“[Policy] is like a play in many acts which unfolds inevitably once the curtain is raised. To declare then that the performance will not take place is an absurdity. The play will go on, either by means of the actors... or by means of the spectators who mount the stage.... Intelligent people never consider this the essence of the problem, however. For them it lies in the decision whether the curtain is to be raised at all, whether the spectators are to be assembled, and in the intrinsic quality of the play….” With these words of Metternich, Dr. Henry A. Kissinger begins the chapter on the definition of the political equilibrium in his book on problems of peace in Europe between 1812–1822.

Publication of Politics Among Nations is another important milestone in the development of systematic studies of international political phenomena into an established and recognized branch of higher learning.

Comparison of this impressive treatise with any work published before 1914 reveals in dramatic fashion how much ground has already been covered. Before World War I, as Grayson Kirk has described, the study of international relations was largely carried on in the sterile atmosphere of international law and conventionalized diplomatic history. The crusade for the League of Nations opened up a new field and gave great impetus to the study of world organization. This newcomer practically stole the show during the 1920's. But the course of world events did not fulfill the bright hopes fostered by schemes for disarmament, outlawry of war, collective security, judicial settlement of disputes, and codification of international law. Teachers and writers, however, continued to play the same old records, which sounded more and more unconvincing as the dictators prepared the stage for another world war.

During the past decade policy makers and academic observers have become increasingly aware of the political importance of economic relations, especially among the advanced industrialized states. Some of this awareness came precipitously when monetary crises threatened not only individual currencies such as sterling, the franc, or the dollar, but also the basic structure of the international monetary system. Some of this awareness was more incremental, as with the growing fear that neomercantilist trade policies might result in a reversal of the postwar policies of trade liberalization pursued by the Western industrialized states.

Two American debates on foreign policy and national security. The Reagan administration and those who share its ideology see today's Soviet Union as not much different from yesterday's, and yesterday's Soviet Union as not much different from Nazi Germany. Like its progenitors in the 1930s, the modern Soviet Union is a “totalitarian” state, and therefore by nature expansionist, armed to the teeth, disposed to violence, fond of diplomatic tests of political will, and—as a consequence of all these factors —hard to deter and harder to beat. A different view prevails among most of the arms control community, the NATO allies, and some American academics. In its foreign policy, the Soviet Union is seen as a fairly typical great power whose behavior in international politics can be explained by the mixture of fear, greed, and stupidity that has characterized most great powers in the past as they have tried to secure their borders and pursue their interests in a world without law. It does not like to take great risks, it fears war, and it is, at worst, opportunistically expansionist. In sharp contrast to Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union is more conservative than reckless; if anything, nuclear weapons have reinforced this conservatism.

With the end of the Fourth French Republic and the apparently effective performance of the Fifth Republic, France no longer provides an obvious touchstone for studies of “unstable” democracies. Perhaps as a result of the search for another such example, there has been an increase in American scholarly interest in Italy. Recent research—when combined with the studies of LaPalombara, Barnes, and Zariski, and with the studies conducted by Italian political scientists—provides a fund of organized and readily available information which may be used to test both general hypotheses and specific ones about Italian politics.

The uncertainty about whether atomic weapons will be used in future war, whether local or general, lends itself to political exploitation in the cold war. The efficiency of nuclear weapons in wartime, and their resulting threat-value in either war- or peacetime, constitute their political-military worth. In peacetime, the threat-value of weapons can be exploited in many ways: by an ultimatum, by authoritative or inspired statements on capabilities or intentions, by studied disclosures of new weapons at ceremonial occasions, by means of maneuvers, redeployments of forces, or by so-called demonstrations.

HUNDREDS of books have been written to describe the ways in which particular groups or individuals have come to exercise domination over large numbers of their fellows. Despite this tempting wealth of factual material, or perhaps because of it, modern social science has very largely avoided any attempt to discover and explain, within a strictly empirical framework, what recurring patterns there may be in these myriads of events. The following pages represent a very modest effort in this direction.

If there is indeed a distinguishable process of acquiring power, or, as is more likely, a series of such processes, the attempt to distinguish them must be formulated in terms of a time sequence. It should indicate the conditions in the society as a whole that lead to a concentration of power. In addition, it should indicate the sequence of stages through which the concentration takes place.

Chinese Communist military policy significantly affects our preparations for war and hopes for peace. However, we have few public studies of Chinese military policy and the reasoning on which it rests.1 This article tries to set forth the calculus or rationale which Peking employs to select military strategy and tactics. In other words, it makes no attempt to attack or defend Chinese military policy or to appraise that policy's specific strengths and weaknesses. It does try to locate the important factors that operate in the minds of Chinese decision-makers and Peking's perception of the consequences of different tactical choices. When we say that the Chinese have a calculus for military policy, we do not mean to imply that it works well or badly. We do imply that the Chinese have a military calculus which imposes a predictable pattern on their military policy. Obviously, an identical military calculus does not operate in the minds of all Chinese leaders. Accordingly, “Peking thinks” is shorthand for the “averaged” views that can be induced from the public record of Chinese words and acts.

In the general election of June 1951, the French Communist Party lost almost 10 per cent of the votes it had obtained in 1946 and, thanks to an electoral system that was designed to reduce its parliamentary representation, almost half of its deputies. These results should not be interpreted as a serious defeat for a party that still holds the allegiance of one-quarter of the French people. Its loss of votes, particularly among peasant and middle-class elements, did not affect its major strongholds in industrial areas and in some agricultural regions. Communism in France remains a major political force in a position to threaten both political stability and capacity for effective military defense. The presence of a strong Communist Party, and to a lesser extent of a Gaullist Party that is in part its by-product, prevents the coalition government from adopting a forceful and constructive policy and giving the French people a sense of effective leadership.

