A new body of literature, including India's Political Economy by Francine Frankel, argues that the organization of the rural poor can facilitate a “democratic socialist” mode of development in India. The author dissents from this left-liberal world view. The organization of the lower classes has seldom led to a significant redistribution of economic resources in a democracy; it is not likely to do so in India. Attempts to convert lower-class interests into redistributive policies face institutionalized obstacles the ideological, organizational, electoral, governmental, and bureaucratic levels. If the lower classes gain effective political power despite these obstacles, the stability of the democratic process generally tends to be undermined. For these reasons, simultaneous optimism for India's democracy and for India's poor is not realistic.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, scholars in the fields of Soviet politics and comparative communism began to reexamine the political and social character of the Soviet Union and Soviet-type regimes in the wake of more than a decade of de-Stalinization. They questioned the validity of the totalitarian model (at least in its more rigid forms) that suggested a static image of politics and society in communist systems, and proposed concepts more cognizant of the dynamic nature of these systems. A prominent theme in much of this literature was that social differentiation resulting from economic development and the emergence of modern industrial society would prove incompatible with continued dictatorial rule by a “vanguard party” following a militant, Utopian ideology. In particular, the rise of a large elite stratum of skilled technical and professional personnel was expected to militate against the long-term viability of a revolutionary regime. Analysts proposed that, under pressure from this group, whose contributions are indispensable to economic growth and development, the party leadership would eventually be compelled to abandon radical social and economic restructuring through revolutions from above in favor of more legal-rational modes of operation, and see its own role as the balancer of the various interests typical of a modern society.

In NATO's early days statesmen spoke glowingly about subordinating national military interests to a truly international “balanced collective force,” a goal similar to classic free trade in its promise of mutual gain secured at the cost of dependence upon foreigners. Naturally, in so nationalistic a field as defense, achievement fell far short of this sweeping aspiration. But we are ill-placed now to belittle either the slogan or the degree to which we realized an international division of military labor. Nowadays the slogan is “interdependence,” but in practice this seems to mean performance deviating still more widely from the goal of integrated defense.

There are fads in scholarship as well as in fashion. Just JL now, the current fad, with respect to American diplomatic history, is to belabor what is called “Wilsonianism” with all the sarcasm and dignified invective at the writer's disposal. It is almost de rigueur to expatiate upon the prescient wisdom of the Founding Fathers, to pass over most of the period between John Quincy Adams and William McKinley as relatively unimportant, and to concentrate the heaviest guns of criticism upon the “Utopianism” of the first half of the twentieth century. Only now, and belatedly, we are told, is the United States beginning to come down from the clouds of illusion and to survey realistically the true nature of the world with which its diplomatists and policymakers must cope. Only now are we beginning once again to measure possible policy decisions by the yardsticks of power and “the national interest.”

China has been such a big unit during most of the last two thousand years that it has habitually been thought of in terms of models, whether Legalist, Confucian, Neo-Confucian, or Communist. To put it another way, the remarkable early success of Chinese administrators in setting up and maintaining a centralized bureaucracy was part and parcel of their inveterate penchant for blueprinting the social order. Today "China" is one of the largest concrete referents commonly used in discussions of world politics. Generalizing about China is a particularly daring venture, but it is a game we continue to play because the Chinese have always played it. Before appraising the most interesting recent treatment of China in this customary fashion—Franz Schur-mann's book Ideology and Organization in Communist China—I should like to look briefly at the fashion itself.

Dr. Nolte's Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche is a work of exceptionally broad range that combines description, comparison, and interpretation in an admirable manner. It attempts three major tasks requiring skills rarely combined in a single historian: a general classification of Fascist systems aiming at a typology; a special examination of the main features of one pre-Fascist (Action Française) and two Fascist movements (in Mussolini's Italy and in Hitler's Germany); and an overall interpretation, in both historical and philosophical terms, of fascism as the dominant force of the period of European history extending from 1919 to 1945.

