Sarah Wambaugh was technical advisor to the Peruvian delegation during the 1925-26 Tacna-Arica plebiscite, contested between Chile and Peru. Although the United States was to lead the plebiscite as a neutral arbiter, the fact that the territory was under the control of Chile, which had seized the region several generations earlier, would ultimately lead to the plebiscite being abandoned. Wambaugh would witness first-hand the violence and futility of the attempted plebiscite, made more galling because women were not allowed to vote, all of which fired her with determination to ensure that future plebiscites would not suffer the same results. Consequently, it was in Tacna-Arica that she began to systematically analyse the post-war plebiscites and distil normative conclusions for their future use. These normative prescriptions would be honed by her in the coming years, culminating in a list of eighteen points contained in her important 1933 work on the post-war plebiscites.

Describes the British government’s ‘Meade Mission’ to the island of Mauritius and its subsequent report.

The final decade of Sarah Wambaugh’s life would see her appointed technical advisor to the allied-run mission to observe the sensitive Greek elections of 1946, as well as to the soon abandoned plebiscite in Kashmir several years later. However, in Greece Wambaugh’s expertise now stood in contrast to new scientific sampling techniques, while she would keep silent about the fact that women were not allowed to vote, in a bid to support the anti-communists who won the election. Meanwhile her normative rules for the plebiscite would be dispensed with as not culturally relevant by those planning the vote in Kashmir. The chapter ends with an examination of the first UN plebiscite actually held, in British Togoland in 1956, and with the 1955 referendum on the proposal to turn the Saar into a Europeanised territory. Both operations eschewed many of the heavy normative principles which Wambaugh had developed for the plebiscite.

I met Robert Aumann (*1930) in his office at the Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The place has an interesting architecture; it is a square building with a large opening in the middle, so everyone could basically see everyone else’s office, enabling a lot of interaction. The green plants in the building nicely complemented the brown wood, together giving the feeling of comfort. Aumann’s office was located in a central spot in the building. When I entered, he sat behind his desk, surrounded by hundreds of books and papers. Rather small, but with a long white beard and a black suit, he nearly blended in with the shelves. Throughout the whole interview, Aumann remained friendly but at the same time notably affirmative, clearly having strong views – particularly on the status and relevance of game theory not only as a scholarly enterprise but also a basis for political advice and ultimately as a tool to support one’s political views.

Describes further work on postwar planning and discussions of the postwar world with the US administration.

Every 5 years, the World Congress of the Econometric Society brings together scholars from around the world. Leading scholars present state-of-the-art overviews of their areas of research, offering newcomers access to key research in economics. Advances in Economics and Econometrics: Twelfth World Congress consists of papers and commentaries presented at the Twelfth World Congress of the Econometric Society. This two-volume set includes surveys and interpretations of key developments in economics and econometrics, and discussions of future directions for a variety of topics, covering both theory and application. The first volume addresses such topics as contract theory, industrial organization, health and human capital, as well as racial justice, while the second volume includes theoretical and applied papers on climate change, time-series econometrics, and causal inference. These papers are invaluable for experienced economists seeking to broaden their knowledge or young economists new to the field.

Describes life and work at the League of Nations.

Continues the account of Meade’s life and work as Professor of Political Economy in Cambridge.

This chapter examines the rise of regular mass, public giving, through initiatives such as Save the Children’s Penny-a-Week scheme in thousand of factories, Christian Aid Week and the hundreds of branches of Oxfam, War on Want and Save the Children that initiated a huge variety of fundraising activities. Britain was a nation of givers, but the perennial problem of humanitarian fundraising was always apparent: that people gave in response to immediate suffering when the charities were committed to long-term aid. This chapter reviews the publicity materials and surveys of public opinion to examine the persistent nature of the problem, demonstrating the extent to which an incredibly self-aware sector has nevertheless been locked into the pursuit of fundraising tactics which it knows are far from appropriate. One consequence was the discrepancies in attitudes to poverty overseas and immigration in the UK. The Commonwealth, as both a post-imperial entity and as a facilitator of aid interventions, remained crucial to the imagination of what charity meant overseas. But when that Commonwealth came home – via immigration – the silences of the humanitarian charity spoke volumes too.

Every 5 years, the World Congress of the Econometric Society brings together scholars from around the world. Leading scholars present state-of-the-art overviews of their areas of research, offering newcomers access to key research in economics. Advances in Economics and Econometrics: Twelfth World Congress consists of papers and commentaries presented at the Twelfth World Congress of the Econometric Society. This two-volume set includes surveys and interpretations of key developments in economics and econometrics, and discussions of future directions for a variety of topics, covering both theory and application. The first volume addresses such topics as contract theory, industrial organization, health and human capital, as well as racial justice, while the second volume includes theoretical and applied papers on climate change, time-series econometrics, and causal inference. These papers are invaluable for experienced economists seeking to broaden their knowledge or young economists new to the field.

The chapter introduces the origins of the plebiscite as a tool of international politics, and examines Sarah Wambaugh’s early career in the American women’s peace and suffrage movements. Wambaugh began researching the plebiscite following American entry into the First World War in 1917, and her early contributions reflected her youthful idealism and embrace of the principle of the self-determination of nations pronounced by Woodrow Wilson. Her early works may have influenced the peacemakers during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919; however, the plebiscites that resulted were more frequently the result of instrumental bargaining among the victorious powers. If the plebiscite was not used as consistently as advocates such as Wambaugh would have liked, a major achievement was the inclusion of women’s suffrage in nearly all plebiscites written into the post-war settlement. In this the first plebiscite decided upon for the Danish–German border region of Schleswig set an important precedent.