference in new ways. Sovereignty in 1919 was about remaking “the world”—not just determining of answers demarcating the international system, but also the questions. Most histories of the Paris Peace Conference stop with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on June 28, 1919. This book considers all five treaties produced by the conference as well as the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey in 1923. It is organized not chronologically or geographically, but according to specific problems of sovereignty. A peace based on “justice” produced a criminalized Great Power in Germany, and a template problematically applied in the other treaties. The conference as sovereign sought to “unmix” lands and peoples in the defeated multinational empires by drawing boundaries and defining ethnicities. It sought less to oppose revolution than to instrumentalize it. The League of Nations, so often taken as the supreme symbol of the conference’s failure, is better considered as a continuation of the laboratory of sovereignty established in Paris.


Author(s):  
Deri Sheppard

In March 1908, the BASF at Ludwigshafen provided financial support to Fritz Haber in his attempt to synthesize ammonia from the elements. The process that now famously bears his name was demonstrated to BASF in July 1909. However, its engineer was Haber's private assistant, Robert Le Rossignol, a young British chemist from the Channel Islands with whom Haber made a generous financial arrangement regarding subsequent royalties. Le Rossignol left Haber in August 1909 as BASF began the industrialization of their process, taking a consultancy at the Osram works in Berlin. He was interned briefly during World War I before being released to resume his occupation. His position eventually led to His Majesty's Government formulating a national policy regarding released British internees in Germany. After the war Le Rossignol spent his professional life at the GEC laboratories in the UK, first making fundamental contributions to the development of high-power radio transmitting valves, then later developing smaller valves used as mobile power sources in the airborne radars of World War II. Through his share of Haber's royalties, Le Rossignol became wealthy. In retirement, he and his wife gave their money away to charitable causes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (01) ◽  
pp. 123-139
Author(s):  
Taufan Herdansyah Akbar ◽  
Agus Subagyo ◽  
Jusmalia Oktaviani

Realism is an approach and paradigm that is in international relations, Realism began to be debated during World War II (World War II) because of the failure of the League of Nations (LBB). LBB is the brainchild of idealists who are considered to have failed to prevent war and create peace. Realism existed even before the paradigm debate which was later called classical realism with one of its characters being Niccolo Machiavelly. Niccolo Maciavelly's style of realism emphasizes that human nature is egositically and creates an anarchic world. In this study the research team wanted to prove that what Niccolo Machiavelly delivered was not merely increasing military power merely to create peace, but negotiation and diplomacy methods were also instruments of the State in achieving its national interests in realism like Indonesia. The national interests of Indonesia are everything for Indonesian politicians and the existence and power of Indonesia is the goal of Indonesia's interests to avoid war. Therefore Indonesia must have played its role in the Asian-African Conference and the Non-Aligned Movement at that time as an instrument of achieving national interests in Realism. This research will use qualitative research methods with a historical approach. The results of this study provide answers that Realism is not merely militaristic but also a role as a rational actor.


2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-138
Author(s):  
William John Pratt

The wastage of Canadian manpower due to venereal disease (VD) during World War II was an ongoing problem for the Canadian Army. Military authorities took both medical and disciplinary measures in attempt to reduce the number of soldiers that were kept from regular duties while under treatment. The study of the techniques employed to control sexual behaviour and infection places the Canadian Army in a new historical perspective as a modern institution which sought to establish medical surveillance and disciplinary control over soldiers’ bodies. This study also explores Canadian soldiers’ sexual behaviour overseas, showing their engagement in a broken system of regulated prostitution, and with European women who were coping with war’s destabilization and strain by participating in the sex trade. Agents of the Canadian Army overseas extended their disciplinary and surveillance functions from soldiers to their sexual partners. VD rates were low when formations were in combat, but rose to alarming rates when they were out of the line, suggesting that individual agency and sexual choice trumped the efforts of modern discipline.


