The Continuing Dilemmas of UNESCO

The Continuing Dilemmas of UNESCOU.N.E.S.C.O. by Jean Thomas; UNESCO: Assessment and Promise by George N. Shuster;UNESCO Education in Action by Kent PillsburyReview by: Walter R. SharpThe Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Sep., 1969), pp. 402-412Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/173506 .

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The continuing dilemmas of UNESCO:

a review

Jean Thomas, U.N.E.S.C.O. Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1962.

George N. Shuster, UNESCO:Assessment and Promise New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1963.

Kent Pillsbury, UNESCO Education in Action Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1963.

WALTER R. SHARP Emeritus, Department of Political Science, Yale University

George N. Shuster concludes his assessment of UNESCO with this observation: "UNESCO would have to be created if it did not exist" (p. 114). But would it be created in the same manner and with the same broad range of substantive functions and goals? Probably no two commentators on this UN agency would completely agree as to the "how and what." No other organization within the UN family has been the object of more commentary concerning the intended meaning and scope of its constitutional raison d'e'tre. The fact is that UNESCO's charter was so formulated as to allow for almost any type of program activity provided it could command majority support from member governments and had at least a nominal relation to education, science, and culture (plus communications).

The language of the Preamble and Article I of the UNESCO Constitution, as has often been noted, lends itself to various interpreta- tions. Was UNESCO's role to be limited to the utilization of the channels of education,

science, and culture in furtherance of international peace and human freedom, or, in addition, were they to be developed as ends in themselves? In somewhat different terms, was UNESCO set up to advance "the common welfare of mankind" (to quote from the Preamble), or (to employ a phrase often used during the organization's earlier years) to "enrich the peace"? More broadly still, was its task to embrace "peace-building" and "peace-enrichment"?

This is by way of saying that, of all the specialized agencies, UNESCO is the least narrowly functional (i.e., technical) in the sense of functionalist doctrine. In the view of one recent commentator (Sathyamurthy, 1968, p. 616), it perhaps "lies outside the category of strictly functional organizations." However classified, UNESCO has been confronted with continuing dilemmas in its search for an appropriate and feasible role. According to Shuster (p. 82), it can probably best be defined as an international ministry of education; yet one does not have to read

CONFLICT RESOLUTION VOLUME XIII NUMBER 3



DISCUSSIONS AND REVIEWS 403

very far in Shuster's volume of reflections on UNESCO's evolution to realize that it has been both more and less than such a ministry. The impact of a rapidly changing world environment, added to the shift, since the late 1950s, of the voting balance of its mem- bership from the industrialized West to the modernizing nations of the Third World, has in fact moved the main focus of its widely dispersed program from research and infor- mational activities to the rendering of welfare services to developing countries. How does this latter category of functions relate, if at. all, to better "international understanding"? This question remains scarcely touched by empirical research-certainly not in the literature presently under review.

By and large, the existing literature on UNESCO, however informative, has been confined to unsystematic descriptive or in- terpretative accounts, most of them authored

by persons with background experience on the staff of UNESCO or closely associated with its operations as consultants or as

members of national delegations or of the

UNESCO Executive Board.1 International

organization specialists have tended to pass UNESCO by in selecting problem areas for

empirical treatment. In part, perhaps, this may be explained by the obvious difficulty of designing research on an organization as complex and unique as UNESCO, but it is also true that the critical literature on the UN specialized agencies in general remains

scanty. Except for Ernst Haas's magistral study of the International Labor Organiza- tion and James P. Sewell's analysis of the

World Bank's role in his Functionalism and World Politics, no theory-oriented assess-

1 Besides the Thomas and Shuster volumes presently under review, this literature includes Laves and Thomson (1957), Ascher (1951), Besterman (1951), Sathyamurthy (1964).