Historically, communal conflict seems to have occurred in four environments—during the evolution of the major European states, in post-independence colonies, during the disintegration of polyglot empires, and in post-industrialized societies. Within these environments, six conditions serve to heighten the possibility of the use of violence. These conditions include: (i) the presence of communal cleavages based on religion, race, or language, combinations of these cleavages being more volatile than their occurrence singly; (2) the absence of a common value or identity; (3) the concurrent development of antagonistic nationalisms; (4) the possession of an economic or cultural elite status by a subordinate communal group; (5) differential rates of modernization; and (6) the displacement of anticolonial feelings upon a communal group perceived as associated with a colonial power. The examples of the Copts in Egypt and the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire are presented as illustrations of the interaction of these conditions in two different environments and the use or absence of violence in communal conflict.

Fernand Braudel's immense history of international politics in the sixteenth century s i significant for analytic social scientists from two standpoints—methodological and substantive. Although Braudel does not pretend to present a theory of history or international relations, he utilizes a broad range of geographic and economic theory to provide a novel conceptual framework. He devotes particular attention to defining boundaries in time and space. Braudel is highly innovative in his use of quantitative techniques, as in his analysis of communications potentials to delineate the spatial configurations of the sixteenth-century world. Just as Braudel's eclectic methodology suggests alternatives to approaches dominant in North American social science, his substantive emphasis on the pre-eminence of Latin civilization during the formative period of the modern Western world provides an impressive alternative perspective to the Whig interpretation of sixteenth-century history which has generally prevailed in English-speaking countries.

The evolution of theories of political development has gone full circle with its current “return to Europe” and to history. Scholars are once more examining the early state-building process and especially the extractive and repressive activities of its military, bureaucratic, and taxation systems. A geographical and historical model of the timing of state formation in Europe since 1500 reveals situations and necessities that explain much of the history of various European states. The changing dynamics of collective action and violence since 1830, moreover, reflect the underlying transformation of society and organizational life. But it is still too early to attempt an exhaustive synthesis of the different theories of crisis and political change.

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.

Only small gains can be made in the study of political economy without building upon the traditions of Marx and rationality models. Deep are the historical observations and theoretical linkages that these schools have given us. Rationality models give us a feeling for the coalitional and strategic elements in political calculations. They inform us as to the behavioral constraints that will operate on political actors. Marxian tradition sensitizes us to the institutional constraints which markets and private property give to the political process. It is therefore unfortunate that two recent books regarding political economy-Tufte's Political Control of the Economy and Lindblom's Politics and Markets-avoid both of these traditions. Their contribution to our understanding of political economy suffers because of this omission.

In one of the landmark contributions to the strategic literature of the late 1950's, Albert Wohlstetter advanced the disquieting thesis that the vulnerability of our strategic retaliatory force (then consisting largely of overseas-based manned bombers and rather primitive, unhardened IRBM's) to a well-orchestrated Soviet surprise attack had come to suggest worrisome implications for continued U.S. security. The credibility of a deterrent posture, he pointedly emphasized, presupposed the ability of the deterring power to convey to its opponent an absolute certainty that any attack, however massive, would be answered by an unacceptably devastating reprisal.

This book is a highly professional effort to move toward a unification of concept in the fields of cultural anthropology, sociology, and psychology. The reviewer is an economic historian who, at the limit of generosity, can be described as an interested observer of these fields.

The reviewing procedure raises some difficulties. Although the obscurity of the contributions to the volume varies, it is only with sustained effort that the amateur can come to believe that he has conquered the barrier of private vocabulary which the behavioral scientists have erected, no doubt for good and sufficient reasons. But one trained in modern economics least of all has a right to complain.

In the history of wars and diplomacy in the Western state system of the past several centuries, the most important single boundary is surely that of northeastern France. Since the unification of both Germany and Italy in the last century, the one territorial problem within western Europe that has most seriously endangered the peace of Europe and the world is that of Alsace-Lorraine. While the Germans regarded the annexation of 1871 as a restoration of areas once a part of Germany, they did not return to any previously established boundary, but rather created one that was newly drawn for the purpose. What factors influenced them to place the boundary—the international boundary from 1871 to 1919—precisely where they did place it?

