This study systematically identifies the Soviet lessons of Vietnam as presented in eleven Soviet newspapers (specialized and regional as well as the central papers) and eight journals. Altogether, 1,585 citations were coded, representing more than 70 different lessons. A predominant finding is that the most common lessons the Soviet Union learned from Vietnam differed from their American counterparts: the Soviet lessons would not have warned the leadership about the dangers of military intervention in Afghanistan. A left/right scale was constructed, based on such issue clusters as why the communists won in Vietnam, the nature of imperialism, and the implications of Soviet policy in the Third World. Substantial variation was found among the media examined, many of which are linked to specific Soviet institutions. The implication is that Soviet foreign policy is contingent upon individual choices, institutional interplay, and changing contexts. This, in turn, suggests that Western policy makers should not lose sight of their capacity to influence the Soviet policy dialogue, and hence Soviet policy choices.

Policies may be characterized in several distinct and competing ways: as best resolved by professional expertise, as fit for political determination, as properly treated in terms of legal rights, as appropriately subject to bureaucratic norms, or as sensibly left to market determination. The consequences of the choice among these frameworks is apparent in contrasting the British and American approaches to a particular policy issue, the education of handicapped children. That analysis reveals the utility of maintaining a policy scheme which builds in a tension among the competing frameworks.

Recent work on political development fails because it does not address the fundamental questions of “developmental theory.” The questions, answered in the essay, are: What “grows” in the passage from rudimentary to “modern” polities? What is the polity in its rudimentary form? Why is advancement from the primal to the advanced form ineludible? Through what stages does it pass? What forces move it through its passage? Political development is conceived as the necessarily increasing politicalization of society through six stages; and, along with this, as the gradual transformation of ceremonial, theatrical polities into “efficient,” managerial ones.

Based on documentation and in-depth interviews with 14 emigrants from China; this study traces changing perceptions of China's social structure by different urban social groups. Each group adopted a perspective that best served its own interests. In the fifties and sixties these images did not necessarily coincide with—but nonetheless were within—the bounds of the image propagated by the Chinese authorities. During and since the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, a new perception of society has been formulated particularly by people from the former middle classes: the issue centers on whether a new bureaucratic class has emerged in China. The article closes with a discussion of the authorities' recent attempts to redefine popular images of the social structure in response to a changed social reality and China's eagerness to modernize.

The relationship between Soviet Islam and the Islamic revival outside the U.S.S.R. is neither unidimensional nor definitionally antagonistic. Although bogged down in a costly civil war in Afghanistan, the Soviet leaders have tried to maintain a public stance of tolerance toward Islam. Recent Soviet writings reflect a new sophistication, which demonstrates unblinkered consideration of Islam as both a social and a political force. The quiescent state of Islam in the Muslim regions of the U.S.S.R., where indigenous populations practice a nondoctrinal, heavily ritualistic religion, further makes it unlikely that the Soviets are following aggressive policies in Southwest Asia because they fear Islamic fundamentalism at home.

This article inquires into changes in the distribution of power and the extent of ideologically based conflict in the international system as they affect one aspect of international law, the recognition of new governments. These effects are assessed by analyzing instances in which recognition is used as a device for expressing opinions about or securing specific commitments from a new government. An examination of such instances since 1815 leads to the conclusions that (a) the distribution of power makes a difference only when the international system, or the new government's regional subsystem, is dominated by one strong power; (b) the extent of ideological conflict has a significant effect on expressions of opinion; and (c) a number of addictional factors also affect all political uses of recognition.

Estimates of the extent to which Third World countries have experienced slower rates of growth than those in the industrialized West since i960 indicate a weak relation between initial wealth and subsequent economic growth that follows an inverted U-shape pattern: while the lowest growth rates are found among the poorest countries of the Third World, the highest growth rates are found not in the industrialized West, but in the wealthiest Third World countries. Drawing on contending arguments associated with modernization and dependency perspectives, the relationship between foreign investment and growth within the Third World is examined. Results undermine the idea that foreign investment inhibits growth, suggesting instead that flows of foreign investment may facilitate growth, especially among the initially wealthier countries of the Third World.

