Interests in APD after 1945: Where Is the United Nations or the “International”?

Despite Gourevitch’s observation in Reference Gourevitch1978 in “The Second Image Reversed” that the “traditional distinction between international relations and domestic politics” is “dead,” scholars of American political development (APD) have been slow to consider how international developments shape US politics. Katznelson and Shefter’s (Reference Katznelson and Shefter2002) Shaped by War and by Trade is an exception; their goal is to examine “how the international situation of the United States has molded the character of the American state” with focus on international influences as systemic causes of change (6, 15–16). The United Nations receives only one mention in this volume, however, in Zolberg’s (Reference Zolberg, Katznelson and Shefter2002) chapter on the rise of the imperial presidency and US hegemony. Chapters by Skocpol etal. and Shefter consider the impact of war mobilization on civic engagement and international-domestic linkages on party development, respectively, but these chapters are limited in scope. Gourevitch’s suggestion that political development is not only shaped by war and by trade but also by the impact the international system has on the distribution of power among groups and coalitions remains largely unexplored. Elizabeth Borgwardt’s (Reference Borgwardt2005) A New Deal for the World, in the subfield of “new international history,” is a notable examination of the intersections of international, cultural, and economic change in which the United Nations is prominently featured. Her focus centers on the global expansion of the New Deal and transformations in American national identity and conceptions of national interest (also Sparrow Reference Sparrow2011). Although poised to analyze how these transformations mattered to groups of citizens, Borgwardt’s focus is on ideas, political elites, and institutions—interests receive only passing comment.

The dearth of attention to the United Nations in APD might be explained by realist presumptions that it has been little more than a nuisance in a story of American state building, a story most often told as one of exceptionally domestic institutions, ideas, and interests. Of course, the story of the formation of the United Nations as an elite-led, US-driven World War II event has been well told, but this literature tends to focus on issues involving war, trade, relations between the Big Four, and the origins of the Cold War, omitting attention to the ways these developments restructured state-society relationships in the United States (or elsewhere) (Hoopes and Brinkley Reference Hoopes and Brinkley1997; Schlesinger Reference Schlesinger2003). Johnstone (Reference Johnstone2011) notes, for example, that APD tends to view foreign policy through the lens of elite action, only glancing at nonstate actors or private organizations.

There is no shortage of scholarship on domestic and international interactions outside APD. The significance of the United Nations for interest mobilization has been well noted in comparative and international relations fields in a burgeoning literature on the role of nonstate actors in international and nation-state development, world culture, and political change (e.g. Lipschultz Reference Lipschutz1992; Putnam Reference Putnam1988; Rosenau Reference Rosenau1990, Reference Rosenau1995). Keck and Sikkink’s (Reference Keck and Sikkink1998) Activists beyond Borders examining transnational advocacy networks is among the best-known examples (others include Ahmed and Potter, Reference Ahmed and Potter2006; Boli and Thomas Reference Boli and Thomas1997, Reference Boli and Thomas1999; Ghils Reference Ghils1992; Khagram etal. Reference Khagram, Riker and Sikkink2002; Martens Reference Martens2003; Owen Reference Owen2010; Tarrow Reference Tarrow2005; Turner and Killian Reference Turner and Killian1987; Weiss and Gordenker Reference Weiss and Gordenker1996).

It is especially surprising that APD scholars have conceded little attention to the United Nations and its relationships to group interests because the mid-twentieth century is frequently pinpointed as the period in which the discipline became self-conscious about the need for empirical research about group processes, and the time when the modern interest group system was born. Civil society scholars have noted dramatic shifts in citizen involvement from an impressive increase after World War II to precipitous decline by the early 1960s but, despite the fact that state-led war mobilization is a conventional focus, these accounts have paid little attention to the United Nations or to the internationalization of civic engagement that was a result (Pierson and Skocpol Reference Pierson and Skocpol2007; Putnam Reference Putnam2001; Skocpol Reference Skocpol2003; Skocpol and Fiorina Reference Skocpol, Fiorina, Skocpol and Fiorina1999; Skocpol etal. Reference Skocpol, Munson, Karch, Camp, Katznelson and Shefter2002; Walker Reference Walker1991). Scholars of interest groups typically take the 1960s as a point of departure, implicitly (or explicitly) assuming that the forces that shape and respond to interest groups are limited to factors endemic to the federal government: campaign finance, political parties, congressional lobbies, the development of the American news media, the rise of executive power, and so on (Baumgartner and Leech Reference Baumgartner and Leech1998; Berry Reference Berry1999; Cigler and Loomis Reference Cigler and Loomis2007; Schlozman and Tierney Reference Schlozman and Tierney1986; Walker Reference Walker1991). Industrialization, increasing societal complexity, technological developments, war, and the unique features of the American political system—these variables loom large in conventional views US interest development over the second half of the twentieth century (Hansen Reference Hansen1988; Tichenor and Harris Reference Tichenor and Harris2005; Truman Reference Truman1951; Walker Reference Walker1991).

