Several writers have asked whether there exist among states varying predispositions to support the United Nations. Hayward Alker has answered this question with reference to the voting patterns of member nations in support of increased UN activities particularly in the peacekeeping field. More recently Robert Keohane has ranked states by using a support measure based on delegation size and has suggested that size of national delegations to the United Nations is indicative of support for the organization.

It has been suggested that the United Nations may perform any of three general functions in its field operations: peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peaceservicing. The first two functions are more widely recognized than the third, and it is to the third that this article is directed with specific application to the Middle East. Peacekeeping, the termination or containment of violence, has been extensively discussed; in the Middle East such agencies as the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), and the Mixed Armistice Commissions are regarded as peacekeeping units of the parent organization. Increasingly a separate functional category for analysis termed peacemaking has been employed referring to efforts to remove or mollify the substantive issues causing violence. In the Middle East missions such as the Conciliation Commission for Palestine (CCP), its special representatives, and the representatives of the secretary-general such as Gunnar Jarring are generally labeled peacemakers rather than peacekeepers.

Ever since Adolph Hitler's invasion of Poland, American and European interwar diplomacy has, with good reason, been judged a failure. Analyzing what went wrong, American historians have been quick to note their own nation's withdrawal from European affairs following the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Consequently, they have focused great attention on the Senate's rejection of United Statesmembership in the League of Nations, an act which has been seen as both cause and effect of the ensuing years of isolation. Indeed, nonmembership in the Geneva-based international organization came to have—for contemporaries and historians alike—deep symbolic and emotional overtones as well as diplomatic significance, appearing as the quintessence of isolationism itself.

The nature of political relationships in the United Nations is of considerable interest to students of international organization and, to a lesser degree, to students of international politics. One important aspect of this question concerns the extent to which Western states as a group and the United States in particular dominate the organization. In their examination of this issue many authors contend that the United States prevailed over the United Nations General Assembly during the assembly's earliest years but progressively lost its control as the membership of the organization increased. Their findings, with some variations in detail, indicate that prior to the first significant membership increase in 1955 the United States, with an automatic two-thirds majority in the General Assembly, was dominant. In their view the United States position from 1955 through 1959 was considerably weakened but remained strong enough to ensure favorable decisions by the organization. With further increases in membership during and after 1960, however, they suggest that United States predominance came to an end. Now the newer, less developed, and nonaligned states determine the character and concerns of the UN.

The study of integration provides a seemingly endless variety of theories, frameworks, approaches, definitions, terminology, and methodologies. An unfortunate consequence of this profusion and confusion is that research findings exhibit the same variety. For instance, studies of integration within the European Economic Community (EEC) can easily be divided into two types: those that find integration progressing steadily and even rapidly and those that find it stagnant.