The purpose of this dissertation is to examine and evaluate the role of the Organization of African Unity as an international organization in the solution of intra-African conflicts. For the purpose of this paper, eight conflicts from 1963 to 1980 were investigated. Utilizing these cases, the paper (a) examines four assumptions: (1) that regional actions promote settlements by isolating soluble local conflicts from more complex ones; (2) that intrastate conflicts are more difficult to resolve by regional organizations than interstate or border disputes; (3) that most of the boundary disputes in Africa are due to the arbitrary colonial boundary demarcations; and (4) that most of the causes of the ineffectiveness in its conflict resolution is as a result of poor administrative set-up, lack of resources, and failure of its commissions to operate effectively; (b) it answered the following questions: (1) Did the O.A.U. stop, help stop, or fail to stop the fighting; (2) Did the O.A.U. settle, help settle, or fail to settle the conflict; and (3) Was there super power intervention, and if so, to what effect? The methodology used is primarily case study method. Most attention is given to the way the O.A.U. handled the conflicts.

This study investigates the causes of the Iranian revolution of 1978-79. To this end, the different theories of revolution are reviewed in Chapter One. Chapter Two provides a discussion of the historical background of the country and the role the clergy played in shaping its political development. Socioeconomic and political factors which contributed to the outbreak of this revolution are examined in the following two chapters. Finally, an attempt is made to draw some conclusions on whether existing theories of revolution can fully explain the Iranian upheaval of 1978-79 or not. For the preparation of this study United States government documents and Iranian and English language scholarly works were consulted.