Important exceptions are found in budding scholarship that considers the role of emergent globalism on social movement development, particularly in the context of the US civil rights movement. Skrentny’s (Reference Skrentny2004) Minority Rights Revolution, for example, shows that the expansion of civil rights in the United States was connected to the expansion of these rights in other parts of the world (also Borgwardt Reference Borgwardt2005). Layton (Reference Layton2000) examines the intersections of US foreign policy and domestic race policies, suggesting that “international context did far more to command specific components of the federal government’s attention to civil rights than would have come from the government’s own inclinations” (8; also Dudziak Reference Dudziak2000; Kryder Reference Kryder2000; McAdam Reference McAdam1982; Plummer Reference Plummer1996, Reference Plummer2003). In Eyes Off the Prize, Andersen (Reference Andersen2003) notes that the formation of the United Nations led key African American leaders in the NAACP to reshape their institutional structure, priorities, partnerships, and ideological vision, expanding their platform to include international human rights. Ritter (Reference Ritter, Beckwith and Baldez2008) offers a similar account about the intersection of women’s rights discourses and emergent international understandings of human rights (also Laville Reference Laville, Laville and Wilford2006, Reference Laville2008; Mathews-Gardner Reference Mathews-Gardner, Laughlin and Casteldine2011). Zunz (Reference Zunz2012) is more interested in international humanitarianism than social movements per se, but his work on the postwar relationships between private and religious charities and the United Nations nonetheless points to similar linkages (also Curti Reference Curti1963). These scholars have crafted rich narratives about transformations in organizational identities, strategies, and memberships within and among organized interests that hinge on the intersections of national and international politics in the postwar era. Of particular importance, they collectively suggest that interest mobilization and development, and the networks between the state and private associations, were influenced in distinctive ways by mid-twentieth-century international political dynamics, in general, and by the United Nations, specifically.

This article suggests a more robust theoretical framework that may link these otherwise disparate narratives of postwar interest development. Constructs similar to those found in the social movement literature—resources, issue framing, political opportunity structures—have been applied to broader notions of “interests” by a few, notably Skocpol (Reference Skocpol2003), Clemens (Reference Clemens1997), Young (Reference Young2010), and in the context of women’s and racial organizations, Minkoff (Reference Minkoff1995). This literature highlights the relational nature of interest development, a significant conclusion of which is that institutions shape the way and extent to which organized interests participate in the public realm. Young (Reference Young2010), for example, shows that organized interests undergo adaptive change within broader historical patterns in which political institutions are arbiters of access to political and policy-making processes. Skocpol’s Diminished Democracy (Reference Skocpol2003) is notable for its focus on the post–World War II era; she argues that a “great civic transformation” took place after World War II as a result of political and institutional change, including a burst of federal legislation bolstering liberal activism and the emergence of the “rights revolutions” of the 1960s and 1970s. Like much of this literature on US organized interests, this work is insulated from international developments, but nonetheless offers a theoretical starting place to begin thinking about how the formation of the United Nations and the US government’s particular role in its institutionalization were consequential for interest development.

A subset of postwar political scientists writing about interests of their time lend support for this conceptual framework. In 1958, Donald Blaisdell observed the growing significance of “pressure groups” in international politics. Noting that pressure groups “exert pressure simultaneously on national governments and international agencies,” Blaisdell wrote, “intergovernmental organizations attract the attention of pressure groups just as national governments do, and for the same reasons—to be present where action is taken and decisions are made and to attempt to influence or determine the action” (319; see also Almond Reference Almond1950; Beer Reference Beer1958; Masland Reference Masland1942; Sprout Reference Sprout1935; and White Reference White1951). A previous employee of the State Department, Blaisdell suggested that mid-twentieth-century innovations in “organizational and propaganda techniques have enabled groups to claim an enlarged role in the decisions of both foreign offices and intergovernmental organizations” (Reference Blaisdell1958: 319).

Blaisdell’s observations invite reconsideration of the postwar landscape of organized interests. In 1949, the US Department of Commerce’s National Associations of the United States reported that there were 4,000 active national organizations in the United States, including 1,800 business and trade organizations, 500 professional groups, 200 labor unions, 100 women’s organizations, and 25 fraternal associations (Judkins Reference Judkins1949). It was this Commerce Department directory that provided empirical support for Truman’s Reference Truman1951 Governmental Process and to which contemporary scholars refer when articulating an axiomatic claim about the dominance of business, trade, and professional associations in the mid-twentieth century (e.g., Baumgartner and Leech Reference Baumgartner and Leech1998; Schattschneider Reference Schattschneider1975; Schlozman and Tierney Reference Schlozman and Tierney1986; Walker Reference Walker1991). Seeking to explain the rapid mobilization of economic interests in the first part of the twentieth century, Truman focused on total numbers of organizations—noting, for instance, that there were more than 800 manufacturers’ organizations in 1949—but, surprisingly, did little to map the growth of organizations over time. Figure 1 provides a new look at this data, arranging organizations by founding date. These data support Truman’s “disturbance theory”; the spike in trade and industry associations between 1913 and 1919, for example, and again in 1933, may be linked to government war mobilization and economic planning during World War I and National Recovery Administration efforts following World War II, respectively. More than 200 trade or industry related associations were formed in 1933 alone, the same year that Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act. Although trade associations continued to grow after 1933—often at a rate of 40 to 50 new groups per year—well more than one-half were formed prior to 1934 and the formation of new groups began to decline by the end of the 1940s.Footnote ²

Source: Jay Judkins, National Associations of the United States, US Department of Commerce (1949).

Figure 1. Development of US organizations listed in Commerce Department’s National Associations of the United States, by founding date.

