Suchergebnisse

The African food crisis of 1983-85 galvanized political commitment both among African governments and in industrialized states to alleviate the chronic problem of hunger in Africa. One result is the 13th General Assembly Special Session on the economic crisis of Africa in May-June, 1986. This step, following considerable preparation, paralleled steps by African states to allocate greater resources to agriculture and food production and by the World Bank and other donors to help increase their assistance targeted toward the relief of hunger and the establishment of food security. After years of lip service about priorities to agriculture or the pursuit of agriculture development through investments that were biased toward both large-scale and production-oriented projects, African governments, in preparing for the 1986 Special Session of the UN that focused on Africa's economic crisis, exhibited genuine shifts in their policies toward agriculture.

Increased global interdependence has had an important effect upon the work of bureaucracies of national governments. Increasingly, they have had to coordinate domestically oriented programs to take account of international activities & reciprocal effects. Officials responsible for food & energy policy in the US have developed extensive networks to provide information & allow for policy coordination across national boundaries. The shifts in behavior & attitudes of these officials suggest that the task of internationally managing the production & flow of important goods & services may lie less with formal international institutions & more with networks of officials located among the domestic bureaucracies of a number of national governments. 1 Table. AA.

Many agencies of the United States Government with nominally "domestic" mandates play important roles in international affairs, and collaborate extensively with other governments and international organizations in the performance of their tasks. In some areas, these agencies rather than intergovernmental organizations play key management roles. Data gathered from a variety of sources indicate the extensiveness of this involvement, and suggest that it continues to expand, although not in linear fashion. Certain trends in governmental reorganization, such as those in the Agriculture Department, suggest similar patterns to those observed in business firms as they become more heavily involved abroad. More attention needs to be paid to international networks involving "domestic" governmental bureaucracies and governmental agencies traditionally oriented toward international affairs. From a conceptual point of view, we should think of "international organization" as including not only formally intergovernmental organizations, but all officials who participate significantly in these networks.

Although the literature on political development has been remarkably insightful, hopes for a science of "nation-building" have not been realized. While numerous works have described the effects of traditional patterns, ethnic and linguistic cleavages, and rapid mobilization, and have investigated factors such as culture, bureaucracy, ideology, and parties, we have learned very little about how to alter favorably the political conditions these have fostered. Political scientists, more often than not, have documented obstacles to, and failures in, political change desired by leaders in new states, rather than explored strategies whereby such change might be realized.