Significantly, we have few if any studies of the totalitarian O dictator as a personality type. It may be that we are little closer to a working psychological model of him than Plato took us with his brilliant sketch of the ideal type of the “tyrant” in The Republic. The contemporary literature on totalitarianism does, of course, contain materials that are relevant to the problem of characterization of the totalitarian dictator. Yet no frontal attack appears to have been made upon the problem. The purpose of the present article is to argue the need for one, and to do this in the context of a critical reexamination of the theory of totalitarianism. In the course of it I shall put forward some ideas of possible use in developing a conception of the dictator as a personality type.

Because of heightened involvement of the United States in world affairs during the period between the Spanish-American War and World War I, American political thought expanded to include the dimension of international politics. In the process three different styles of thought emerged. Each style was equipped with its characteristic view of the nature of international politics, the nature and role of war, views of human nature, a method of social and political analysis, and proposals for dealing with the problems of world politics.

Most writers on international relations and international law still examine the relationship between international law and politics in terms of the assumption that law either should or does function only as a coercive restraint on political action. Textbook writers on general international politics like Morgenthau, and Lerche and Said, as well as those scholars who have specialized in international law like J. L. Brierly and Charles De Visscher, make the common assumption that international law should be examined as a system of coercive norms controlling the actions of states. Even two of the newer works, The Political Foundations of International Law by Morton A. Kaplan and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach and Law and Minimum World Public Order by Myres S. McDougal and Florentino P. Feliciano, in spite of an occasional reference to the non-coercive aspects of international law, are developed primarily from the model of international law as a system of restraint. Deriving their conception of the relationship between international law and political action from their ideas on the way law functions in domestic communities, most modern writers look at international law as an instrument of direct control. The assumption that international law is or should be a coercive restraint on state action structures almost every analysis, no matter what the school of thought or the degree of optimism or pessimism about the effectiveness of the international legal system. With an intellectual framework that measures international law primarily in terms of constraint on political action, there is little wonder that skepticism about international law continues to increase while creative work on the level of theory seems to be diminishing.

In the last forty years, Germany has had three radically different political systems. In each case, the party system, better than any other single index, reflects the style of politics of that period. The highly splintered, multiparty system of Weimar mirrors perfectly the extreme ideological dissension and radicalism of postwar German politics. The one-party system of the Third Reich epitomizes the attempt to destroy the individual's traditional social ties and then to absorb him totally in a coordinated movement. Finally, the two-party system of Bonn reflects the growing social and political consensus concerning the more pragmatic and concrete political goals of postHitlerian Germany. Although these three political systems are intimately related, the main question for us is why the democratic party systems of Weimar and Bonn are so different. The party systems are unintelligible, however, without an understanding of the patterns of pressure-group politics as well.

Serious literature about foreign policy, when it is not primarily historical, can be classed in three ways. It is either pragmatic, attempting to solve specific problems through a mastery of specific data; or it is what I will call unitary, arguing for comprehensive solutions on the basis of some general vision of the truth; or it is pluralistic, asserting the value of many approaches and denying the certainty of any one.

THE Kennedy Administration had not been long in office when one began to hear from Pentagon friends that the man whom the President had chosen as his Secretary of Defense was not just extraordinary; he was un phénomène.

A Critique of “Theories of Rational Decision” and an exposé of “Hazards and Pitfalls of Strategic Thinking” comprise the first two and more significant Parts of Strategy and Conscience. A third Part pleads for understanding between the United States and the Soviet Union, and for “ideological disarmament”; it presents vanother mode of thinking in which conscience is central.”

In the fifth volume of his collected essays, Jean-Paul Sartre has brought together thirteen pieces written during the last ten years and dealing with the problems of colonialism and decolonization. They range from prefaces or reviews of books to polemical articles and interviews on the Algerian question and French politics; as is to be expected, they vary widely in quality as well as importance. Some of them are perhaps better seen as documents, testimonials of Sartre's courageous stand against the policies of successive French cabinets toward Algeria. At a time when the majority of the French people and of their leaders were striving to avoid seeing or acknowledging the profound moral issues confronting them, Sartre's voice was among the few raised to point out the real problems, to remind Frenchmen of their own recent experience under the Nazis, and to warn them against imitating those Germans who "did not know" what was happening at Dachau and Auschwitz. At the time of the Hungarian revolt of 1956, Sartre did not let his commitment to Marxism and to the left still his voice or his conscience. During the Algerian war, in the late 1950's, he became once again the conscience and the voice of French humanism and French culture. He and his collaborators and friends kept up the intellectual (and sometimes material) contact between France, as a nation and as an idea, and her rebellious colonial subjects.

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.