ment of any of this group of agencies has yet come to light.2

Jean Thomas's U.N.E.S.C.O. consists of a series of interesting personal reflections arising from the author's many years of service as head of its Department of Cultural Activities. As a French intellectual and, prior to joining UNESCO, a professor of philoso- phy, Thomas approaches UNESCO from a humanistic point of view. While his judg- ments are for the most part as objective as might be expected from one intimately in- volved in the life of the organization, there is a discernible tendency to magnify the importance of "cultural" projects in comparison with the other subject-matter areas with which UNESCO has been concerned. The first chapter of the book (following an introduction describing UNESCO's Paris headquarters) is entitled "The Doctrine of Cultural Cooperation" (my emphasis). Throughout the quite readable volume there runs the theme that UNESCO's main emphasis should lie in the field of the humani- ties, including closely related aspects of education and the social sciences. One is never quite sure, however, whether Thomas really understands the nature and scope of contemporary social science. Admiration for Julian Huxley's "scientific humanism" is ex- pressed, even though Thomas admits that it was a mistake for Huxley, as UNESCO's first Director-General, to envisage the promotion of "a single world culture" as UNESCO's long-range goal.

In somewhat sketchy fashion Thomas

2 J understand that Sewell, my former col- league at Yale, now has underway an empirical analysis of the program process in UNESCO. Haas's book-length research, Beyond the Nation State (1964), uses the ILO as a kind of case study for testing the validity of functionalist theory.



404 WALTER R. SHARP

traces the evolution of the UNESCO program, with particular attention to such major undertakings as "the mutual appreciation of the cultural values of the Orient and the Occident," the world literacy campaign, and the development of organized communication links between artists, scholars, musicians, museumists, philosophers, and librarians. A long chapter is devoted to "UNESCO and the Maintenance of Peace." Peace, remarks Thomas, "is UNESCO's supreme objective" (p. 191). When it comes to the implemen- tation of this objective, however, the author's observations tend to be vague and rather banal. For example: "Peace comes from the sheer fact of UNESCO's existence, the cooperation of its members and the spirit of the totality of its action." In other words: peace equals peace! In another place, the author states that the best hope for peace by way of UNESCO is the education of youth, but little is said as to how such education may most effectively be furthered through UNESCO instrumentalities. Thomas laments the fact that action in this domain is severely limited by the reservation of domestic jurisdiction provision in the UNESCO Constitution. The contribution of cultural exchanges to "peace in the minds of men" is assumed without any reference to recent studies by social scientists indicating how mixed is the impact of "study abroad" on national stereotypes.

Thon-as's commentary on the network of

policy initiators in, and advisers surrounding, the UNESCO bureaucracy, while interesting, adds little to what is generally known. Ob- serves Thomas: governments and national

commissions, both of which can play an

important part in policy-making, do not

necessarily work in harmony; nor are their

functions always clearly differentiated. The

utility of the national commissions varies

greatly depending on the type of political

regime to which they are attached, as well as on the adequacy of their secretariat services. True enough, as was forcefully pointed out by Laves and Thomson in their own study of a dozen years ago. A brief com- parable reference is made to member government permanent missions in Paris, yet there is no suggestion as to how their usefulness in the program process might be im- proved. How outside experts, whether ad hoc or as organized professional groups, affect program construction is left largely to the reader's imagination; some specific examples might have helped to illuminate their role.

Similarly, the struggle within UNESCO for budgetary resource allocations-a struggle involving the central secretariat and professional vested interests extending out- ward from the Paris hub to national capitals -is scarcely alluded to; this aspect of insti- tutional behavior presumably did not interest Thomas except insofar as it may have af- fected his own departmental budget. As for the Executive Board, Thomas concedes that it has had a thankless task, caught in between the Director-General and his aides on the one side and the General Conference on the other. Here again some comment might appropriately have been offered on the am- biguity of the Board's constitutional status.

Not surprisingly, it is the Secretariat that lies closest to Thomas's heart. "Without the Secretariat there would be no UNESCO.... This microcosm, reflecting a diversity of cul- tures, is the most stimulating milieu in the world."3 On its staff one finds a wider range of professional specialisms than in any other UN agency. This reviewer, in the light of his own two years' service in the UNESCO Secretariat, would agree, without necessarily being quite so ecstatic about the "stimu-

3 English translations of excerpts from Thomas's French text are the reviewer's.

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rating" atmosphere. Certain of the staffing problems confronted by UNESCO are noted by Thomas: recruitment difficulties arising from noncompetitive salaries and precarious career prospects, the impact of geographic distribution on personnel management, and the depressing effect of the McCarthy era on staff morale. Thomas rightly stresses the need of more in-service training, while regretting that the professional staff of UNESCO must work "anonymously." In this regard, he says, the Paris Secretariat is like "a monastic order." By comparison, the situation of UNESCO's field experts is less frus- trating since their names may be attached to their reports. (Thomas fails to make it clear, however, that few of these reports ever get beyond UNESCO Headquarters.)

