Until recently it has been taken more or less for granted by many students of the subject that totalitarian polities will not in the long run tolerate any form of pluralism in their power structure. Lucid and convincing arguments have been constructed to support this contention, in studies of the several historical manifestations of totalitarianism. Implicit in these speculations was the more general view that it is in the very nature of power, and especially political power, that it will not gladly suffer any rivals. In the West the very virtues of democracy have been defended precisely on the grounds that democracy tends through its procedural commitments to diffuse power, to counteract, as it were, the inherent tendency of power toward infinite selfaggrandizement.

An epigram coined under the Third Republic presents the political Frenchman as torn between the claims of his heart on the Left and of his pocketbook on the Right. At a time when a nationalistic policy in Algeria draws heavily on all pocketbooks this idea seems out of date: today a good section of the French public is trying to reconcile accepted attitudes with a new policy, and the old phraseology of the Left conceals less and less successfully an ideology of the Right. The trend is strengthened by transfusions of new blood from a colonial domain lost or endangered in the last few years; that is, by the arrival in metropolitan France of tens of thousands of politically active and actively resentful citizens from Indo-China, Morocco, Tunisia, impenitently expressing their disrespect for democratic values, their wartime sympathies for Pétain and Vichy, and their contempt for the traditional language of political conformity.

In June 1957, when he sent this book to the publisher, Max Lerner must have been very tired. The jacket blurb says the preparation took more than twelve years, and this strikes one who has been working at the book for eight months as probably an understatement. As nearly as a lone individual can do, Lerner seems to have read almost everything about the United States. The “Notes for Further Reading” alone occupy 43 pages of small type. Portions of the manuscript were checked by no less than 142 “experts”: historians, government officials, musicians, journalists, social scientists, poets, architects, foundation officers, and others.

Between 1944 and 1948, six European countries experienced Communist seizures of power. Three were enemies and three friends and allies of Soviet Russia during the war; four were Slav countries; five were predominantly peasant with some remnants of feudalism; with the exception of industrial Czechoslovakia, their prewar record in democratic government was far from exemplary. In all of them, however, the Communists were successful.

What were the components of Communist success and democratic defeat? The case of Czechoslovakia shows clearly that the active interest and impressive display of Soviet power in contrast to the West's hesitant policy not only formed the background but were the chief bases for Communist successes in Eastern Europe. Careful, professional infiltration of democratic institutions and the wishful thinking of the democrats did the rest.

The historical role of the working class has recently been subject to reassessment. Frequently repudiated are the Marxist views that the proletariat constitutes either, as Marx's and Engels' classic scheme would have it, the revolutionary social force in capitalist societies, or, as Lenin believed, the pre-eminent element in a revolutionary alliance with the poorest strata of the peasantry, or, finally, as Mao holds, the leadership cadres needed to mobilize the downtrodden peasant masses into conscious, revolutionary action. Consider, for instance, the meager role attributed to the working class in Barrington Moore's brilliant effort, in Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, to delineate three historical routes to modernity.

The view of critics like Myrdal that a solution to problems of mass poverty requires sweeping changes in established cultural attitudes and institutions which cannot be carried out through democratic methods remains influential in India among intellectuals and radical political parties. Yet, a frontal assault on the existing social order would delay or abort basic economic reforms by fragmenting large numbers of the poorer classes along more potent allegiances to religion, language, and caste. An alternative solution can be devised based on the distinction between direct and indirect obstacles to economic development which are part of the social setting. Direct constraints are found in patterns of land ownership and land tenure. By contrast, the cultural attitudes, caste structures, and power relations are indirect obstacles in the sense that they strengthen ideological and political patterns that stand in the way of agrarian reform. Under Indian conditions democratic rather than authoritarian institutions offer the best prospect over the long term for carrying out basic economic changes. They strengthen egalitarian values and provide an opportunity for direct organization of the more numerous lower castes to weaken both the legitimacy and power of the dominant landed castes—without risking the social disorder of a direct confrontation.

The oil crises of the 1970s ended a distinct historical period in the control of oil. While the demise of the first oil regime is clear to all, the nature of that regime itself is less well understood. What, in particular, was the distribution of power among the actors in the regime? What were the structures and goals of this system during the long period (approximately the first seventy years of the twentieth century) during which petroleum became vital to industrial society and emerged as the most important commodity in world commerce?

