Much of the recent writing on peasants and rural development is based on a litical economy model. This approach, best exemplified by Samuel Popkin's The adtional Peasant, sees the peasant as a self-interested rational actor, and develops a unchaning investment logic to explain economic and political decisions. It is a more sophiticated approach than earlier attempts at applying a political economy model because it recognizes that income-maximization is not the exclusive means for self-improvement. Equally important, it also recognizes that, although individuals tend to be cient in their use of resources, problems of cooperation and organization often preview villages from being economically efficient. Although this type of research tends to as empirical as earlier, more anthropologically oriented work, it promises to be me helpful in building generalizable theory about peasants, and in aiding practitioners rural development.

Theories of democratic development have to account for breakdowns, fascist and other, and to consider phases of incomplete democratization as well as mass democracy. To this end, they may need to relate structural changes to social and political mobilization, explain different kinds of revolution—not only the “true revolution” of leftist ideology—and different types of military coups. “Developmental dictatorships,” fascist or not, are unlikely midwives of liberal democracy. Democratic development can also be related to broad cultural and religious patterns of political civilization that may shape the course of revolutionary or non-revolutionary change.

The authors of the two volumes under review present different approaches to an analysis of the foreign policy of the People's Republic of China. Gurtov and Hwang stress the importance of national interest and the interaction of domestic factors and foreign policy; they make a connection between China's sensitivity to external threat and its reaction to it, especially at times of domestic political weakness. Armstrong asserts that ideology has played a major role in Chinese foreign policy making. In both volumes, case studies are cited to support the authors' hypotheses. The article concludes that national interest is the principal factor determining the foreign policy of the PRC. Mao Zedong's thought continues to play an important role in Chinese thinking; it is concerned with domestic economic and social change and not with the internal affairs of other countries.

The contradiction between Israeli and Palestinian goals and Israel's refusal to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization have caused a profound diplomatic impasse. Moreover, the PLO's dependence on Arab hosts has embroiled it in secondary-level conflicts with Arab states. Although the PLO has gained their moral, diplomatic, and financial support, it has posed a threefold challenge: rulers resent the military cost of confronting Israel; Palestinian raids precipitate Israeli retaliatory actions against host territories; and the presence of autonomous Palestinian political and military forces undermines the host regimes' sovereignty and legitimacy. The review essay explores the ramifications of these Palestinian-Israeli and Palestinian-Arab dilemmas, and assesses the likelihood of a compromise settlement by creating a Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Five recent books reveal the beginnings of important new work in conceptualizing the place of human rights concerns in national foreign policies. The moral force of claims of human rights requires that they be given serious consideration in foreign policy. Philosophical analysis also shows that categorical moral distinctions between personal (or civil and political) and economic and social rights must be abandoned. Any justifiable priority for one class of rights must rest on strategic or political, not conceptual or moral, grounds. Since human rights are only one of many foreign policy concerns, tradeoffs with other goals, interests, and values will be necessary. However, human rights and the national interest are often complementary. The “tradeoffs” actually made should be principled, instrumental decisions, rather than apparently ad hoc or cynical sacrifices of human rights.