Thomas's assessment of the position of UNESCO vis-d-vis the UN system is one of one of the most perceptive features of his book. In this connection, he points out that cultural activities constitute the only UNESCO program area that belongs ex- clusively within its competence. Its role in education must be shared with the ILO, FAO, WHO, and the UN itself, while its province relative to the natural sciences has been reduced by the claims of the FAO, WHO, WMO, and IAEA. As for the social sciences, alleges Thomas, UNESCO lost the initiative to the UN Department of Eco- nomic and Social Affairs, particularly to its Division for Public Administration. On this point he ignores the fact that much of this was due to the lack of sustained support for the social sciences by various UNESCO directors-general (especially Torres-Bodet).

Why is it that the social sciences were for

years, and indeed still are, the budgetary "step-child" of the organization? This intri-

cate story remains to be revealed.

By way of amplifying Thomas's treatment

of UNESCO as a part of the UN system,

this reviewer ventures to note that UNESCO has probably displayed the most cooperative attitude of all the members of the UN family with reference to interagency program coordination. Time and again UNESCO representatives at ECOSOC and in the Ad- ministrative Committee on Coordination (ACC) have taken the initiative in proposing the joint planning of field activities, as well as in loyally carrying out policy recommen- dations forwarded to UNESCO by ECOSOC or the General Assembly.

In Thomas's view, with which this writer concurs, UNESCO has been unable to escape the intrusion of political questions, as it was originally (and rather naively) thought it might. What is more political than the ramifications of public education into the realm of propaganda and ideology, let alone the potentially exploitive uses of the mass media? The polarization of world politics during the Cold War led to the division of the UNESCO General Conference into op- posing blocs, West and East. In more recent years the lines of division have become rather more North versus South, not only over matters of welfare aid but also' to some extent concerning attitudes toward de- colonization and race policy. In Thomas's time it was the Korean war that first cata- pulted political conflict into the UNESCO arena, when it went on record in support of UN and democratic values, though by di- vided vote. UNESCO's own action was then limited to modest educational aid for South Korea. According to Thomas, the UN has been the "moral conscience" of UNESCO, rather than the reverse (as it was often

argued during the early years should be the

situation). Looking back over his fifteen years in

UNESCO, Thomas sentimentally generalizes that it "is on the right route." But what is this route? Is there one clear route, or



406 WALTER R. SHARP

several? Where should its priorities lie? Should UNESCO's principal program target be national policy and opinion elites the world over? or nation-building in the modernizing societies? or all three? If the latter, are there feasible criteria for determining the allocation of UNESCO's limited resources in manpower and funds? Such basic queries as these appear to lie beyond the purview of M. Thomas's vision.

George N. Shuster's UNESCO: Assess- ment and Promise is one of a series of policy books sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations of New York. Its author, for many years president of Hunter College and more recently executive assistant to the president of Notre Dame University, writes from the vantage point of US foreign policy in relation to UNESCO. As educator and philoso- pher, Shuster draws upon his rich experience as a member of the American delegation to several UNESCO General Conferences and as member of the UNESCO Executive Board, together with active participation in the US National Commission for UNESCO.

Shuster starts from the premise that UNESCO has been badly understood and unfairly criticized in the United States. His announced object, consequently, was to com- pare the popular and often misguided view of what UNESCO is supposed to be with (1) what it actually is and (2) what it might become in the future. This is a large order which he is not entirely successful in cover- ing.