Author(s):  
Jussi M. Hanhimäki

The International Peace Conference in 1899 established the Permanent Court of Arbitration as the first medium for international disputes, but it was the League of Nations, established in 1919 after World War I, which formed the framework of the system of international organizations seen today. The United Nations was created to manage the world's transformation in the aftermath of World War II. ‘The best hope of mankind? A brief history of the UN’ shows how the UN has grown from the 51 nations that signed the UN Charter in 1945 to 193 nations in 2015. The UN's first seven decades have seen many challenges with a mixture of success and failure.


2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (6) ◽  
pp. 1740-1768 ◽  
Author(s):  
MAGGIE CLINTON

AbstractFascist Italy's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia and the League of Nations’ handling of the crisis resonated strongly in Nationalist China, where it recalled the League's failure to thwart Japan's claims to Manchuria in 1931. As these two crises unfolded, the League became a nexus around which Nationalist Party debates about the position of colonized and semi-colonized countries within the extant world order crystallized. Party adherents reflected on China's and Ethiopia's positions as independent nation states with limited territorial integrity or juridical autonomy, and assessed this situation in light of their respective League memberships. While party liberals continued to view the League as a flawed but worthwhile experiment in global governance, newly-emerged fascist activists within the party denounced it as an instrument for curtailing the sovereignty of weak nations. From these conflicting views of the League, it can be discerned how Nationalist disunity was partially grounded in disagreements over the nature and ideal structure of the global order, and how Chinese fascists agitated to escape from modern structures of imperialist domination while reiterating the latter's racial and civilizational exclusions.


Neurosurgery ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 63 (5) ◽  
pp. 989-1000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hartmut Collmann ◽  
Hans-Ekkehart Vitzthum

1975 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 238-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh M. Neuburger ◽  
Houston H. Stokes

Wherever there are banks there are arguments about the macro-economic effects of banking policy. One of the best theoretical formulations of the effect of German banking on German development appears in Alexander Gerschenkron's “Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective” and “Reflections on the Concept of Prerequisites of Modern Industrialization.” This problem is given an empirical treatment in “German Banks and German Growth, 1883–1913: An Empirical View,” by Hugh Neuburger and Houston H. Stokes. Our intention in this paper is to test further our previous findings and to contrast our findings for Germany with those for post-World War II Japan. While the two situations are not entirely comparable they are similar enough to make such a comparison worthwhile.


Author(s):  
Pāvels Jurs ◽  
Inta Kulberga

Independence and freedom of Latvia State since the proclamation of the Republic of Latvia in 1918 was interrupted by World War II. During that time the education system of Latvia has also changed, including fundamental principles of educational institution management. The goal of the article is to analyse changes in educational institution management in historical perspective, comparing legal regulations in two periods of Latvia: in the democratic (1919) and authoritarian (1934) regime of the First Free State of the Latvia Republic. In the article the theoretical research methods (method of comparison and critical thinking) and empirical research methods (data collection method and document analysis) have been applied. Comparing the periods of the democratic (from 1919 to 1934) and authoritarian regime (from 1934 to 1940) of the First Free State of the Latvia Republic in the context of educational institution management, it should be mentioned that the legislation of the authoritarian regime envisaged much broader responsibility, duties and rights for the head of the school. Moreover, the head of the school could also have deputies depending on the size of the school. The structure of educational institution management in the authoritarian regime in comparison with the democratic regime was more particular, with a more detailed description of responsibilities, with an increased parents’ involvement in the school life organization.


2021 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 346-350
Author(s):  
Daniel P. Gross ◽  
Bhaven N. Sampat

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers, researchers, and journalists have made comparisons to World War II. In 1940, a group of top US science administrators organized a major coordinated research effort to support the Allied war effort, including significant investments in medical research that yielded innovations like mass-produced penicillin, antimalarials, and a flu vaccine. We draw on this episode to discuss the economics of crisis innovation. Since the objectives of crisis R&D are different than ordinary R&D, we argue that appropriate R&D policy in a crisis requires going beyond the standard Nelson-Arrow framework for research policy.


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