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This article examines the issues concerning the confrontations that occurred during the Sixth European Conference of the Peace Research Society in 1969, where a declaration directed against traditional peace research and against the organizers of that conference was signed by a majority of the researchers who attended the event. The cause of the critical statement was the publication of the papers presented at the Conference on Vietnam organized in 1968 in Cambridge, Massachusetts by the Peace Research Society. Peace research, like most other research activities, is a response to felt needs for the maximization of certain values--the particular contribution of research is to obtain better knowledge to be used in the realization of those values. The radical peace researchers in 1968-1969 challenged the traditional and established peace research. Traditional peace research was challenged for serious shortcomings in the ability to explore significant problems, for its contribution to mystification by exploring the irrelevant or unimportant, for using unacceptable and narrow conceptions of peace and inadequate and distorted concepts of conflict. Furthermore, it was claimed that these conceptions were due to ideological fixations, that thereby the peace researchers were aiding the established power-elites of the world in their continued dominance of respective spheres of influence.

Conflicts between European Union (EU) members about enlargement result from its redistributive effects. EU members are more likely to suffer from enlargement if they profit from EU transfers and if they are relatively close to applicant countries in which unemployment is significantly higher than in member countries. Phasing in membership rights serves to compensate the relative losers of enlargement to accomplish EU widening. Using data from all previous enlargement rounds until 2004, we demonstrate that EU members are more likely to demand a discrimination of new members if distributional conflicts arise. The existence of these distributional conflicts in turn increases the odds of EU members and the accession candidates actually agreeing on a phase-in period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Ten-Nation Disarmament Committee. The committee, which is comprised of five Eastern European nations and five Western powers, illustrates the techniques debate and propaganda maneuvering. Comprehensive disarmament was first considered by the committee. The Soviet Union proposed a treaty on disarmament but were met with objections. Control provisions rather than disarmament were proposed by the Western Powers on the other hand. The authority of the United Nations was called upon to induce acceptance of general and complete disarmament by the Western powers.