The founding of UNESCO, in Shuster's view, was primarily to make future "nazisms" impossible. He specifically recalls the special interest of the United States in the potential role of press and radio in creating an inter-

national climate of opinion for human rights and mutual understanding-an interest, in-

cidentally, that has become somewhat ob-

secured as the years have passed. The in- clusion of "science" in the UNESCO title, the author claims, was because of the belief that the language of science would be the most hopeful medium for communication with the Russians. Perhaps so, but a fuller explanation would have to include the strong pressures exerted by physical scientists in the West for direct recognition in the new agency. Pressures from the social scientists, as of the mid-1940s, were not only much less vocal but not nearly so widely organized. Thanks in considerable part to assistance from UNESCO, the international organization of the major social science disciplines has progressed markedly since 1950.

As to program content, Shuster's commentary overlaps much of the ground covered by Thomas. The former's attempt to classify program activities under five major headings, however, leaves something to be desired. These headings include 1) services to education, science, and cultural; 2) in- direct educational action; 3) the establish- ment of offices of liaison; 4) direct educational action; and 5) operational activities within the United Nations. Not only do these rubrics vary greatly in scope and stand on different levels, but they do not identify very clearly their meaning. Rubrics 1 and 5 clearly overlap. Like Thomas, Shuster admits that the total program has become un- duly fragmented and dispersed. Certain activities should, he feels, be sloughed off, yet there is no indication as to what sorts. The author praises UNESCO's contribution to the social and economic development of the Third World countries, although, curi-

ously, he raises (without answering) the

question whether multilateral arrangements are really more economical and more pro- ductive of results than bilateral channels, particularly for the United States. In this

context, UNESCO's growing concern with





national educational planning, aided by financial support from the World Bank, is singled out, and rightly, for special com- mendation.

Turning to what UNESCO is not, Shuster refers to various types of criticism of the organization which he thinks are in large measure unjustified. First among these criti- cisms he puts the Soviet contention of its subservience to Western values and interests. In his view, the West has been infinitely patient with the Russians in UNESCO. As if to strengthen this point, Shuster recalls the attack on UNESCO during the 1950s by American patrioteer and veteran groups, charging Communist domination of the organization. A further charge has been that UNESCO is poorly managed. To some extent Shuster thinks this is a valid criticism. UNESCO's subject-matter departments, he complains, are administered "in a variety of styles." (Where, among major international agencies, is this not the case-and why not?) At times, also, there has been too much delegation by the director-general to departmental units; at other times, not enough (again, this is surely not peculiar to UNESCO in the UN complex). From his own participation in, and frequent contact with, the Paris Secretariat over the years, this reviewer would be disposed to admit that the direction of the central bureaucracy has typically been authoritarian in character, allowing too little share in program decision- making to middle level officials.

The most significant difference between Thomas's and Shuster's treatment of UNESCO lies in the detailed attention given by the latter to the procedural aspects of United States participation in the organization. Here Shuster speaks of the uncoordi- nated and at times conflicting relations existing between the State Department and the US National Commission. As of the period

covered by his study, he thinks-and he was not alone in this-that the National Com- mission had had little positive influence on State Department policy affecting UNESCO. The Department, fearing adverse congres- sional repercussions, tended to pursue a decidedly cautious course. However, the creation, in 1962, of the post of Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cul- tural Affairs would, he hoped, provide a more effective channel from the UNESCO Relations Staff (as secretariat for the Com- mission) to State Department policy-makers.

Shuster offers a number of concrete sug- gestions for improving US machinery and procedure. He would combine the position of US member of the Executive Board with permanent delegate in Paris, with ambas- sadorial rank (as certain other countries have done). Secondly, he proposes a drastic re- duction in the size of the National Com- mission (too many members are inactive), and he would have a majority of commission members chosen from the governing boards of nongovernmental organizations, international as well as national, in UNESCO's subject-matter domain, in order to "strengthen the international impact of US endeavors" in UNESCO. This reviewer is skeptical whether this arrangement would tend to raise the quality, and especially the leadership potential, of commission members; the individuals thus selected would in many cases doubtless be the same as those that are chosen under the existing system.