Truman’s conclusions are complicated by figure 2, which includes data compiled from a series of directories published by the Foreign Policy Association in 1942, 1948, 1953, 1955, and 1964. The Foreign Policy Association collected data on hundreds of “private organizations which conduct serious programs of research in international affairs, or which maintain meetings and information programs on a continuing basis” (Wasson and Savord Reference Wasson and Savord1964: vii). These directories (which excluded government sanctioned organizations, social and cultural groups [e.g., women’s clubs of Skocpol’s interest], local branches of national groups, relief organizations, and, after 1947, organizations included on the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations) show that more than 765 new groups were established in two decades. When it first published the 1942 directory, the council identified 43 organizations, still active, formed prior to 1900, including long-standing organizations with international chapters, including the Salvation Army (1865), American Red Cross (1881), American Association of University Women (1882), and National Association of Manufacturers (1895). An additional 83 active organizations had formed by 1918, the year that Woodrow Wilson gave his first speech in support of the League of Nations. By 1920, more than 150 organizations in total had formed, including the American Jewish Congress (1918), American Farm Bureau Federation (1919), and National Bureau of Economic Research (1920). The start of World War II brought the sharpest increase in new US organizations active in world affairs; 90 new organizations were formed between 1939 and 1941 alone. Between 1940 and 1960, the cumulative incidence of new organizations exceeded 420—an impressive figure when placed next to Truman’s Governmental Process data in figure 1. Tellingly, the vast majority of these organizations, close to 60 percent, were headquartered in New York City in close proximity to the United Nations (less than 1 percent headquartered in Washington, DC).

Figure 2. New foundings of US organizations interested in world affairs, 1900–60.

These data suggest the mid-twentieth century was a period of impressive growth and change among organized interests in ways that previous studies have overlooked. The remainder of this article suggests that the internationalization of US interests in the mid-twentieth century was a part of a broader transformation in state-society relationships, one that centered in important ways on the development of the United Nations.

Mobilizing US Interests around the United Nations

The mobilization of US public opinion in support of the United Nations began no later than the country’s rejection of the League of Nations.Footnote ³ These efforts were led by a group of US intellectual internationalists responding to the isolationism that defeated the League and continued to undermine Roosevelt’s interventionist strategies in the late 1930s (Divine Reference Divine1967; Hoopes and Brinkley Reference Hoopes and Brinkley1997; Johnstone Reference Johnstone2009; see also Borgwardt Reference Borgwardt2005). In 1940, the newly formed Commission to Study the Organization of Peace, which included Max Lerner, Virginia Gildersleeve (who would become the only female delegate to the 1945 United Nations Conference), William Allen White, and John Foster Dulles aired weekly radio broadcasts on a program called “Which Way to Lasting Peace?” Soon after, Dulles formed the Commission to Study the Bases of a Just and Durable Peace, an arm of the National Council of Churches. These efforts acknowledged the need to “educate and crystalize public opinion,” around some kind of world order, as Dulles put it (also Hoopes and Brinkley Reference Hoopes and Brinkley1997; Leigh Reference Leigh1976; Robins Reference Robins1971; Zunz Reference Zunz2012). Clark Eichelberger—former director of the League of Nations Association and member of the Council on Foreign Relations—and James Shotwell—Columbia University history professor—were among the most influential in promoting internationalism and, through close relationships with the Roosevelt administration and the State Department, the role of citizen groups in helping to achieve it (Johnstone Reference Johnstone2009).

In January 1944, the second anniversary of signing the UN Declaration, the president released a statement declaring that “the concept of United Nations,” implied an international commitment of its signatories not just to the war, but to the global “struggle against disease, malnutrition, unemployment, and many other forms of economic and social distress” (Roosevelt Reference Roosevelt1944). Three months later, the State Department announced the creation of an “international program for the rebuilding of essential educational and cultural facilities of the war-torn countries,” noting that this would be “an important service in the national interest and in the interest of international security.” Pointedly, the statement included an invitation for “the advice and cooperation of other agencies and organizations, both governmental and private” (State Department 1944a).

The creation in the State Department of a Division of Public Liaison in 1944 (with the Office of Public Information, renamed the Office of Public Affairs) marked the administration’s desire “to make the Department an instrument of the people.” As Haynes and Ignatieff (Reference Haynes and Ignatieff2003) note, this was a “revolutionary new goal for an agency that had never concerned itself with public opinion” (also Johnstone Reference Johnstone2009). Staffed by public relations consultant, John Dickey, the centerpiece of its campaign involved cultivating relationships with private associations that comprised “a major force in the field of public opinion,” in combination with a series of public outreach efforts, including speeches, radio interviews, public appearances, press releases, and at least two documentaries. Dickey urged the State Department to support citizen organizations most supportive of the United Nations in their “public educational work,” building a groundswell of support well before any definitive treaty negotiations were to commence. Secretary of State Stettinius referred to the program as “an aggressive policy for public relations” (in Leigh Reference Leigh1976: 123).

Collaborative relationships between the federal government and private organizations had begun to take new shape during and after World War II, fueled by what Borgwardt (Reference Borgwardt2005) describes as Americans’ growing cosmopolitanism and openness to large-scale multilateral institutions (also Sparrow Reference Sparrow2011). The bureaucratic machinery of the federal government was regeared after the war to help build support for government efforts. The reorganized private nonprofit Advertising Council (previously the War Advertising Council) linked the White House, businesses, news and entertainment industries, and a wide range of citizen organizations in a carefully orchestrated effort to shape probusiness (and progovernment) public attitudes (Wall Reference Wall2008). Philanthropic organizations and religious charities provided relief and humanitarian aid, helping the United States achieve its policy goals abroad (Curti Reference Curti1963; Ringland Reference Ringland1954; Zunz Reference Zunz2012). Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson was instrumental in drafting a plan for the first international relief organization in 1943, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which created symbiotic relationships with private charities like the Red Cross, the YMCA, and Friends’ Relief.

