This essay seeks to answer an important question of normative political theory concerning the developing countries: What claims to economic benefits are people justified in pressing against governments that are preoccupied with the development of their economies? Two alternative principles of distributive justice—the principle of maximizing growth and the principle of minimizing poverty—are examined with special reference to the circumstances of developing societies. An attempt is made to bring intergenerational considerations systematically to bear on the problem of economic rights in the present. It is concluded that there is an absolute minimum level of welfare to which everyone is entitled, and that this level is usefully conceived in terms of “basic needs.”

Two radical models of economic foreign policy making are summarized: instrumentalist and structuralist. By means of an issue-based policy paradigm, the views of several leading conventional scholars are described. The contrasting radical and conventional models are shown to be related—radicals providing useful insights into the setting of policy and conventional scholars being strongest regarding the policy process. Cautious synthesis is recommended to students of U.S. foreign economic policy making.

The relationship between economic system and political regime has recently reemerged as a central issue in social science. An examination of the political perceptions and actions of individual firms and of sectors during the uncertainties of decolonization permits a new approach to this question, using the concept of political exposure. The firm or sector characteristics that are associated with greater political exposure are assessed. Political preferences cannot be equated with either political action or outcomes, however. The links between capitalism and political regime require further refinement and qualification.

Opinion poll and behavioral evidence indicates that public resistance to the growth of taxation and state expenditure has increased significantly during the last decade in many advanced industrial democracies. This paper examines trends in the magnitude, composition, and consequences of taxation and government spending in relation to cross-national patterns of popular opposition to the expansion of the welfare state in five European industrial societies. The evidence suggests that the politically optimal system of taxation and expenditure relies heavily on indirect and programmatic taxes rather than on direct, general-revenue levies, and channels state resources toward cash transfers to households rather than into labor-intensive public consumption.

Several recent studies of the Vietnam War challenge the generally accepted view that American policy in the war was a political and moral failure. It is now argued that “the system worked” because U.S. policy reflected a democratically formulated consensus, and that the military conduct of the war does not warrant the moral condemnation it has received. Each of these arguments is vitiated by factual and logical errors. The first reveals a failure to grasp the importance of constitutionalism and the rule of law in the American democracy. The second—that U.S. military methods were morally defensible—confuses morality with expediency, and rests on a mistaken understanding of the distinction between intentional and unintentional injury to noncombatants. If there is a case against the accepted view, it has yet to be made.

Several recent books on India have focused on issues of nationalism and ethnic conflict, policy and ideological differences, parties and elections, and the stability of Indian democracy. The most useful contributions to the understanding of Indian politics and to social science theory have come from works that use analytical categories that have proven themselves cross-culturally (namely, those of class, status group, and power), and that lay bare through case studies the sources of the conflicts and cleavages in Indian society that both threaten and sustain democracy. Less useful are works that impose on Indian political behavior explanatory frameworks, political ideals, and methodologies derived from Western political history and culture-bound social science, such as political divisions between Left and non-Left, the two-party system, citizenship, and survey research.

Three recent works provide the point of departure for assessing the performance of the new profession of policy analysis. Both the scope of the enterprise and the standards it adopts for evaluating policy are found to be excessively narrow. A revised framework for policy analysis is proposed whose scope is broadened to encompass the design of policy-making procedures as well as substantive policy outcomes. Such procedures have a vital impact upon how policy problems are defined and how preferences concerning them are formed. The standards for evaluating policy are expanded to include an explicit consideration of citizenship. All policies and policy-making procedures directly or indirectly affect the capacity for self-government. Therefore they must be judged, at least in part, in terms of how they influence the capabilities of citizens to participate in public life and the willingness of citizens to do so.