Strategic intelligence, die evaluated informational product of intelligence bureaucracies, is a potentially important element in foreign policy decision making. But the role and impact of intelligence reports are very difficult to analyze, because of bodi secrecy and conceptual or definitional problems. Some new light is shed by a number of recent books, in three categories: essentially uncritical works by former insiders, muckraking exposes, and historical case studies. Collectively, these books improve our understanding of the variables that condition the impact of strategic intelligence on policy, or they illuminate die policy and bureaucratic context of intelligence activities. But only one of the recent books has a theoretical thrust. Great need remains, and opportunities exist, to move toward better dieoretical understanding of intelligence, or at least toward inproved information about when, how, or whether intelligence activities or reports have measurable impact on foreign policy decision making and policy outcomes in world politics.

The rapid spread of judicial review around the world has resulted in several studies of constitutional courts in various countries. Because of their differing methodological approaches and analytical frameworks, these studies are of limited theoretical value and, in some instances, only incidentally relevant to politics. Nevertheless, they constitute a foundation on which to build a meaningful and unified body of knowledge in the developing field of comparative judicial politics. Three research directions are proposed as a means of accomplishing this objective: to classify judicial review on a worldwide basis and chart its relation to legal and political variables; to systematically study the political roles of courts of judicial review in individual countries; and to embark upon cross-cultural studies of constitutional doctrine.

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.

Primarily by reference to the writings of Charles E. Merriam, the impact of the Chicago school of political scientists on the study of world politics is assessed. Differences between that school's pragmatist pluralism and political realism are examined, as are differences between Merriam's ideal of cross-cutting human associations in a world of shared power and that of advocates of world government. Better adjusted personalities and international civic education would in Merriam's Utopia of science and reason lighten the task of governance within and between states, but he recognized the difficulty of achieving a warless world so long as “the antagonism of value systems which run below the obvious surface of the world” continues.

Packenham's Liberal America and the Third World, although a needed response to more radical critics, does not cut sufficiently deeply into the ambiguities, roots, and patterns of thought of liberal redemptive activism. The problem is to tame rather than to exorcise the redemptive activist belief in a “larger” American interest in the developing world. Modification of the reorientation of American policy articulated by Packenham and the Overseas Development Council is required to: (1) take account of limited agreement upon a conception of global economic equity; (2) develop a more refined response to the excesses of reformist interventionism; (3) avoid the risks of reliance upon a “will and capacity” strategy of developmental assistance. “Proximate pursuit” of the longstanding vision of a world in which the values of liberal democratic order are being increasingly realized constitutes a preferred alternative to both the liberal reorientation and past redemptive activism.

The usefulness of the concept of “small states” as an analytical tool is discussed in a review of books by Edward Azar and Marshall Singer. The size of states has both domestic and international ramifications. Authors who use the concept of “small states” struggle with the problem of defining it. Such definitions can be clear and unambiguous but arbitrary at the same time; more sophisticated definitions are also more ambiguous and difficult to apply to concrete cases. Inquiry into the role of small states in international politics is shown to be still in a very elementary stage. Although there does of course exist a continuum of size of states in international relations, small states form too broad a category for purposes of analysis.

The concept and institutions of an international civil service have been studied by numerous authors. The works reviewed in this article, by Brian Urquhart, Shirley Hazzard, Henry Cabot Lodge, Richard Symonds and Michael Carder, and Alexander Szalai with Margaret Croke and Associates, are all related to the UN Secretariat, its successes and its failures. The practice of multilateral diplomacy as conducted by the Secretary General of the UN, personnel policies and national interference in the UN administration, relations between the international Secretariat and member governments on the one hand and with the media on the other, as well as the role of international civil servants in promoting social reform are discussed. The works under review are found to contain conflicting images of the UN and its Secretariat.