To facilitate the recruitment of qualified Americans for UNESCO staff service, Shuster suggests the creation of an advisory committee of representatives of universities, foundations, and learned societies to promote agreements for releasing academic staff peo- ple for longer periods of time than is now the case (presumably up to three or four years) without loss of position or seniority



408 WALTER R. SHARP

rights. Some tendency in this direction has been noticeable during the years since Shuster wrote.4

Shuster ends his evaluation of UNESCO by asserting that it is becoming "the world's indispensable agency in the promotion of free trade in intellectual and cultural goods. [But] no one should be sanguine enough to suppose that peace will result from this ef- fort alone" (p. 110). However this may be, he believes that the United States would do well to develop a vigorous cultural relations policy divorced from power politics and propaganda, coordinating such policy with UNESCO's efforts as far as this may be operationally feasible. Finally, Shuster ventures to suggest that the United States government should undertake "a serious appraisal" of the potential usefulness of UNESCO. This idea provides a convenient theme for the concluding section of this review. What, in the light of over two decades of experience, is UNESCO's potential for service to the highly unstable and tortured world of our day? and what are the conditions for the realization of this potential?

Preliminary to any attempt to discover what UNESCO's potential may be, we need to know far more than we do now about its operational behavior and substantive impact to date. What it can, and cannot, effectively do can best be determined after a systematic examination in depth of its program evolution in terms of the significant inputs into the program process and how they mesh or collide with one another. How, for instance, are conflicts of interest, or ideology, accom-

modated, whether within the UNESCO

4 Since the publication of the Shuster volume the State Department has set up a special liaison office to aid in the location and recruitment of Americans for the staffs of international agencies.

bureaucracy or its general policy organs? How have patterns of support for new activities shifted over the years, as reflected by policy discussions and voting alignments in the General Conference? How have succes- sive directors-general maneuvered to mobi- lize supporting clientele for innovative pro- posals-of their own? What kind of a role in program content has been played by the network of NGOs associated with UNESCO? Has this role been merely peripheral, or have certain segments of "the private sector" (to use Thomas's phrase) provided an important program impetus-for, alternatively, blockage? How, if at all, have such initia- tives been linked with professional (discipli- nary) groups within the Secretariat? To what extent have UNESCO field officials tried to exert pressure on national ministries in aid- requesting countries to formulate project re- quests in terms of the recipient country's overall social and economic development needs? Is there still a tendency for UNESCO officialdom to bid for project applications primarily to ensure a favorable competi- tive showing for UNESCO in relation to sister agencies in the UNDP program? Is UNESCO undertaking a larger share of UNDP/Special Fund component projects than it has the capacity to handle properly? And so on.

Such questions as the foregoing do not pretend to add up to a general design for the analysis of program anatomy and construction. They are intended rather to suggest certain guidelines for empirical research. In order to minimize cultural bias, it would be wise to organize such research under the general supervision of a small multinational group of experienced social scientists, in close consultation with key UNESCO officials. A series of coordinated case studies would probably be the most feasible arrangement by which to conduct the inquiry. This kind

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of approach, in the reviewer's opinion, would be particularly appropriate for building a typology of the flows of program inputs up and down-and across-the hierarchy of the organization. This method might also be applied to the study of the origins of specific categories of projects. In this context, what effect has program planning, for periods of five to ten years ahead (as, for example, for the study of primary education in Latin America) had on the attraction of support, whether from the regular budget or from voluntary contributions?

Admittedly, this kind of research would not be easy to implement. A second type of analysis supplementing it would in some ways be even more difficult to carry out, though equally important. This would con- sist of a thorough and sophisticated evaluation of UNESCO program impact. During recent years the Secretariat and Executive Board have sponsored a considerable number of evaluations of selected field projects. These appraisals, however, have tended to focus on efficiency of performance (adminis- trative, financial, procedural) rather than on substantive effects on national, regional, or transnational attitudes and/or policies.

