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In international as in domestic politics group ac tivity has become influential. Organizational and propaganda techniques have enabled these groups to claim an enlarged role in the decisions both of foreign offices and of intergovernmen tal organizations. Whether the form of activity which in the United States is synonomous with pressure groups is a universal phenomenon is a question awaiting systematic analysis. In the United States governmental structure, undisciplined political parties, the industrial and communications revolutions have combined to widen the opportunities open to citizens' groups to participate in the making of policy. Due to the necessity of compromise between the conflicting aims of such groups, the results of their activities in terms of foreign policies are rarely consistent. The external environment raises the armed serv ices, already practiced in lobbying, to a new height of influence in grand strategy. Participation by international nongovern mental organizations in making policy with wider scope and effect has been recognized in the United Nations and other postwar charters. In a nation-state system in which national ism builds up new states while the technology of security tends to undermine old ones, the modern system of pressure groups introduces an element of democratic control over policy, but with mixed effects on the welfare of peoples.

Contents: Pressure groups in government; The big three of pressure politics; The operation of pressure groups; Regulation of lobbying; Toward a group theory of politics; American and foreign pressure politics.

The articles of the United Nations Charter providing for the establishment of a Military Staff Committee and looking forward to provision for armed forces, assistance and facilities by Members introduced for many states new and perplexing problems in their relations to international organization. While it is true that military considerations are normally one of the factors influencing the formulation of the foreign policy of every state, never before has there existed one central international organization to which it was expected that all major political problems would be submitted, regardless of origin and regardless of the geographical area concerned. Coordination of military policy with political representation under these circumstances becomes, therefore, not a matter of the occasional conference at a given moment of international tension, but, instead, requires a day-to-day ìntegration in order to achieve both consistency and effectiveness.