The predominant approach to modeling OPEC behavior depends upon the assumption that economic self-interest provides the best predictor of the cartel's price and production strategy. With rational monopoly behavior, the exogenous characteristics of the oil market determine an optimal price path for the group. But OPEC members have diverse economic as well as political goals. And uncertainty about oil market responses provides substantial leeway to argue about what is optimal. An examination of the five key OPEC price decisions since 1973 shows that an operational code of advancing political priorities on Arab-Israeli issues while deflecting security challenges better explains Saudi Arabia's decision-making than the economic optimizing approach. Moreover, no economic formula alone is consistent with Saudi behavior. The balance of internal and external forces of a political or security character on Saudi leadership suggests more of a tilt toward price hawkishness than pure considerations of economic self-interest would indicate. This tilt is reinforced by a systematic weakness on the part of the U.S. government to exercise a sustained countervailing influence on the Kingdom on behalf of moderation.

International civil aviation appears to be a pertinent yet largely overlooked issuearea to study in the light of recent discussions about the changing international system. In this article the evolution of the international aviation system from its inception early in this century is analyzed in terms of regime changes. Three different regime periods are delineated, and possible explanations of the observed regime changes are discussed. On the face of it, the development of international aviation seems to conform with the overall global trend toward complex interdependence. Yet it also raises a number of questions concerning interdependence that might be addressed in the study of other issue-areas. These concern the links between politico-economic issue-areas and military security, the degree of harmony or conflict associated with interdependence, and the role of states generally—and the United States in particular—under conditions of complex interdependence.

This paper examines the experience of developing countries in the three major regional financial institutions, the Inter-American, Asian, and African Development Banks. In the Inter-American Development Bank, members from developing countries have secured both influence and resources; in the Asian Development Bank they have secured resources but little influence; in the African Development Bank they have influence but limited resources. This variation can be explained by the different issue area power structures within which the banks function. The Inter-American Development Bank has functioned within a hegemonic structure. The dominant power, the United States, pursued long-term political objectives and accepted considerable autonomy for developing countries within the Bank. The Asian Development Bank has functioned within a bipolar structure with Japan playing an increasingly important role. As a normal power, Japan has pursued tangible economic interests and has constrained the behavior of the Asian Development Bank. Until the late 1970s the African Development Bank functioned in a multipolar structure that largely excluded nonregional countries. This exclusion made it impossible to generate substantial resources. Experience in the regional development banks suggests that a hegemonic structure can offer weaker states both resources and influence provided that the milieu goals of the dominant power are not violated.

Does food aid enhance or diminish the nutritional status of recipient populations in less developed countries? In proposing that the long-term impact is negative, critics have argued that aid depresses local food production, is maldistributed and mismanaged such that it does not reach the needy in sufficient quantities, or, where effective, that aid merely reduces the death rate relative to the birth rate, permitting more people to survive at the margin of existence. This study explores the long-term impact of U.S. Public Law 480 food aid through a crossnational analysis of aggregate data on aid receipts and change in nutritional status over the period from 1962 through 1974. Alternative hypotheses are tested through least squares methods and.mean difference tests in the framework of a nonequivalent control group, quasi-experimental design. This study supports the following generalizations: food aid is significantly related with improved nutritional status; the greater the aid, the greater the improvement in nutrition; higher aid recipients do not have significantly lower rates of growth in domestic food production; higher aid recipients do not have higher rates of population growth; and food aid may lead to greater meat consumption among higher aid recipients. Negative effects, experienced in some countries at some times, are not systematically incurred by all food aid recipients over time. In general, food aid does improve nutrition.

Eight generalizations are extracted from two partially competing perspectives (Johan Galtung's “feudal interaction” and Jorge Dominguez's “international fragmentation”) on center-periphery interaction patterns. Seven of these generalizations are tested by examining head of state, governmental and ministerial visits to and from the Arab world between 1946 and 1975. Neither perspective is fully supported or disconfirmed by the data. Dominguez's emphases on limited resources and local problems, however, which lead in turn to relatively high intra-subsystemic interaction between peripheral actors and changing center-periphery patterns, appear to provide a more accurate analytical base than does the static model, with its emphasis on high levels of asymmetry and concentration, advanced by Galtung. Further tests of the two perspectives will be necessary in order to assess fully the geographical scope and the type of interaction patterns covered by these diachronic findings.

This research note reports the findings of a mail survey of higher level Guatemalan civil servants, soliciting their views on the United Nations. The survey was administered in the summer of 1979 for comparison with similar surveys of Norwegian and United States officials undertaken five years earlier, to determine whether experience with international organizations produces attitudes more favorable to international cooperation.