As an illustration of this kind of evaluation, which adds little to our objective knowl- edge of the worthwhileness of UNESCO projects in the domain of education, one might cite the brochure by Kent Pillsbury (listed at the beginning of this review), on UNESCO Education in Action. This brochure provides for the general reader a useful though somewhat superficial factual de-

scription of the Arab States Fundamental

Center in Egypt, the Education Institute at

Hamburg, Germany, and the Youth Institute

near Munich. The commentary tends to be

discursive and disconnected and one misses

any basis for a critical appraisal. Sweeping assertions are made that seem to have little

relation to the evidence, as, for instance: "UNESCO plays a profound role in the construction of the future." In what sense "profound"? Does not this generalization suggest that the author, a member of the education faculty of one of the California state col- leges, is indulging in fuzzy, wishful think- ing?

For the type of analysis of program impact adumbrated by the reviewer, it would be necessary to devise imaginative criteria by which to reveal significant correlations that may exist between degrees of impact and types of national regime in terms of political ideology, domestic power structure, stage of economic development (moderniza- tion), regional affiliation, and the like. Along a different line, is there any significant relation between the dimensions of projects in a given subject-matter category, as regards manpower, funds, and the length of time UNESCO supplies aid, and the residue of national action? The findings of a series of studies of this sort might help to clarify the question whether UNESCO does, or does not, dribble a disproportionate part of its resources away in the form of minuscule projects, with little or no visible follow-up.

Moving from aid activities as such to a broader kind of inquiry, yardsticks for esti- mating the involvement of educational, scientific, cultural, and communications elites in common transnational tasks might usefully be discovered. Is such involvement increas- ing, and if so, in what subject-matter areas?

How much is due to UNESCO? The growth of transnational dialogues between non-

governmental bureaucracies should serve as

one index (as suggested by Haas) of how UNESCO, as part of the UN complex of

organizations, may be promoting international integration. In terms of a related

concept, along the lines of Haas's formula-

tion, does UNESCO appear, or not, to be



410 WALTER R. SHARP

TABLE 1

PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION OF UNESCO RE-

SOURCES, BY BUDGET HEADINGS, 1967-1968

Regular Program UNDP

Education 33% 44% Natural science 21 50 Social sciences, human sciences, and culture 2.0 2

(of which the social sciences proper had only 31/2 percent)

Communication 22 4 International legislative

action 4

Totals 100% 100%

Source; These figures are derived from the Approved Programme and Budget for 1967-1968 (Doc. 14 C/5, Paris, January 1967).

gaining in "autonomy" and/or "authority"? This reviewer's guess would be that

the foregoing kind of research would show an extremely mixed picture. Among other things, he would expect to find that the subject-matter range of UNESCO program activities is still spreading out of all propor- tion to the increase in its overall budgetary resources. For the 1967-1968 biennium, these resources aggregated $118 million, of which 52 percent was earmarked for regular program and the rest for UNDP projects. The percentage distribution by budget headings was as shown in Table 1.

Keeping in mind that the total annual budget (i.e., half of the above) amounts only to about that of a major but second-level American university, one can realize how thinly UNESCO must be spread over a multiplicity of largely isolated undertakings. This is particularly true of activities in the

domain of the social sciences, including in-

ternational relations. The amount allocated

for the promotion of "peace research" in the

foregoing biennial budget was limited to the

pitifully small sum of $31,000, while for the

study of "the social and economic conse-

quences of disarmament" the allocation was even less (only $20,000). Subsidies in support of the development of international social science associations remain quite small in contrast with those in the natural science domain. Education for "international understanding" (through revised curricula and special teacher training) did somewhat better in the budgetary battle, yet support for ex- perimental studies in this crucial area repre- sents only a pittance, in comparison, for example, with the amount reserved for the world literacy program.

These few citations, which could be multiplied if space permitted, imply that the old dilemma of how to determine program priorities in terms of UNESCO's central values still persists. This problem is intensified by the rapidly changing world environment of which UNESCO is perforce a part. Given such a context, this reviewer would be inclined to argue that UNESCO would do well to minimize its action relative to the physical sciences and technology, not because their importance for the reshaping of man's environment is not obvious, but for the practical reason that at least four other specialized agencies are equipped to per- form operational functions involving science and technology. WHO, for example, would appear to be the logical agency for handling work in the life sciences; FAO, for the agri- cultural sciences; IAEA, for the atomic sciences; and the World Bank, for engineering and technology. As things now stand, com- plicated jurisdictional agreements not in- frequently have to be negotiated between UNESCO and one or more of these agencies in connection with borderline operations.