DEEP crises in the life of a nation sometimes lay bare with lightning clarity those basic social ties, loyalties, and commitments which render possible some maintenance of order and control when everything seems about to break down or disappear. In 1945, year of the deepest crisis that the German people have undergone in modern times, groups and organizations like the Junkers or the Nazi Party simply vanished; others, like the military, disappeared at least temporarily or, like the industrialists, were gravely weakened. It was the bureaucracy which became the bedrock, the irreducible minimum of social cohesion upon which, first locally, then in larger units, society was rebuilt. Subsequently, confirmed in its traditional position of control by the occupation powers (certain measures of attempted political purge and technical reorganization notwithstanding), its actual power was enhanced by the innumerable tasks of postwar reconstruction, from the building-up of entire new administrations (in the new Länder as well as on the bi-zonal and then federal levels of government) to the handling of what has been aptly called the “universe of claims” arising out of Nazi, war, and postwar conditions.

Are there prismatic societies in Africa? That such a question can now be asked is as much a measure of changes in the study of administration as it is a recognition of new patterns of government emerging from African independence. During both the colonial and the current period, students of African bureaucracy have contributed little to administrative theory. Before independence, scholars concentrated on formal studies designed to raise efficiency. Since independence the field has been dominated by studies of political parties, trade unions, and voluntary associations, because these organizations carried on the independence struggle, often over the opposition of the bureaucracy. Behavioral studies of colonial administration and independent Afrir can civil services are badly needed.

A Heavy onslaught on the (predominantly American) “scientific” school of students of international relations has recently been delivered to the evident satisfaction and comfort of those who practice or respond most comfortably to the “classical approach.” Still, the defeat of one school—if defeat there was—need not, of course, necessarily redound to the honor of the other, and it is surely worth considering what positive case has been made out on this occasion, explicitly or by implication, in favor of “classicism.” In fact, this article will argue, neither approach is entirely adequate. Neither provides a really firm basis on which to found a coherent and well-integrated field of study or—what is undoubtedly more important—a framework within which the facts of contemporary international life can be selected, compared, and interpreted in a thoroughly valid and enlightening manner.

In a period of search for politico-military détente between the major nuclear powers, one cannot avoid the question of whether the theories and categories for the analysis of international relations, especially those involving the role of military force, are appropriate and clarifying. Although they strive to make use of timeless categories, social scientists, especially when analyzing international relations, must take into consideration the changing historical context. In this paper I will attempt to reassess the well-known issue of the limits of military intervention in international relations by advanced industrial societies. I will seek to extend and formulate the ideas which, in The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait, were vaguely expressed in the notion of a constabulary.

Within the last year or so there have been signs of another attempt to halt the drift toward anarchic restrictionism in international trade. Its origins may be discerned in the conference of British Commonwealth Finance Ministers summoned to London in January 1952 to consider the third of the sterling area's postwar crises. This conference, after branding as “palliatives” the measures taken to remedy recurring balance of payments deficits, concluded that a lasting solution of the sterling area's problems was possible only“when the world-wide trade of the sterling area is on a substantially higher level than at present, when sterling is freely convertible into all the main currencies of the world, and its position need no longer be supported by import restrictions.” A year later, another Commonwealth conference reaffirmed these objections in more striking language: “The Commonwealth countries look outward to…co-operation with other countries, not inward to a closed association. It is their common purpose, by their own efforts and together with others, to increase world trade for the benefit of all peoples.” The first formal step toward widening the basis of this initiative took place in March of this year, when Mr. Anthony Eden and Mr. R. A. Butler, acting in this matter for the British Commonwealth as a whole, discussed the economic prospect with Mr. John Foster Dulles, and found “reason to hope for continued progress towards a better-balanced, growing world trade and the restoration of a multilateral system of trade and payments.” From Washington, Mr. Eden and Mr. Butler went to Paris in fulfillment of a promise to “keep in step with the Organization for European Economic Co-operation.”