Abstract
This chapter will argue that the campaign over UNESCO in recent years has been about control of UNESCO and of the United Nations system more broadly.1 It suggests that the reasons given for the Western attack on UNESCO, led by the United States, were secondary. The chapter will also emphasise the connection between the international politics about UNESCO and the domestic politics of leading critics among UNESCO’s members.
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Notes
Pierre de Senarclens, ‘Fiasco at UNESCO: The Smashed Mirror of Past Illusions’, Society, vol. 23 (Semptember/October 1985), pp. 6–7.
On this theme, see Byron Dexter, ‘UNESCO Faces Two Worlds’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 25, no. 3 (April 1947), pp. 388–407.
Lawrence S. Finkelstein, ‘Conference Document: Is the Past Prologue’, in A Critical Assessment of US Participation in UNESCO (Special Meeting of the US National Commission for UNESCO, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C., 1–3 June 1982). Department of State Publication 9297 (October 1982), p. 28. Roger A. Coate agrees, in ‘Changing Patterns of Conflict: the US and UNESCO.’ Paper prepared for the United States Participation in International Organisation Conference, Wingspread, Racine, Wisconsin, 28–30 January 1987, pp. 10–11.
See also James P. Sewell, UNESCO and World Politics: Engaging in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 148–50; and Byron Dexter, ‘Defining UNESCO’s Role.’ Letter to the editor, New York Times, 20 August 1950.
Leon Gordenker, ‘The United States and Economic and Social Change’, in Leon Gordenker (ed.), The United States in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 152.
For a fuller application to the UN system of David Easton’s classic definition of politics as the authoritative allocation of values, see Lawrence S. Finkelstein (ed.), Politics in the United Nations System (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1988), especially this author’s “The Politics of Value Allocation in the UN System’, (ch. 1) and ‘Comparing Politics in the UN System’, (ch. 15).
For a critical description of these events, see Richard Hoggart, An Idea and Its Servants: UNESCO From Within (London: Chatto and Windus, 1978), pp. 75–81.
See also Daniel G. Parian, Documentary Study of the Politicization of UNESCO (Boston: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1975), pp. 11–101, for a more detailed documen
UNESCO General Conference Resolution 4.113. For analyses of this history, see, from a very extensive body of literature: J. Herbert Altschull, ‘UNESCO: A New International Information Order’, in Altschull, (ed.), Agenda of Power; The Role of the News Media in Human Affairs (New York: Longman, 1984), pp. 207–51
Rosemary Righter, Whose News? Politics, the Press and the Third World (London: Burnett Books, 1978)
Kaarle Nordenstreng, The Mass Media Declaration of UNESCO (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1984)
Clare Wells, The UN, UNESCO, and the Politics of Knowledge (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987).
UNESCO, Many Voices One World: Towards a New More Just and More Efficient World Information and Communication Order (Paris: UNESCO, 1980).
Department of State, US/UNESCO Policy Review, 27 February 1987 (mimeo).
See UNESCO, Proceedings of the 6th General Conference, 1951, p. 179.
There was disagreement about how great the increase over the previous budget was. UNESCO estimated it at 3.6 to 4.3 per cent. Ibid., p. 71. A critic of the US position has pointed out that that compares with an increase in the US federal budget the same year of 10.8 per cent. See Hans N. Weiler, ‘Withdrawing from UNESCO: A Decision in Search of an Argument’, Comparative Education Review, vol. 31, no. 1 (1986), p. 4, n. 7.
Letter from the Secretary of State, Geoffrey Howe, to Director-General Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow, 5 December 1984. See also, British Information Services, New York, UNESCO: United Kingdom Will Cease To Be A Member (Policy Statements 43/85), 6 December 1985.
It went unnoticed that this pattern resulted in part from budget limitations imposed on UNESCO over the years and, particularly in the case of the United States, a policy reluctance to fund technical assistance programmes through the regular budgets of the UN specialised agencies, including UNESCO. On this subject in general, see David A. Kay, Technical Assistance Through the Regular Budgets of the United Nations Specialized Agencies: An Analysis of the Issues (Washington, DC: American Society of International Law, 1978). See also Director-General M’Bow’s explanation of this distribution of resources in his letter of 12 July 1984 to Congressmen Jim Leach and Mike Lowry in ‘Recent Developments in UNESCO and Their Implications for US Policy’, Hearings, note 10, pp. 34–5; and What Are the Issues Concerning the Decision of the United Nations to Withdraw from UNESCO? An Advisory from the United States National Commission for UNESCO, 1984, pp. 20–1.
GC Records, 1st Sess., Paris, 1946, p. 64. The chief protagonist of this idea was William Benton, Chair of the US Delegation to the Conference and Assistant Secretary of State at the time. For more on Benton’s role as advocate of mass communication in UNESCO, see Sidney Hyman, The Lives of William Benton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 336–7, 366.
The point has been made by Thomas G. Weiss, Multilateral Development diplomacy in UNCTAD: The Lessons of Group Diplomacy (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1986), p. 27.
Director-General M’Bow favoured reliance on consensus in theory as well as in UNESCO practice. See Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow, ‘Consensus in International Organisation.’ Address to the International Diplomatic Academy, Paris, 21 March 1978 (DG/78/01).
For an exposition of this point, see the author’s ‘The Politics of Value Allocation in the UN System,’ (ch. 1), in Finkelstein (ed.), Politics of the UN System note 6. On consensus in the UN General Assembly, see M.J. Peterson, The General Assembly in World Politics (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1986), pp.80-ff.
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© 1989 David P. Forsythe
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Finkelstein, L.S. (1989). The Struggle to Control UNESCO. In: Forsythe, D.P. (eds) The United Nations in the World Political Economy. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20196-9_10
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