America's current nuclear strategy seeks to improve deterrence with a counterforce targeting plan that exceeds the requirements of mutual assured destruction. This “countervailing” nuclear strategy codifies an enlarged spectrum of retaliatory options. The author argues, however, that the countervailing strategy is based upon a number of implausible and contradictory assumptions, and that it actually degrades the overriding objective of genuine security. For many reasons, the Soviet Union is not apt to assign a higher probability of fulfillment to American counterforce threats; under certain conditions, current policy confronts our adversary with a heightened incentive to pre-empt. The conclusion identifies an alternative strategy for the avoidance of nuclear war, a network of doctrines and obligations that calls for a return to minimum deterrence, a comprehensive test ban, and a joint renunciation of the right to the first use of nuclear weapons.

This essay is an analysis of the implications of misperception—the inaccurate assessment by one actor of the other actor's preferences—in international relations. The author finds that misperception cannot affect the choice of an actor with a dominant strategy, although it can affect that actor's expectations as long as both actors are self-interested and seek to maximize their own payoffs. Misperception creates conflict only in a narrowly circumscribed range of situations, and even then the misperceived actor has no incentive to mask its true preferences. An actor who deceives does so in order to facilitate coordination through the other's misperception of its preferences, and thus to avoid conflict—not to create it. Three possible outcomes can occur when both actors misperceive, and in only one of the three does misperception cause conflict that would otherwise be avoidable. In a formal analysis of the limited set of situations that characterize international crises, misperception is found neither to create conflict nor to lead to the escalation of crisis into war.

Empirical research on the United Nations has been characterized as fragmented, noncumulative, and lacking in the coherence necessary for conceptual integration—a condition at least partly due to the variegated nature of the institution itself. Yet in some important respects the research literature projects a rather homogeneous image. This image is shaped by a prevailing research perspective that treats the U.N. as (1) an arena for the political maneuvering of member states rather than an actor in its own right, and (2) as a resultant of exogenous forces governing world politics rather than as a source of influence affecting the larger world community. One or both of these traits may be found in 36 of 41 research articles published between 1970 and 1977. This perspective probably derives from numerous factors, including the state-centric orientation dominating our discipline and the tendency to view the U.N. as a convenient source of data for the study of world politics.

Foreign investment policy is an increasingly important part of overall foreign policy. The authors investigate the substance of U.S. outgoing foreign direct investment (OFDI) and incoming foreign direct investment (IFDI) policy in terms of a small set of policy values and process factors. The policy values are domestic prosperity, national autonomy, and national security. The process factors are ideological consonance, impact transparency, the diffusion and concentration of perceived costs and benefits, and the political capacity of groups and institutions. These considerations illuminate the relative stability in both areas of policy since World War II, and help to explain the changes that did take place. The paper concludes with a forecast that, despite the oft-heard prediction that economic nationalism is on the increase, U.S. policies toward foreign investment will remain much the same during the eighties as they have been Since World War II.

In an effort to explain U.S. ocean policy making, four analytical perspectives are applied: statism, international interdependence, bureaucratic politics, and domestic politics. In each of these perspectives, structures, processes, and actors are singled out that may have an impact on the policy-making process. The statist perspective can explain the importance of security interests and of access to resources, but it cannot account for some of the major changes in U.S. ocean policy during the 1970s. The perspective of international interdependence introduces some of the international constraints and explains the use of linkage strategies. But only domestic politics, which played an increasingly important role during the period, can explain the enactment of the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976. One of the general conclusions is that the policy-making system is structurally biased toward subnational and parochial interests. For this reason, policies of the world-order type are likely to be frustrated.

What determines the occurrence, the scope, and the timing of major changes in foreign policy? In approaching this question, the author focuses on the “stabilizers” of foreign policy-that is, on the factors blocking, reducing the scope of, or delaying adaptation to new conditions, learning from negative feedback, or change in response to other disturbances. A framework for the analysis of stability in foreign policy is proposed. Several hypothetical stabilizers of foreign policies are discussed; they are grouped into administrative, political, cognitive, and international categories. Finally, the framework is applied to the problem of East-West detente.

Recent economic theory places growing emphasis on the importance of psychological expectations in economic behavior and policy implementation. This article reviews four recent books on political economy which analyze failures in Keynesian macroeconomic management in light of social and political pressures in advanced democratic nations (especially Britain and the United States). Public choice theories focusing on the myopic behavior of voters and structuralist interpretations stressing class or corporatist conflict are discussed; but the author concludes that political as well as economic response to uncertain conditions is best understood in terms of how future expectations shape current preferences. James Alt's pioneering research on British public opinion suggests that expectational adaptation may hold the key to democratic stability as well as economic adjustment.

