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.”

The concept of a“strategic triangle” is useful in an analysis of the internal logic of the relationship between the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. The preconditions for a triangular relationship are that each player recognize the strategic salience of the three principals, and the relationship between any two will be affected by each player's relationship to the third. Within the triangle, there are three distinct pattern dynamics: the ménage à trots, consisting of mutually positive relationships among all three; the stable marriage, consisting of a bilateral relationship excluding the third, and the romantic triangle, consisting of one pivot player playing off two suitors. Each of these pattern dynamics has specific rules of rational play. The shift from one pattern dynamic to another is a function of the attempts of the players to freeze a given configuration through commitment to a treaty or a common ideology, interacting with periodic crises that test their commitments.

Critics of research in political socialization have asserted that the field has been more descriptive than theoretical, overly concerned with socialization to party identification, and too implicit with regard to underlying cultural patterns. At the same time, the study of moral development, largely addressed by psychologists but increasingly of interest to other social scientists and philosophers, has become a focal point of academic inquiry. After a brief discussion of concepts, a model of moral development is presented that integrates existing approaches within a more inclusive theoretical structure. An interrelationship is suggested between the nature of political and social institutions and the form and degree of individual moral development, and some findings show how moral development as an aspect of political socialization can aid in understanding the political behavior of both leaders and followers. Finally, it is suggested that moral development may be an appropriate bridge, within political science, between philosophers and behavioralists.

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.

The problem of whether the rational, self-interested individual will voluntarily subscribe to a large group providing collective benefits is examined, using the perspectives of Hardin's application of game theory and Olson's application of economic theory. The arguments in each case are held to be unsatisfactory, and the same analysis cannot automatically be applied to all problems involving collective action. The subscription to large groups normally represents a distinct sub-class of problems, the solution to which, contrary to the established wisdom, is that the rational, self-interested individual with a net benefit (together, perhaps, with the irrational one with a net loss) will voluntarily subscribe to a group providing a collective good.

This study examines the role of technological variables in the decisions by Egypt, the World Bank, and the United States regarding the selection and financing of the Aswan High Dam project. Three major decision-making models-rational choice, incremental, and organizational process-are assessed according to their appropriateness for and applicability to the “technological dimension.” This dimension is defined in terms of three major components-design, impact, and management issues. Despite a tendency of the literature to associate the rational-choice model with highly technical decisions, this study illustrates the dominance of “satisficing,” “muddling through,” and “bounded rationality” behavior for each of the major participants. The technological dimension is found to be important, but clearly secondary to the primacy of politics.

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 World Bank has encountered serious difficulties as it has moved from an almost exclusive concern with capital infrastructure into social sectors of development, such as rural development and population planning. The present study, based on an intensive examination of the Bank's experience in the population sector, concludes that the Bank's effectiveness has been constrained by its institutionalized commitments to (i) its clients, the finance and planning ministries of developing countries; (2) its technology for rendering assistance as embodied in its project lending procedures; and (3) its independence from other organizations that provide development assistance. Instead of modifying these commitments in order to improve the Bank's performance in the population field, its officials have recently reorganized the population program in a way that preserves the Bank's basic priorities and procedures without necessarily advancing its population objectives.

A“political” explanation of collective political activity is examined in the light of 58 varied historical cases. The cases support a description of these activities as largely rational, collectively arrived at, and heavily influenced by recent changes in motives and opportunities.“In” groups are most likely to act collectively when newly threatened,“out” groups when new opportunities present themselves. Emotion and frustrated expectations do not seem to be the best variables on which to base predictive hypotheses. Violence is not strongly associated with communal groups or with emotion as such, but it does seem to be associated with“bad times.” While action is usually based on collectively made decisions, its occurrence does not depend on strong organization; the latter seems, however, to be a condition of continuing and durable effectiveness.

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.

Linkage politics—a state's making its course of action concerning a given issue contingent upon another state's behavior in a different issue area—is of interest to policymakers as well as to those theoreticians who employ an issue—area approach to the study of international politics. However, there has been little discussion of the circumstances and conditions of linkage, or of its bargaining strategies. In this paper, 2 × 2 games are used as a model of strategic interaction to delineate the situations amenable to linkage, the forms of linkage, and relevant strategies. Coerced, threat-induced, and mutual linkage are illustrated and distinguished.