In similar ways, the State Department sought to develop relationships with private groups to further foreign policy objectives and to strategically respond to demands from groups seeking a more prominent role in international affairs. In 1941, the National Peace Conference announced plans to enlist organizations in studying the principles of international organization and peace. These efforts were complemented by ripples of activity among church organizations—the Federal Council of Churches and the Catholic Association for International Peace among them—as well as civic associations including the American Association of University Women, the National Council of Jewish women, the PTA, and the National Grange. The activities of organized groups were not irrelevant if for no other reason than the State Department’s own admission that “their total membership runs into the millions and their influence reaches the general public and has a definite effect on general public opinion” (quoted in Johnstone Reference Johnstone2011: 485). The National Peace Conference and 16 citizen groups—including the national board of the YWCA, the National Council of Jewish Women, the American Unitarian Association, and the United Council of Church Women—officially endorsed the Fulbright and Connally Resolutions in 1944 supporting the nation’s membership in a postwar security organization (Rogow Reference Rogow1993). Other groups, including the National Peace Conference, the Church Peace Union, and the American Association of University Women offered their own programs for world order—they published pamphlets, held conferences, and sponsored institutes in more than 35 cities across the nation to discuss organizing the peace (Newcomer Reference Newcomer1944; Robins Reference Robins1971). In June 1944, the group Americans United for World Organization—an umbrella organization representing 24 national organizations—announced a political action program to “bring about greater Congressional support for effective world organization” (Haynes and Ignatieff, Reference Haynes and Ignatieff2003: 57–59; also, Divine Reference Divine1967).

Recognizing the “very valuable two-way contacts” the State Department had with citizen organizations, the Office of Public Liaison worked to “establish and maintain additional close personal contacts with additional secretaries, directors and other offices of outstanding national organizations and groups” (in Robins Reference Robins1971). Plans included developing programs that local chapters of national groups could use to “promote a better understanding of the functions and problems of the state department,” and developing press materials for group leaders to use when speaking about US foreign policy. At times, the State Department’s strategies for mobilizing public support evidenced anxiety on the part of officials, who were concerned that organizational aspirations to mold public policy “needed education” lest their efforts to secure postwar stability pull the nation in contradictory directions. Many citizen groups, Dickey noted, were “experienced in and geared to this sort of public educational work,” but required further “encouragement” and “background guidance,” from the State Department (ibid.: 38; see also Leigh Reference Leigh1976). Dickey’s staff carefully culled 300 daily newspapers, national magazines, public opinion polls, and the Congressional Record to track public opinion. Responding to what one reporter described as “a minor public-relations crisis at the State Department,” officials conceded that the success of postwar US foreign policy “will rise or fall on the extent to which the American people understand and support it” (Reston Reference Reston1947).

Between September and December 1944, the State Department held at least five meetings with leaders of national organizations to coordinate widespread public education. The largest of these, at Dickey’s urging, followed the request of Ernest Hopkins, chairman of the Americans United for World Organization. More than 100 organizations attended (ranging from the Brookings Institution to the American Academy of Political and Social Science to the US Chamber of Commerce to the NAACP); much of their agenda focused on generating additional public support for a postwar international organization (State Department 1944b). “Only as there develops in this country a substantial and informed body of public opinion,” then Under Secretary of State Stettinius noted at, “can the Government go forward successfully in the task of participation in the further steps needed for the establishment of an international organization” (State Department 1944a, 1944c). State Department meetings were complimented by gatherings held in New York City under the auspices of the American Association for the United Nations and the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace; the PTA, National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, New York Times, and Readers’ Digest were among those who discussed the preparation of materials—leaflets, radio broadcasts, comics, motion pictures, organizational charts—that could best facilitate a public education campaign.

In the months leading up to the San Francisco Conference of the United Nations, the State Department received more than 20,000 pieces of mail per week—at times 7,000 letters per day (State Department 1945b). The Times (“State Department Heeds Public,” 1944) noted, that “in the between-war years only a few women’s organizations, a few international organizations, and the so-called ‘peace-groups’ of this country bestirred themselves on the subject of international affairs”; now, however, “foreign relations are of such immediate and intense interest to the public” that the State Department received thousands of “voluntary expressions of opinion” daily. The department endorsed more than 500 speaking engagements, aired a weekly radio program featuring topics like “It’s Your State Department,” and distributed 2.2 million publications to Americans nationwide (State Department 1945a). One State Department Bulletin noted that, “demand for copies of the Proposals, pamphlets … qualified speakers, and radio discussion programs,” on the part of civic organizations, “exceeded everyone’s expectations” (State Department 1945c). Estimates suggest that the combined effect of these and independent efforts undertaken by groups such as the League of Women Voters and Federal Council of Churches was to provide more than 20 million people with UN literature in less than one year (Haynes and Ignatieff Reference Haynes and Ignatieff2003). Stettinius noted his satisfaction with “the vigor with which the proposals have been discussed”:

The scope of the US State Department campaign is a significant instance of executive leadership in building not just public support, but ultimately, congressional support for American foreign policy and US leadership in the United Nations (Haynes and Ignatieff Reference Haynes and Ignatieff2003). In 1937, American public opinion had been decidedly against US involvement in the League of Nations—only 26 percent of Americans supported the League. In the months leading up to the founding conference of the United Nations, 94 percent of Americans could identify “Dumbarton Oaks” and support for US membership in the United Nations hovered around 70 percent (Lentz Reference Lentz1960; Robins Reference Robins1971; Scott and Withey Reference Scott and Withey1958; see also Divine Reference Divine1967). It is likely, as Johnstone (Reference Johnstone2011) notes, that much of this activity served another goal: improving the public’s view of the State Department, one of Stettinius’s key goals (whose background working for General Motors and US Steel taught him the value of public relations).

