For anyone interested in tracing the development of the comparative study of foreign policy behaviour the work of James Rosenau is central. His work in the 1960s was a major impetus in the formation of an identifiable research community in the United States; and the problems which he has addressed since that time have been the problems of comparative foreign policy analysis writ large. Above all, his work, exactly because it has attracted such sustained and widespread attention, has served as a focal point for a critique of the very possibility of the comparative analysis of foreign policy behaviour. Like it or loathe it, Rosenau's work represents the clearest and most extensive example of the comparative foreign policy school of thought.

In the introduction to his Principles of Political Economy John Stuart Mill wrote, 'there are no practical questions, even among those which approach nearest to the character of purely economical questions which admit of being decided on economical premises alone'. He was expressing no more than what he considered to be the conventionally held wisdom of the day.

The White House Years and Years of Upheaval take the story of Henry Kissinger's influence and power from his appointment to the White House staff at the beginning of Richard Nixon's presidency to the period of Nixon's resignation, when Kissinger was Secretary of State. He continued in that office under President Ford until 1977, so his public memoirs are not yet complete. George Ball, though not rising to quite such high office, has had an official career spanning a wide range of years and appointments, and fitting into what has become, in the last two generations, a traditional American pattern of in-and-out' involvement with public office. He is now full of years, and his memoirs, in the sense that he is in retirement, are a full retrospective of his career. The two works offer a fascinating comparison at almost every level, especially as Ball has much to say of the Nixon-Kissinger period, which followed his own period of particular prominence under Kennedy and Johnson. And yet they could hardly be more different. It is not so much that they are chalk and cheese; the contrast between haute cuisine and nouvelle cuisine is, I think, a better analogy, in relation both to the richness of the fare and the size of the portions.

A common theme of all the books under review is the neglect of change by scholars in the social sciences generally, and especially in the study of international relations. A number of reasons are offered in explanation of this. One is that change is hard whereas continuity is comparatively easy. What stays the same over time is simpler to map than that which changes. In any young science static comes before dynamic analysis. (Gilpin, p. 4) Another reason for the neglect of change is the dead weight of tradition. The argument in the volume is that established theoretical approaches to the field have over-emphasized continuity at the expense of change.' (Buzan and Jones, p. 2; see also Holsti et al., p. xvii) A third reason is the decline in grand theory. (Gilpin, p. 4) We are reluctant to ask big questions about society any more and are concentrating on small and middle-sized ones. Fourthly, of course, there is the now well-known western bias in the study of international relations, and a parochialism which allows no purchase on the non-western systems whose study would be important for a theory of international political change. (Gilpin, p. 5) A fifth reason for the failure to do justice to change is anti-intellectualism. The search for laws of change is futile because of the uniqueness, and complexity of historical events. (Gilpin, pp. 4–5) No order can be imposed on the empire of circumstance. Finally, there is the idea that the conservatism of the western practitioner of political science conditions his or her treatment of the subject. (Gilpin, pp. 6–7) A preference for stability, or for, at most, orderly social change, makes it difficult to give a proper account of the radical change that would make the life of the observer uncomfortable. It is not surprising, says Chris Farrands, that one looks in vain to conservative thinkers for ‘an account, still less a theory, of international social change’. (Buzan and Jones, p. 87)

In the October, 1982, issue of the Review, John Baylis presented a series of observations on recent issues in peace research and peace education. Such comments are most welcome, for they represent at least the beginning of a dialogue between peace researchers and ‘outsiders’. This dialogue is long overdue. It is not surprising that its start has been delayed for, as Baylis points out, the debates and conflicts within peace research itself may have retarded its wider acceptance. Yet it could be argued that, having been left to get itself together, peace research is now better placed to make itself known to a wide audience of outsiders. If this is the case, then the phase of establishing an identity, the period of confusion, doubt and debate, may be concluded, with positive results. Such a thesis informs the following remarks, which contrast with those of Baylis; though in some respects I am in agreement with him.

Like Goodwin's collection, McMahan's book is entirely and Hare and Joynt's book largely concerned with the merits and demerits of nuclear deterrence; and so is one contribution (Edward Rogers') to Sims' collection. This latter work, besides other essays on ethical topics, is also concerned with international law and institutions, as is Geoffrey Best's essay in Goodwin. But the three works dealing with the ethics of deterrence are more internally cohesive, and prone to cross swords with one another, and it is these which deserve the greatest attention. Of these three, the books by McMahan and by Hare and Joynt are valuable contributions to applied moral philosophy, embodying the rigour in argument to be expected of philosophers, while the diverse standpoints expressed by theologians, strategists and the philosopher Barrie Paskins in the Goodwin collection, produced for the Council on Christian Approaches to Defence and Disarmament (CCADD), are well compared and assessed in the volume's 'Concluding Comments' by Ronald Hope-Jones.