State institutions and organizations in Black Africa are less developed than almost anywhere else, and political instability has been prevalent. Yet, these serious empirical weaknesses have not led to enforced jurisdictional change. In order to explain the persistence of some of the weakest states in the world, the authors argue that state jurisdictions in Black Africa have been maintained primarily by the international society of states. Unlike the states that formed in Europe at an earlier period, many Black African states evolved—and survived—in the absence of effective national governments. Whereas state jurisdictions and international society once were consequences of the success and survival of states, today in Black Africa—and perhaps elsewhere, especially in the Third World—they are more likely to be conditions.

Economists have only recently begun to characterize the behavior of the state as rentor profit-seeking. One of the ways in which the rent-seeking state may maximize the resources it extracts from taxpayers is through diversification of the tax revenue base. Empirical evidence presented in this paper may help to explain the extent to which countries are able to engage in this form of rent seeking. The highly developed country's ability to diversify its tax base is constrained by the ease of exit of taxable assets from its jurisdiction; with the exception of this limitation, countries with more diversified tax bases collect more revenue relative to national income. This conclusion does not hold, however, for geographic diversification (i.e., federalism). The case is different for developing countries: although they may have a more diversified tax base than developed countries, they are unable to exploit it because of administrative weakness; therefore, rent seeking on the part of the state may be predicted by more conventional factors such as income or trade.

While development strategies of international assistance organizations and governments of less developed states have become more complex over the past decade, the methods of planning and management used during the 1960s and 1970s to formulate and implement policies have become less effective. Synoptic planning and scientific management techniques are used to control development activities rather than to facilitate and encourage the flexibility, experimentation, and social learning that are essential. The prospects of improving control-oriented administration are constrained by difficulties in defining objectives; lack of appropriate data; inadequate understanding of local social and cultural conditions; ineffective means of controlling behavior; the dynamics of political interaction; and low levels of administrative capacity in developing countries. Changes that must be made include: recognizing explicitly the uncertainty and complexity of development problems; managing development activities as policy experiments; building widespread administrative capacity; relying on adjunctive and strategic planning; simplifying analytical techniques; creating incentives for error detection and for innovation; and viewing effective program and project management in new ways.

The article examines Japan's diplomatic style and rhetoric, actual policies, and underlying attitudes toward North-South problems, focusing on her reactions to demands for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) by the LDCs. The conventional classification of Japan as “right-wing conservative” is shown to be misleading. Her policies are often less conservative than her rhetoric. As a result of her success as a recently developed country, her close observation of the industrialization of Asia's newly industrializing countries, and her status as a still growing latecomer—experienced in “structural adjustments” for her own benefit and faced by growing protectionist pressure from other developed countries—Japan is perhaps the most realistically optimistic of the states concerned about the prospect of the NIEO demands for a “new division of labor” and “structural change.” It is possible that Japan will assume some activist role as a mediator in the North-South dialogue, perhaps in the quiet areas of negotiation and policy formulation rather than in the arena of public diplomacy such as summit meetings.

The public choice model of urban residential location offers an opportunity to integrate economic and political models of migration, and thus has broad applicability as a positive model of both individual behavior and national policies relating to international migration. The authors describe the basic economic model of the urban migration process and explore its dynamics. They utilize this model to explain the migratory behavior of individuals and groups and the reactions of national governments, whether “sending” or “receiving” the migrants. Finally, they examine the policy implications of such a model.

Because alternative sources of energy cannot be developed fast enough in the short term, the problems of energy security in the next decade will continue to focus on oil. The problem is not that the world will run out of oil in this century, but that low-cost oil is heavily concentrated in the Persian Gulf, an area of domestic and international political instability. The current oil glut and soft markets will not solve the energy security problem. Market forces are a necessary but not sufficient element in an effective strategy for energy security. The same can be said about an effective American military presence in the area. Current enthusiasm for enhancing military capabilities can provide only part of a solution when we are dealing with a transnational system such as international energy. Successful analysis must draw on insights both from traditional realism and from studies of power and interdependence. Theories of interdependence and transnational systems are not based upon a world of detente, but remain relevant to the complex threats to national security we face, such as energy in the 1980s.

The study of international relations has been dominated by scholars working in the United States and has concentrated on questions that have been important to the U.S. as it emerged as the leading international power after 1945. These tendencies have limited the questions asked, the concepts generated, and the perspectives relevant to theory building. These limits can only be overcome by integrating the work of specialists from other countries. To this end, recent contributions by a number of French scholars are examined through a review of four publications. They provide a deeper sense of the options open to lesser states than is usually found in American contributions, a greater acceptance of flux and change in the international system, with less weight given to external influences on foreign policy formation and more to domestic politics and to personal relations among political leaders.

Who benefits how much from economic development? Three approaches to measuring the income distribution effects of growth are described and contrasted, and the experiences of various countries are classified accordingly. Seven books analyzing patterns of change in income distribution in Asia are reviewed. Although some of the authors feel that “getting the prices right” in a market economy with a minimum of government interference is the way to achieve growth and distributional goals, a better conclusion is that synergism between policy and initial conditions explains the presence or absence of equitable growth.