Their success with citizen groups made it difficult for the State Department to deny organizational leaders some kind of access to San Francisco; their unprecedented concessions signaled a new role for organized interests in both domestic and foreign affairs. Prior to the 1945 meeting, officials from the US congressional delegation took up the issue that “a great number of private organizations and groups want to be represented in San Francisco,” and that to accommodate them all would lead the US delegation to “reach tremendous proportions.” They decided to invite select organizations to send one representative “to be there for consultation as this might prove desirable.” These leaders, Stettinius explained, “would not be official members of the American Delegation, but a full system of liaison would be set up to keep them closely in touch with the progress of the work.” Not all members of the US delegation shared Stettinius’s and Dickey’s enthusiasm for this “experiment in democracy.” Senator Arthur Vandenberg (a recent convert from isolationism) suggested it be made clear that the conference “was to be a ‘peace-keeping’ show and not a ‘peace-making’ show,” hoping one consequence would be “a large number of organizations seeking representation would not be interested.” Several members of the congressional delegation expressed reservations—Senator Connally worried about “the impracticality of [US] delegates conferring with large numbers of representatives due to their heavy duties and schedules”—but ultimately capitulated to what Stettinius explained was President Roosevelt’s belief that “it would do considerable harm if no recognition was given to the leading national organizations,” and that “it was best in the end to invite representatives from certain groups and establish a liaison office for them.”Footnote ⁴ These decisions were not universally popular. New York Times Washington correspondent, Arthur Krock, described the announcement to bring a “long list” of consultants to the meeting as evidence that “the State Department is fighting a losing battle” to prevent the descent of thousands of individuals and groups “with detailed specifications” from “going to San Francisco,” likely resulting in “days of wasted time, needless expense, the numerous discomforts of overcrowding, confusions in the news, and the mischief sure to be made by agitators and publicity hunters who will find no other way to register their presences” (Reference Krock1945).

Twenty-eight organizations sent word that they were going to send representatives to San Francisco. Shortly thereafter, and despite the lingering ambiguity about just what role private citizen groups might play, the State Department invited 42 national organizations, representing what they described as “a fair cross-section of citizen groups,” to serve as consultants to its official delegation (see table 1) (State Department 1945d). Recognizing that it had “not been practical to extend consultant invitations” beyond these 42 groups, the department took an additional step to “provide liaison facilities at the conference for all civic organizations” (ibid.: 671–72, author’s emphasis). Some estimates suggest that in addition to the 42 recognized representatives an additional 200 organizations sent their own unofficial observers (Seary Reference Seary and Willets1996).

Table 1. Organizations included as “consultants” to US delegation to the UN Conference, 1945

* Indicates groups classified by Skocpol (1999) as large membership associations that at one point in US history enrolled 1 percent of men, women, or both.

** Indicates group gained consultative status with the United Nations prior to 1960, either directly or indirectly through international chapters. For example, the American Association of University Women was represented in the United Nations by the International Federation of University Women. Year consultative status was granted is indicated in parentheses.

Source: Department of State Bulletin XII, No. 3030 (April 14, 1945). Dates of consultative status are derived from UN Yearbooks.

The State Department held 25 meetings with organizational leaders, approximately once every other day. Described as “an experiment in applying the democratic process,” this arrangement was strategically designed to maintain high levels of public support (State Department 1945c). Officials went to some length to explain to consultative groups that their role would not be that of “a pressure group.” “You are not here to advocate a position on particular subject matter,” explained one department official (quoted in Robins Reference Robins1971: 108). If the consultative organizations remained within confines set by the State Department, the same could not be said for the 200-plus leaders of groups merely observing the conference from unofficial positions. “We have had a very difficult time with this whole experiment,” noted an exasperated Dickey, “and I have no reason to believe that it is not going to continue to be difficult for quite some time.” Dickey implored consultative groups to help manage the unofficial organizations. Stettinius remarked about his “great personal frustration” in meeting “the public demand” (Leigh Reference Leigh1976). Accusations that the State Department was using citizen groups as pawns only further complicated the matter. Johnstone shows that despite the State Department’s best efforts to appear “neutral” in sharing “facts” with citizen groups, it was difficult to avoid “crossing the line from information to propaganda”; Robert Taft was among the most vocal critics in accusing the State Department of a nationwide propaganda campaign.

Whatever State Department or other US officials hoped for NGOs in San Francisco, their presence was consequential. The State Department had to negotiate protests from those that were not included as consultants including most prominently the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) that, with encouragement from the Soviet Union, sent a formal letter to Stettinius decrying the lack of trade-union representatives among consultative groups and seeking permanent representation in the UN Security Council and Economic and Social Council—a request that was turned down but that was nonetheless replicated by others, including the AFL and ILO, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the International Cooperative Alliance (Chiang Reference Chiang1981; Goodrich etal. Reference Goodrich, Hambro and Simons1969; “Labor Men Demand World Parley Role” 1945). Members of US consultative groups were not averse to meeting with members of other state delegations, at times inviting confusing origins in proposals to revise the charter—this was particularly concerning to the US delegation, which believed it would “be better for public relations” if proposals to amend the charter clearly came from the United States.Footnote ⁵

Consultant organizations expected to play a formative role in the conference and they brought along proposals, amendments, and revisions to the charter. Joseph Proskauer and Jacob Blaustein of the American Jewish Committee, James Shotwell of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Frederick Nolde of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ, and Clark Eichelberger of the American Association for the United Nation were among the most passionate initiates lobbying for inclusion of human rights language in the charter, an endeavor in which they were victorious and marked the most substantive change to the charter (American Jewish Committee 1945; Borgwardt Reference Borgwardt2005; Gaer Reference Gaer, Weiss and Gordenker1996; Korey Reference Korey1998; Porter Reference Porter1945a).Footnote ⁶ A second triumph, led by US delegate Virginia Gildersleeve and leaders from the NEA, AAUW, BPW, American Council on Education, and National Congress of Parents and Teachers, secured the reluctant agreement of the US delegation to the addition of “education” in the purposes of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) (Rawalt Reference Rawalt1969; Robins Reference Robins1971). US consultants found allies in conference delegations from smaller, developing countries who were more enthusiastic then the big three—Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States—about giving the United Nations a greater role in economic and social affairs.

