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398 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. ix (1971)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0398 and id is 1 raw text is: INTRODUCTION The communication explosion was inevitable, once technological advances had simplified cross-nation interaction. Such is the innate curiosity, gregariousness, novelty-seeking, and ambition of the human animal that every technological im- provement has made his containment less and less feasible. There is no doubt that communication also is a great facilitator of democracy. Easy access to the elec- torate and through it to the government removes any pretense for making decisions without consultation with or oversight by the governed. Democracy and communication gave propaganda its rationale and its vehicle. If a government is sensitive to the views of its constituents and they, in turn, are subject to influence by their leaders, why not appeal to people over the heads of their governments? This potential gave a new twist to the conduct of statecraft, as Bryant Wedge points out, and it may well lead to the global cultural homoge- neity he predicts. It also led to the evolution of a body of norms for the legal and diplomatic control of international propaganda. These are described by John B. Whitton, who says that what we need is not more rules but some acceptable means for interpreting and enforcing the ones we have. International propaganda as an instrument of statecraft is no new phenomenon. W. Phillips Davison traces its history from its earliest uses by the Greeks and says that propaganda is becoming more pervasive with every advance made by tech- nology. He sees a trend toward greater emphasis on public and private commercial efforts. This is especially true in Western Europe, as Sir Harold Beeley attests. Britain, having adjusted itself to the idea of being a medium-sized rather than a large power, is concentrating its propaganda efforts on its commercial rather than its politico-military needs. Significantly, Kenneth R. Sparks finds that commercial channels of communica- tion are in any case becoming far more important as sources of information about America, and Arthur Goodfriend warns that government-sponsored propaganda is antithetical in its concept and its execution to what a free nation like the United States is trying to sell. As Zygmunt Nagorski points out, ideologically communism has little to offer the Free World-or the Third World, for that matter-which underlines Goodfriend's urging that the United States quit playing the propaganda game by totalitarian rules. He considers the official brand of cultural propa- ganda to be unethical and immoral. Ralph White addresses himself specifically to the morality of propaganda techniques. Some he finds to be morally unexcep- tionable, while others are highly questionable both as to morality and effectiveness. Whether international persuasion can, indeed, be effective is debatable. Daniel Lerner points out that while there is plenty of evidence of its ability to reinforce existing attitudes, the widening gap between the rich and the poor nations is creat- ing such divergent terms of reference as to lessen the feasibility of international communication. From the psychological viewpoint, Yasumasa Tanaka says that certain laws regarding the formation and modification of attitudes are universal, but the criteria for making judgments and deciding on preferences are peculiar to the individual and are culture-bound. In interpersonal communication one can take such individual characteristics into account-if one knows them; but the mass ix

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