In examining patterns in international crises, the authors offer one path to a cocerted attack on a central phenomenon in world politics. After surveying the releva literature, including competing definitions, they set forth a conceptual map of int national crisis variables: actor attributes (age, territory, regime, capability, values system characteristics (size, geography, structure, alliance configuration, stability); a the crisis dimensions they wish to explain (trigger, actor behavior, superpower activity, and the role of international organizations—that is, crisis management, of come, and consequences). From this taxonomy they have developed a research frar work on international crisis, and, as an illustration of more narrow explanatory devie a crisis management-outcome model. Three clusters of hypotheses on the substar and form of crisis outcomes, and the duration of crises, are then tested against I evidence from 185 cases for the period from 1945 to 1962. The ultimate aim is illuminate international crises over a 50-year period, 1930–1980, across all continer cultures, and political and economic systems in the contemporary era.

An examination of the major motifs of dissident political literature from Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Hungary in the 1970s reveals a certain commonality of understanding and suggests that dissent is itself a complex, multicausal phenomenon likely to pervade the region for some time to come. Criticisms of the existing system are based on a rejection of dictatorship and its concomitant intellectual rigidity, economic inefficiency, and social alienation. The dissidents' vision of a better socialist society, in contrast, is one of decentralized decision making and of plural centers of power operating within the context of respect for human rights. The tactics put forward by the dissidents derive from these ideas: open discussion, mass mobilization within a legal framework that respects the rights of minorities, and pressure on established elites to make the necessary changes.

During the last decade, the concept of patrimonialism has become firmly embedded in political science and the sociological literature, being used primarily to explain the operation of bureaucracies in the underdeveloped world. This research note examines some of the usages of the term and attempts to assess its explanatory value. It is suggested that, as employed in much recent literature, “patrimonialism” has not contributed a great deal to the understanding of underdeveloped polities. The author argues that this is primarily because the literature has generally ignored the broader structural factors of which the phenomenon of patrimonialism is a manifestation. Taking account of these structural factors and locating patrimonialism within the broader context of underdevelopment will better equip us to understand the character and operation of Third World bureaucracies.

Several recent studies of Soviet foreign policy formation have sought to bring oganizational and cognitive considerations to bear on the subject. The article evaluation these perspectives and suggests how future research may, through the use of cognit methods of analysis, distinguish formally between different conceptualizations of viet foreign policy formation, thus permitting a more rigorous empirical examination of the organizational issues involved. A model of inference that accounts for organiational and cognitive links between the Soviet press and Soviet foreign policy formation is also constructed; examples are drawn from the items under review. In conclusion the article outlines a research strategy for cumulating knowledge about how the Sov system works, and specifies what the organizational and cognitive frameworks the study of Soviet foreign policy formation may contribute to such a project.

Recent literature, particularly in Germany and the Netherlands, has provided insights into some of the most perplexing imponderables of the Nazi annihilation of the Jews. These are, first, the development of consensus among the various German elites for the purposes of the Final Solution; second, an incremental kind of German decision making which led to the efficiently implemented mass annihilation of the Jews; and third, the passive mood toward the disasters befalling the Jews on the part of the entire universe of bystanders. (In the case of the Netherlands, this resulted, in spite of an unusually low degree of anti-Semitism, in an unusually high degree of Jewish victimization—in contrast to the so-called Danish reversal.) Fourth, because of the unimaginable predicament experienced by the victims and their “governments,” the Jewish Councils (such as the Amsterdam Joodsche Raad), they never had a chance to develop workable responses to such a catastrophe.

The literature on women's roles in economic and political development, and on the impact of development policies on women, illuminates both the process of modernization and the nature of male-female relations. Three main kinds of approaches-liberal modernization theory and its feminist critiques, socialist approaches and their feminist critiques, and an eclectic “female sphere” position that emphasizes the need to replace male-dominated theory and practice with female experience and values-are discussed. Each approach has a distinct view of the causes, consequences, and significance of women's inferior status during modernization, and each proposes different strategies of change. The clarification of theoretical differences suggests new opportunities for productive research with implications for public policy.