Most significantly and with lasting consequence for interest development, a coalition of agricultural, business, labor, and education groups—referred to as “ABLE”—lobbied to strengthen and formalize UN cooperation with private bodies, leading to the adoption of Article 71, which provides for consultative arrangements between NGOs and ECOSOC (Chiang Reference Chiang1981; Gaer Reference Gaer, Weiss and Gordenker1996; Johnstone Reference Johnstone2011; Robins Reference Robins1971; Willets Reference Willets1996). Following Shotwell’s leadership and further inspired by the WFTU’s demand for inclusion, leaders from the International Chamber of Commerce, CIO, AFL, American Council on Education, American Farm Bureau Federation, National Grange, National Association of Manufacturers, AAUW, and Council on Foreign Relations, proposed that ECOSOC “arrange conferences with and receive recommendations from major non-governmental organizations” (in Robins Reference Robins1971: 123). On May 17, after receiving push back from organizational consultants concerned about being brushed aside,Footnote ⁷ Secretary Stettinius welcomed the ABLE coalition to a meeting with the US delegation that was opposed to any official role for NGOs in ECOSOC. A Times journalist noted Stettinius’s decision “represents a complete change of the original concept of the San Francisco conference”; while consultants had been originally instructed that “their function was to understand the security plans made in San Francisco and ‘sell them’ to the various influential sections of American public opinion,” the consultants “took a different view” (Porter Reference Porter1945b). Ultimately, compromise working that provided for “consultation” rather than to “participation without vote,” compelled the US delegation to give in to pressure from the US organizational consultants and their allies (Willets Reference Willets1996).

In his report to the president, Secretary Stettinius noted that US groups played “a direct and material role in drafting the constitution of the United Nations” (State Department 1945e). This was, he noted, an “unprecedented example of cooperation,” that persuaded the conference that “there be added to the Charter a paragraph providing for consultation and cooperation between non-governmental organizations, national and international, and the Economic and Social Council” (ibid.: 120–21). That US organizations helped to legitimate the role of NGOs in the United Nations was not only a consequence of a unique collaboration, as Stettinius noted; it was also an unprecedented development in international affairs, one that signaled something new in state-society relationships—inside and outside of the United Nations—and further catalyzed a period of change in the landscape of organized interests.

1945–65: The Internationalization of US Interests

“NGOs” have existed since the mid-nineteenth century (the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society was established in 1823, the World Alliance of YMCAs in 1855, the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1863), and the United Nations was not the first nor only forum through which Americans mobilized members, formed international connections, and developed interests. In 1910, 132 international groups formed the Union of International Associations to facilitate communication and cooperation on matters of common interest. Groups like the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Federal Council of Churches, International Association of Rotary Clubs, the National Education Association, and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs were active in peace movements earlier in the twentieth century, joining the League to Enforce Peace in 1920. The National Council of Jewish Women, in cooperation with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee lobbied US lawmakers to endorse the World Court and League of Nations in the 1930s (Rogow Reference Rogow1993).

Governments and international and national voluntary organizations had long worked closely, if not directly, together, particularly in foreign relief efforts during and between the two world wars. The roots of ECOSOC can be traced to these efforts and to the success, however imperfect, of the League of Nations, which contained modest provisions for dealing with economic and social matters and which encouraged international cooperation in areas such as health and welfare, rights of workers, nutrition and agriculture, education and children’s welfare, communication, and transportation (Riefler Reference Riefler1947; Rosenthal Reference Rosenthal2005). Earlier cooperative models linking international governance structures and organized interests—including Shotwell’s personal experience with the ILO—helped to catalyze developments in the United Nations. What was new was that Article 71 established formal relationships—recognized in international law—between organized interests and an international intergovernmental body, crystallizing the term “nongovernmental organization” and differentiating roles and participation rights of private organizations (UN Charter Art. 71).

Debates in San Francisco foreshadowed lingering questions about how NGOs would consult with the United Nations. For example, delegates from the Soviet Union objected to US proposals because they put “so much emphasis on national non-governmental organizations,” out of concern that this would create a vehicle for the United Nations to meddle in domestic affairs of member nations. A US delegate proposed a more targeted proposal that permitted consultation with national organizations “where appropriate." Conversely, others in the US delegation worried that “there might be some reaction if we opposed the [US] consultants on this matter.”Footnote ⁸