At recent all-union party congresses, Soviet republic and province leaders have devoted a progressively larger share of their speeches to foreign policy. By the 25th Congress, their remarks had become substantively rich and surprisingly diverse. Does this growing commentary signal an expansion of the Soviet foreign-policy making arena? After comparing the data to a series of alternative explanatory models, the author proposes that a model based solely on political ambition provides a promising but ultimately insufficient answer to this question and should be supplemented by a model presuming an increasing interest among regional leaders in influencing policy itself. This conclusion implies that the policy arena has expanded, an interpretation which is reinforced with additional data on the Central Committee's involvement in foreign policy discussions. Possible causes of arena expansion are then considered. However, the data suggest few concrete implications for the content of Soviet foreign policy.

The “malaise” or inward-turning of American foreign policy is not well explained by any simple cyclical pattern, and also not by any relaxing balance-of-power in the outside world. A more important explanation may be that since 1967 we have lost our earlier confidence that the American model of political democracy would serve the happiness of peoples everywhere. Stanley Hoffmann's Primacy or World Order does not lament the fading of this confidence, but offers a fourth analysis: that international complications now require that American foreign policy be directed toward world order. Yet Hoffmann can be accused of tending to tailor “world order” to fit a preference for economic democracy over traditional liberal values. George Liska's Career of Empire presents a more resigned view of the inward turning of American foreign policy, coming perhaps closest to the first or second of the explanations noted above, but remaining therefore relatively devoid of policy recommendations.

In a framework for analyzing more deeply and comprehensively the question of leadership in the Soviet political system, the roles and functions of the top leader within the collective leadership are considered; so is the problematic relationship of the leadership to the party elite and other functional elites in adopting and implementing major policies calculated to modernize (make more efficient) the operation of highly bureaucratized administrative structures. There is a reciprocal impact of these issues upon public attitudes and motivations as both are perceived by the leadership. Incorporated in the framework are a number of basic analytical concepts from a variety of literatures. The conflict between the requisites of modernization and the imperatives of the political culture is discussed, and matters for the research agenda are noted.

The bureaucratic politics model has achieved great popularity in the study of decision making. Yet too often the term “bureaucratic politics” is used by scholars and practitioners without clearly stating its policy application. The decision-making behavior that occurred during the Johnson and Nixon administrations for SALT I serves to illustrate many of the limits of the model. First, the decision-making structure posited by the bureaucratic politics model is not nearly as prevalent within the executive branch as is commonly assumed. Second, even where the bureaucratic politics structure is present, the decision-making process is not always one of bargaining, compromise, and consensus. Finally, the decision context and the decision participants are ignored in the model. To provide a clearer understanding of policy-making behavior, a more systematic decision-making framework is offered, which should contribute to the development of better model- and theory-building.

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.

Recent literature demonstrates that modern military regimes are actually military-civilian coalitions. The old dichotomy of civil/military is no longer a useful explanation for the politics and the dynamics of military regimes. Role expansion, new professionalism, and mission orientation have changed military missions, doctrines, and self-perception. The author proposes and develops a comparative analysis and a typology of contemporary military regimes: corporative; market-bureaucratic; socialist-oligarchic; personal tyrannies; and army-party. Case studies include Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. His conclusion, based on the literature, is that military regimes have not succeeded (at least not better than civilian regimes) in reforming, modernizing, and developing their respective societies despite organizational, structural, and personal commitments to development and reform.

Images of the United States as nuclear adversary presented in official Soviet commentary provide useful clues in the analyses of Soviet strategic policy. Hard, high-threat images stressing the continuing danger of nuclear war are functionally associated with conservative policies emphasizing the need for efforts to improve war-fighting capabilities. Less militant adversary images appear associated with more moderate defense policies. In the 1970s, sharp divergences in adversary images appeared in official Soviet commentaries, indicative of disagreement within the Soviet Union on the defense policy implications of SALT. The policy implications of shifts in adversary images and the location of the political leadership in terms of conflicting moderate and conservative images are examined for the period 1969–1979.

The paper situates the recent attempt by Immanuel Wallerstein to provide a theoretical account of the emergence of the modern world system in the broader context of contemporary social scientific controversies, exposes the major flaws in the work, and suggests elements of an alternative framework that provides a sounder foundation for the construction of macroanalytic theories of social change. The inadequacies of Waller-stein's theory are revealed on the basis of internal evidence: he treats force as an unaccountable “error factor” which often determinatively shaped relationships among European states as well as between them and the larger world; and he does not account satisfactorily for the structure and the boundaries of the system, nor for the position specific countries came to occupy within it, nor for regime variation among them. The concurrent formation of several states must be considered an irreducible particularity of medieval European social organization. Interactive effects among them shaped the course of each during the early modern period and simultaneously contributed to the emergence of a system of states with its own dynamic. Since these political processes contributed as much to the formation of the modern world system as the economic processes emphasized by Wallerstein, theories of the system's origins and subsequent development must be founded on the notion of co-determination.

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.