Political surprise provides a double stimulus for social scientists. An unexpected regime change, an unanticipated revolution—indeed, any political event that is both dramatic and unforeseen—forces us to analyze not just the origins of the change itself but the origins of our own amazement. The political surprises that emerged in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s have, accordingly, compelled us to ask not simply why events unfolded as they did but why our predictive theories left us unprepared. The five essays collected here address both of these questions and therefore offer insights about both politics and scholarship.

How large is the Soviet gross national product (GNP) relative to our own? A third as large? Half? Two-thirds? Which of the estimates is correct? As the unique solution, none of them, unfortunately. Nor need we search for other numbers: these are probably the best of the lot, and in any case, the reply would be the same. The problem is not one of data, or of definitions, or of estimating methods. Such problems do exist and present difficulties of their own, but the inescapable and immovable barrier to the unique solution in US-USSR national output comparisons is the crucial fact of differences in the structures of the American and Soviet economies. In general, in comparisons of different economies or of the same economy at different times, diverse structures create what the economist calls an “index-number problem.” The worst of it is, the “problem” is insoluble.

THE idea that peaceful adjustment of the relations of states may result from contention among them Claude believes to be hopelessly outmoded. The presence of nuclear weapons means that any equilibrium of states, however stable it may seem, is not nearly stable enough. The task of the theorist and the statesman alike is to introduce order from above, to replace the “invisible hand” by which adjustments are contrived in systems of self-regulation with something a little more substantial. Here the juxaposition of our two authors enlivens the subject. F. H. Hinsley considers the notion of spontaneous equilibrium to be a liberating idea. He applies the eighteenth century's beautiful system of natural harmony to the world of the present and is delighted with the result. Though large-scale war would now be devastating, we need not worry. Nuclear power is absolute and nuclear states, competent to control the instruments of power at their disposal, deter each other absolutely.

At a time when proposals for a European strategic force centering on Anglo-French nuclear cooperation are once again the subject of serious official discussions, it would seem appropriate to raise a number of more general issues about the making of defense policy in Western Europe today.

How far may we hope to go in theorizing about international affairs? That question is at the center of this article, which consists of several more or less eclectic stabs at the problem.

I shall be writing as though some theory of power politics were the only possible candidate for being the theory of international relations. Let that be regarded as an act of methodological faith—certainly I can think of no scientific demonstration of it, and I would rather leave the philosophy of the matter for another occasion. There are a number of stock objections against any general theory of international relations oriented towards power politics, and these I shall try to rebut, chiefly by extending and correcting my own previous efforts in the genre. I shall then introduce objections of a rather more abstract sort, and, again from my own previous work, I shall try to show that the difficulties which these latter present are indeed formidable. But I hope it will be understood that neither kind of objection need be relevant to meories of international relations other than those built around the concepts of force, power, and security.

Most historians of the Weimar Republic, fully occupied with the domestic affairs of the Brüining government in its crucial place between democracy and dictatorship, show little interest in Germany's foreign policy of the early 1930's. If they do devote some attention to it, their evaluation tends to be highly negative, regardless of their political or national sympathies. Observers who can be classified as liberals, socialists, Nazis, and nationalists—at odds among themselves on virtually every other question—all voice strong criticism of the Brüning diplomacy.

Some of the 25,000 American businessmen, most of the 30,000 American missionaries, and all of the 33,000 public officials working abroad have received some form of training in “overseasmanship” prior to embarking upon their careers as technical assistants. This training was not supposed to make them better managers, Christians, diplomats, or technicians, but to enhance their usefulness in a strange cultural environment. Such training may be viewed as a specialized form of education designed to influence their performance or behavior. Conveying knowledge about foreign cultures or about the processes of change is an important form of training as well as a legitimate aspect of education; the distinction is one of purpose and focus. Employers are more sympathetic to offering “training” programs than to providing “education” for their overseas agents, even if the subject matter is essentially the same. They expect a specific result—better performance—from their training programs.

Military relations between the United States and the Soviet Union over the past decade exhibit an apparent paradox: professed mutual interests in parity yielding in practice to a competitive military buildup. The paper examines four hypothetical explanations—denoted respectively as the hypotheses of mirage, momentum, victory, and spillover—in the context of conventional military force development. While certain valid elements are identified in each hypothesis, the author concludes that it is the appeal of spillover, the non-fighting functions of conventional military advantage, which despite a mixed payoff may be regarded as the most significant determinant of Soviet behavior. The evolution of force levels and military budgets, and the political purposes and activities of the U.S.S.R. in the First and Third Worlds, provide the data for analysis.