The purposes of consultation as ultimately specified in Article 71 are “on the one hand, to secure expert information or advice and, on the other hand, to enable organizations which represented important elements of public opinion to express their views” (United Nations 1947: 551). The first Committee on Arrangements for Consultation with NGOs in 1946 suggested that an NGO seeking consultative status should meet several criteria: “it should be concerned with matters falling within the competence of [ECOSOC], its aims and purposes should be in conformity with the Charter, it should represent a substantial proportion of the organized persons with the particular field of interest in which it operated and it should have authority to speak for its members through its authorized representatives” (ibid.). This statement continues to guide NGO relationships with the United Nations, but it took several years to settle on the principles and procedures for admitting consultative groups and defining their rights and privileges. The committee set out three categories of consultation: (a) organizations “closely linked with the economic or social life of the areas they represented”; (b) groups with “special competence,” but concerned only with “a few of the fields of activity covered by the Council”; and (c) groups primarily concerned with the development of public opinion and with disseminating information (ibid.: 552). Ambiguities quickly emerged and were discussed a great length at the first UN General Assembly (Goodrich etal. Reference Goodrich, Hambro and Simons1969), and as Willets (Reference Willets1996) shows, questions centered on the changing status of the WFTU, the largest and most prestigious NGO. The Soviet delegation advanced a proposal in the General Assembly to grant the WFTU formal right to submit items for inclusion on the ECOSOC’s agenda; the United States responded by asserting that all organizations in category (a) should receive equal treatment. In 1947, ECOSOC determined that all category (a) groups could introduce agenda items (this was, it turned out, a temporary measure). Groups in each category were given permission to send observers to council meetings; groups in (a) and (b) were invited to submit written statements to the council and to make oral statements to the NGO Committee; category (a) groups had additional access privileges, including making oral statements to the council.Footnote ⁹

Matters concerning the WFTU and AFL generated special controversy because the AFL was “a national, not an international, trade union organization which had refused to join the WFTU” (UN 1947). While supporters of the WFTU—the Soviet Union, France, and Belgium—favored denying AFL consultative status, delegates from Great Britain and the United States argued that granting the only the WFTU participation advantaged WFTU member governments. Ultimately, the General Assembly adopted a resolution granting consultative status to both groups, recommending that ECOSOC “as soon as possible” clarify the process for granting consultation to others (Goodrich etal. Reference Goodrich, Hambro and Simons1969; UN 1947). If a seemingly innocuous compromise at the time—US delegates sought to traverse the split between the AFL and CIO (which unlike the AFL had joined the WFTU) in fear that a “major domestic lobby might turn against the UN” (Willets Reference Willets1996: 27) while UN officials assumed that, normally, national organizations should “present their views through their respective governments or through international nongovernmental organizations to which they belonged” (UN 1947: 551)—it left open the possibility that other national organizations might gain consultative status, a powerful incentive that would shape subsequent interest formation.

The political tussle between the WFTU and the AFL and similar demands by other groups, including the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions, the World Federation of United Nations Associations, and the International Cooperative Alliance led UN officials to voice concern about “too many requests for consultative status.” They additionally worried that “too many national organizations” admitted to consultation “would lead to duplication of work and would complicate unduly the work of the Council” (UN 1950: 708). By 1950, NGO abuse of the right to submit items for the council’s agenda was another concern—the WFTU’s and AFL’s strategies of submitting multiple proposals was viewed as thinly veiled mutual recrimination (Chiang Reference Chiang1981), while others voiced concern that NGO reports of human rights abuses threatened to undermine governments’ autonomy—leading the NGO Committee to recommend that such rights be withdrawn. Representatives from the United States favored retaining rights for NGOs to submit items for consideration, but “shifting to the NGO Committee responsibility for first screening NGO proposals.” Ultimately, the NGO Committee revised rules governing NGOs such that proposals from NGOs “should reach the Council only after careful preliminary consideration in a commission” (UN 1951: 657–59).

ECOSOC adopted Resolution 288B in 1950 which set the terms for NGOs for the next several years. Organizations were “international” if it they had affiliates in at least three countries; “national” organizations were those determined to have “the national character of a member state,” and were only eligible for consultative status with their state government’s “consent” (Goodrich 1969). Resolution 288B retained the categories of consultative status, slight revised, giving category (a) organizations limited rights to participate in meetings and to propose agenda items and restricting (b) groups to submitting written statements (Korey Reference Korey1998).Footnote ¹⁰ Distinctions been groups were inherently ambiguous and, in differentiating a hierarchy of status and rights, incentivized groups to seek higher levels of consultative status (ironically potentially undermining the goal of international cooperation) and invited political logrolling (Chiang Reference Chiang1981). Rules governing NGOs were progressively tightened further in 1968, when a resolution called for suspending groups “if the organization clearly abuses its consultative status by systematically engaging in unsubstantiated or politically motivated acts against States Members” (UN 1968).

From 1945 until 1960, the number of organizations admitted to category (a) grew from 4 to 10. This stands in contrast to steeper growth of category (b) NGOs (such as the All India Women’s Conference, Boy Scouts International, International Committee of the Red Cross), which increased by 103 percent and the remarkable growth of category (c), which increased by 167 percent (and included groups like Rotary International and the International Association of Lions Clubs) (White Reference White1947). Notably, it was category (c) groups that created a space in the UN for “pressure groups” (Willets Reference Willets1996).

There is strikingly little research on what these developments meant for US interests. Among the more than 360 organizations granted consultative status between 1945 and 1960, several were US-headquartered or US national organizations, including the AFL, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Chamber of Commerce, and Rotary International. Ten of the original 42 groups invited by the State Department to San Francisco in 1945 gained access to the United Nations as “NGOs,” either directly, as was the case for the AFL, or indirectly through international parent organizations, as was the case for National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs through its International Federation, which became a “Level B” NGO in 1947 (Rawalt Reference Rawalt1969) (see table 1). Additional US groups that obtained NGO status included the Committee for Economic Development, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and the National Association of Manufacturers. Based on the Yearbook of the United Nations, among the 154 organizations receiving category (a) or (b) (later I or II) consultative status with the United Nations between 1946 and 1960, at least 18 were US-originated groups (comparatively, 17 originated in Switzerland, 11 in France, and 10 in the United Kingdom).

