Weapons systems have a great impact on national security decision making. In particular, the use of air power for political coercion or “compellence” is a tempting option when a nation has overwhelming aerial capabilities relative to an opponent. Israel's decision to launch air attacks deep within Egypt during the 1970 War of Attrition suggests that coercive bombing may not yield expected benefits and effect unanticipated costs. The decision process that produced the bombing choice was characterized by inadequate search for alternatives; conservative revision of opinion; faulty evaluation of consequences in terms of likelihood, benefits, and costs; a failure to consider value trade-offs between military and political dimensions; and overestimation of the probability of preferred outcomes, coupled with underestimation of the likelihood of undesirable outcomes.

Japan has suddenly emerged as a powerful home country for multinational corporations, offering a new form of competition in the world market. She is making all-out efforts to set up manufacturing operations overseas, in addition to ventures in extractive industries in which Japan, as a resource-poor country, is naturally interested. For a number of reasons, Japan has taken up direct overseas production as a national desideratum, even though the majority of individual firms are not ready to do so on their own. A variety of governmental measures have been taken to defray part of the private costs and to realize the social benefits of overseas investment. The article explores how and why Japanese industry has suddenly gone multinational; it examines the sources of competitiveness in this new form of international economic activity, and points out that overseas investment is now an integral part of Japan's strategy for economic growth and of her foreign economic diplomacy.

The capacity of the British Government to pursue and achieve economic purposes under liberal managed capitalism without the consent, cooperation, or passive acquiescence of organized producer groups is inherently limited. The ineluctable fact is that the British Government is dependent on the holders of economic power for achieving economic purposes. For this reason, national policy makers enter into partnership arrangements and contractual relationships with vital corporatist forces. Deliberate, premeditated, collaborative action is needed to ensure correlation between the government's intentions and achievements. Concertation, which represents a partnership between the public and private sectors as well as cooperative give-and-take in reaching agreements on economic objectives, enables the government to govern.

A summary and reinterpretation of Weber's Sociology of Religion and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism provides the framework within which four contemporary studies in political culture, which purport to be in the Weberian tradition, are examined. The framework distinguishes three levels of analysis in which “religion,” as a social fact, can be defined. The social, economic, or political consequences that can be attributed to religious adherence are different depending on the doctrine of the charismatic founder, the practical religion, or the practical religion of the converted. The author suggests a new, perhaps more fruitful agenda for research based on the methodological arguments of the paper.

The recent emergence of harshly repressive military governments in several of the industrially most advanced nations of Latin America has called into question earlier hypotheses of modernization theory regarding the links between socioeconomic modernization and democracy. Guillermo O'Donnell has made an important contribution to explaining this new authoritarianism and to using the recent Latin American experience as a basis for proposing a major reformulation of the earlier hypotheses. Yet O'Donnell's analysis requires significant modification if its potential contribution is to be realized. Highly aggregated conceptual categories such as “bureaucratic-authoritarianism” should be abandoned, and his explanatory framework should be broadened to explicity incorporate the crucial political differences among Latin American countries, as well as the impact of the international economic and political system. A revised explanation for the rise of authoritarianism is presented to illustrate how some of these modifications could be applied in future research on political change in Latin America.

The author analyzes recent efforts by Soviet and East European theorists to explain the interrelationships among science, technology, and social change in socialist and capitalist countries, and to understand the role that scientific and technical advances are playing and can play in the transition to new forms of “developed socialism.” Theories of “the scientific-technological revolution” are examined from various perspectives: their intellectual content, their social and ideological functions, and the reciprocal influences of ideas, policy, and administrative practice. This essay brings to the attention of Western readers a type of literature strongly encouraged by contemporary Soviet leaders; it is a major evolving component of Marxism-Leninism, and may be influencing or reflecting some of the changing policies and attitudes of communist political elites.