Similarly, as this reviewer sees it, many of the undertakings relating to the modalities of cultural cooperation should occupy such a low level on UNESCO's priority scale to- day that they might advantageously be down-





graded as project liquidations allow. What we are trying to say is that some way must be found to control the centrifugal forces that have for years dispersed UNESCO's program activities all along the waterfront. Given what will always be inadequate action resources, UNESCO's best hope for contrib- uting seriously to the alleviation of international tensions will be to concentrate its efforts on (1) the vitalization of man's education for peace and (2) a more realistic understanding of social behavior both in its intra- and trans-national aspects. This pro- posal, the reviewer realizes only too well, will be considered in some UNESCO circles as highly controversial, if not unrealistic. The object is to provoke discussion. Much of what UNESCO now tries to do in the cultural field might be done with less lost motion and less heavy bureaucratic baggage by nongovernmental bodies, such as foundations, universities, and art, museum and library groups. The program content diminu- tion here proposed should allow UNESCO to penetrate more deeply into the areas of education and social behavior than has hitherto been the situation.

But even if such program reorientation were effected-and it would require real courage and consummate skill on the part of UNESCO's leadership, not to mention singular restraint by interest groups in many countries-a tough dilemma would still remain. This relates to the question whether a meaningful UNESCO doctrine can be formulated for a world confronted by dis- ruption, tension, and conflict as much inside national communities (East as well as West, North as well as South) as between them or within regional groupings. Political instabil- ity in the contemporary world now seems to be endemic. In our technological societies the widening generation gap has precipitated student unrest all around the globe, some of

it revolutionary in nature. Is there any way, for instance, whereby UNESCO might reach through to youth so as to strengthen in youth movements nonviolent reformist as against destructive tendencies? To this question this reviewer has no easy answer, but one can envisage creative experimentation by UNESCO directed toward "conflict resolution" not so much along traditional diplomatic lines as along a wide-ranging sociological arc.

The problem of peace in this multidimen- sional sense presents a further cluster of issues that no one thought about when UNESCO was born. These are the issues produced by the overcrowding and plunder- ing by man of his own planet. There can be little hope of creating a favorable climate for peace and human welfare until real progress can be discerned toward controlling the population explosion and environmental pol- lution. To what extent, and how, should UNESCO be concerned with these highly crucial problems? Insofar as new patterns of education may be devised so as to facilitate national action, it would seem that UNESCO might well play a useful role. For example, it might, in cooperation with the United Nations, help to promote international agreements for the utilization of educational television via satellite, especially with respect to the newer countries. Already there are emerging signs of a UNESCO interest in this existing domain. There may be other areas where UNESCO might act as a catalytic agent in the never-ending task of building a new world order.

If UNESCO is to function along such lines, a broader and deeper consensus of support for it from the major states must clearly be sought. "A genuine world com- munity" may, in Richard Gardner's words, be "waiting to be born" (1964, p. 262). But its birth pains are likely to be long and hard. Can UNESCO usefully serve as one of the



412 WALTER R. SHARP

midwives? Pondering this awesome query should drive any UNESCO director-general to insomnia-beset with dilemmas both new and old.

REFERENCES

ASCHER, CHARLES S. Program-Making in UNESCO, 1946-1951. Chicago: Public Ad- ministration Service, 1951.

BESTEIRMAN, THEODORE. UNESCO: Peace in the Minds of Men. New York: Praeger, 1951.

GARDNER, RIcHARD. In Pursuit of World Order. New York, Praeger, 1964.

HAAS, ERNST B. Beyond the Nation State. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1964.

LAVES, WALTER H. C., and CHARLES A. THOM- SON. UNESCO: Purpose, Progress, Prospects. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957.

SATHYAMURTHY, T. V. The Politics of Inter- national Cooperation. Geneva: Droz, 1964.

. "Twenty Years of UNESCO, An In- terpretation," International Organization, 20, 4 (July 1968).




Documents

The Continuing Dilemmas of UNESCO