Internationalism seeped into the identities and strategies of US groups, who developed globally oriented programs, sent observers to UN meetings, bolstered international partnerships, and increasingly formulated arguments by appealing to UN principles. The US Chamber of Commerce (1955) conducted studies on the United Nations and its agencies throughout the 1950s, testifying before Congress with suggestions for improving relationships with the United Nations, communicating a “business viewpoint” on UN matters, and encouraging greater “business” participation in foreign policy. The General Federation of Women’s Clubs, AAUW, and the American Farm Bureau Federation formed new committees on international relations (AAUW 1955; GFWC 1947; Kile Reference Kile1948); others, like the BPW and National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) assigned permanent observers to the United Nations in New York. The NCJW “took its status as an official observer seriously,” one historian notes, “developing institutes and UN kits to help … educate members on international issues” (Rogow Reference Rogow1993: 182). The BPW responded to “a heightened sense of responsibility toward world problems,” by adding “support and strengthening of the UN,” to its national platform in 1949, voting to increase membership dues by 10 percent for the sole purpose of sending additional funds to the International Federation (Rawalt Reference Rawalt1969: 57–58). Women’s organizations were especially enthusiastic about the United Nations because it was the first international institution to formally recognize legal equality for women and, in the International Declaration of Human Rights, created space to ground national claims in international benchmarks (see Chen Reference Chen1995; Paxton etal. Reference Paxton, Hughes and Green2006; Rupp Reference Rupp1994). Principles embodied in the UN charter similarly inspired the National Negro Congress to file a petition with ECOSOC—introducing the NAACP’s petition to the United Nations in 1947, W. E. B. DuBois asserted that racial disenfranchisement of African Americans in the South was an international, not merely a domestic, issue that infringed on the “ideals and work of the United Nations” (Hughes Reference Hughes1962: 108).

None of this is meant to suggest that organized interests in the postwar era were unapologetic supporters of the United Nations or that the United Nations was an effective international governance structure or even that NGOs successfully shaped the UN or US foreign policy agenda (however much they may have tried). Shortly after the UN founding, the Chamber of Congress noted “three years of disillusionment and disappointment” with the failure of the United Nations to achieve peace, viewing this as consequence of both a lack of internal “authority to prescribe the formulae of peace” (and feebleness in the face of the veto power in the Security Council) and “concert of opinion” among member nations (Policy Declarations of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States 1946: 83). The official platform of the National Grange noted similarly in 1954, that “progress by the UN in preventing aggression and peaceful settlement of disputes has been limited” (nonetheless vowing to continue to support the United Nations). Some organizations, such as Amnesty International, sought routes of influence outside of the United Nations, believing that its effectiveness was undermined by the Cold War (Irwin Reference Irwin2015). The dominance of US and Western groups among consultative NGOs was significantly curtailed in the late 1960s, first by an exposé revealing that NGOs including the National Student Association, the International Commission of Jurists, Pax Romano, and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions were being partially funded by the CIA and, second, by the growth in African and Asian membership in the United Nations, which led to additional modifications in the system of admitting NGOs to the UN system (Ryan and Wiseberg Reference Ryan and Wisberg1997). Political scientists in the mid-twentieth century noted that states frequently used “supposedly private international pressure groups in the economic and social skirmishes of the cold war [sic].” For example, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) was established by the labor movement in the West as a counter to the communist-controlled WFTU; the freedom to participate in ECOSOC debates increased the importance of the WFTU and ICFTU (Blaisdell Reference Blaisdell1958: 156).Footnote ¹¹

The more important point is that the United Nations extended institutional opportunities for NGOs and other organized interests to share expertise with governments, to blend national with international interests, to use the United Nations to legitimize organizational claims and mobilize members, and to redefine their own strategies and policy goals. In short, the United States became a prime center of interest engagement after World War II, offering groups what Skocpol (Reference Skocpol2003) might call “new levers to pull.” The cursory view provided here, one that takes seriously the Council of Foreign Relations’ claim that “interest in world affairs” was a mobilizing principle of the mid-twentieth century (a claim at least partially supported by data in figure 2), suggests that these were enduring changes for vast array of organized interests. The role that US groups played in helping to establish the United Nations ushered in a new model of governance that elicited greater international involvement by existing groups and encouraged new group formation.

Conclusion: Interests Do Not Stop at the Water’s Edge

Commenting on the role of interest groups in 1958, Blaisdell warned that the scholarly focus on “pressure groups” in American politics “does not mean that politics does or should stop at the water’s edge.” In particular, he noted, the United Nations “went further in extending to nongovernmental organizations opportunities for the presentation of their views than have ever been granted to such groups by any national government” (150, 155). Governments and intergovernmental organizations alike, he noted, rarely act without some kind of pressure. A similar sentiment was echoed by the American diplomatic historian, Akira Iriye, in Reference Iriye1999 when he argued more directly that the growth of NGOs and the networks among them is what made the twentieth-century, the American Century” (422, 424).

This article has shown that the US State Department mobilized interests around the formation of the United Nations in ways that reconstituted state-society relationships and encouraged organized interests to imagine enlarged roles on an increasingly internationalized stage. The United Nations and its agencies, by formalizing roles for NGOs, further modified political opportunity structures, creating new avenues for interorganizational cooperation and subsidizing the formation of new organizations within and outside of US borders. Opportunities for interest mobilization in the mid-twentieth century were complimented by renewed focus on international relations and consideration of foreign policy among the American public. The United Nations provided opportunities for US groups to advance goals for international peace and cooperation that many had sought since the failure of the League of Nations, and helped to encourage new groups with an internationalist perspective to emerge, lending new shape, and a new “fit” to American interest group politics. These were enduring changes to the extent that they were built on, and further reconstituted, new relationships between the government institutions—both national and international—and private organizations.