The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (283 page)

 
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The Leninist strategy of alliance between Communists and other radical groups, particularly in the Third World but also for a time in Europe, which was based on two assumptions: that the new bourgeoisie in the colonial countries, especially in Asia, were sufficiently hostile to what Lenin described as economic imperialism to make common cause with the Communist Party, yet sufficiently weak to be unable to resist communist domination.M. N. Roy protested at these assumptions. Lenin won the debate but events proved Roy's case. In India the
Congress
showed little sympathy with the Communist Party. In Indonesia the alliance ended in a massacre of the communists, and this was repeated on an even greater scale in China in 1927 when the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek , having taken Shanghai and placated the capitalist powers, massacred his communist allies and drove the remnants into the mountains. In China, the Japanese threat eventually brought the two sides into a second United Front but it was scarcely a greater success than the first: co-operation, even military co-operation, against the invaders was negligible; considerable Nationalist and communist forces were tied up in guarding their respective territories against their allies. After the Nationalists destroyed the Communist New Fourth Army in Central China in 1941, the United Front with the Nationalist Party virtually ended. Subsequently a new United Front was created to include the Communist Party of China and a number of third-force parties; this is still in existence, but the smaller parties have enjoyed little power or influence.
JG 

 
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United Nations
(UN)

A voluntary association of around 180 states signatory to the UN Charter (1945), whose primary aim is to maintain international peace and security, solve economic, social, and political problems through international cooperation, and promote respect for
human rights
.
The UN, with headquarters in New York, formally enshrines the principle of the sovereign equality of all members. The chief administrative officer is the Secretary-General. Primary responsibility for the maintenance of peace and security rests with the
Security Council
. The General Assembly is the main deliberative organ and plenary body of the whole UN system, which includes an Economic and Social Council for co-ordinating the work of the many specialized intergovernmental agencies and other bodies, and the
International Court of Justice
. The Assembly delivers resolutions and not statutes; it can make external recommendations but not take binding decisions or enforcement action.
The ending of East–West hostilities could enable the UN to increase its peace-keeping activities. The conventional understanding that the body has no right to intervene in matters essentially the domestic jurisdiction of any state (UN Charter Article 2:7) has already been breached in some instances. Funded by contributions from member states, the UN will need additional resources for an expanded role. That might hinge on Japan being admitted to the Security Council, possibly by introducing one European Union seat in place of France and the United Kingdom.
PBI 

 
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In
social choice
, the requirement that a procedure should be able to produce a definite outcome for every logically possible input of individual preference orderings. The rule ‘Choose
x
over
y
if a majority of voters vote for
x
, and
y
if a majority of voters vote for
y
’ fails to satisfy universal domain because it fails to cover the case where neither happens. The rule ‘Choose
x
over
y
if a majority of voters vote for
x
, otherwise choose
y
’ does satisfy universal domain, at the expense of giving
y
an edge over
x
.

 
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‘Urbanism’ in English gains its contemporary meaning as a translation of the French expression
‘l'urbanisme’
, which can be translated as ‘town planning’. But it has implications which go beyond this translation. Urbanism suggests an approach which comprehends the city as a whole and contains a theory which seeks to explain urban relations. Perhaps the most influential such theory has been the neo-Marxist development, by such writers as Manuel Castells and Henri Lefebvre , of urbanism as a set of spatial relations which have distributive and class consequences independent of those generated by industrialism (the mode of production).
LA 

 
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