The authors of three recent books attempt to account for Soviet military developments by exploring a wide range of possible explanations. In Soviet Strategic Forces, Berman and Baker adopt a“requirements“approach; they argue that the Soviet strategic posture has developed mainly in response to threats generated by the West. Andrew Cockburn, in The Threat, maintains that internal factors—in particular, bureaucratic politics and the workings of the military-industrial complex—are responsible for Soviet weapons decisions. David Holloway's more eclectic explanation, in The Soviet Union and the Arms Race, describes both the internal and external determinants of Soviet military policy. The evolution of Soviet regional nuclear policy, and particularly the deployment of the SS-20 missile, can be accounted for by several different explanations—indicating a problem of overdetermination of causes. One way to resolve this problem is by adopting a framework developed by James Kurth to explain U.S. weapons procurement. It suggests that the“modes of causation” for Soviet weapons decisions are generally the opposite of those for American decisions. This generalization is consistent with what an analysis based on the relative strengths of state and societal forces in the two countries would predict.

Among all the social sciences, the art of model building is perhaps best developed in economics.Models or theories are conceptualizations of and abstractions from reality; they rely intrinsically on ldquo;if-thenrdquo;statements and should lead to testable propositions if they are to be of any use at all.

It would be difficult to give a brief description of all the important characteristics of economic models, for there are numerous types, designed to describe or explain completely different aspects of economic reality. Most of them contain as essential ingredients some statements about the technical environment (e.g., marginal cost curves rise after a certain point) and some statements about human motivation (e.g., the entrepreneur desires to maximize profits; the consumer maximizes utility).The models themselves can have either descriptive or normative use. The Keynesian model or theory “explains” the factors diat cause the level of national income to be what it is and allows one to deduce the direction of change in national income resulting from changes in the parameters. The usefulness of such a descriptive model is determined by whether or not its conclusions are testable propositions. Normative models, most frequently encountered in economics in welfare economics and in operations research, also utilize statements about environment and motivations but do not pretend to predict; infact they merely prescribe. The test of the usefulness of such normative models is whether ornot their prescriptions are at least in principle imple—mentable.

The postwar period has been an unusual era in the annals of political science. Numerous practitioners of the discipline have ventured into areas previously unexplored, formulating new concepts, constructing new conceptual frameworks and models, putting forth new hypotheses and theories previously unstated, borrowing and importing ideas and methodological tools from sister disciplines, and improving upon old and innovating new research techniques (particularly quantitative techniques)—all in the interest of pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge. It seems no exaggeration to say that this is one of the most creative, if not necessarily the most fruitful, episodes in the development of the discipline.

Dag Hammarskjöld not long before his death called attention to the mainspring propelling the successful operation of the United Nations. The growth of the United Nations into an increasingly effective organization, he declared, will be dependent upon the cooperation extended by its Member nations in making the Charter “a living reality in practical political action as it is already in law” and in giving enhanced respect to United Nations decisions.

THE student of international relations knows from sad experience what it means to starve in the midst of plenty. His vast sprawling field is the subject of almost endless writing and comment. Memoirs, documents, autobiographies, newspapers, government hand-outs, propaganda publications, and the like pour over his desk in a dismaying stream which grows greater year by year, defying him to master it. If he seeks to preserve his sanity by arbitrarily limiting his interests and investigations to certain geographic areas, he is acutely conscious of the inter-relationship between what happens in his chosen field and developments outside in the terra incognita. If he selects certain topical aspects of his field, such as the study of population, or raw materials, or commercial policy for emphasis, he is quickly enmeshed in the same web of frustrations. He cannot master the entire field and he cannot safely limit himself to a narrow specialization.

Observers have recently challenged the fundamental tenets of NATO's nuclear doctrine, above all its potentially fateful threat—or bluff—to employ theater nuclear weapons to repel Soviet conventional attacks. One group of these commentators has come to view NATO theater nuclear weapons as an anachronism that is neither necessary for deterrence and defense nor usable under any prudent calculation. Another group envisages new weapons and new doctrines that would make theater nuclear weapons more credible instruments of U.S. and NATO foreign policy. The article explores briefly some of the sources of this radical disagreement.

Many students of world politics take their subject so seriously that they often mistake their conception of reality for reality itself. There may be an objective truth about any given event or trend in world affairs, but the observer must use some method to comprehend it and, in so doing, he inevitably renders the truth subjective. The “established facts” of world politics are, in effect, no more than widespread agreement—what I shall call an intersubjective consensus—among actors and experts as to the existence and relevance of particular phenomena. Total comprehension of the realities of world politics can thus only be approximated. The greater the intersubjective consensus, the greater the comprehension and the more “real” the reality.

The Stalinists consider parliaments to be only schools for extra-parliamentary means of struggle. Were the Czechoslovak democratic leaders aware of this attitude while cooperating with the Communists both in the Parliament and Government of Czechoslovakia after 1945? If they were, what countermeasures did they devise? Even if the daily political fight over party or local issues necessarily narrowed their horizon, responsible democratic leaders had a fairly accurate picture of the situation even in 1945, when the Communists, thanks to the presence of the Red Army, could have seized power. The democrats' awareness of danger and their decision as to countermeasures were, however, influenced by many hopes and illusions, some justifiable in view of the international situation at the end of the war.