As the consequences of science and technology impinge more and more on international relations, states attempt to deal with the promise and dangers implicit in these consequences by the creation of international regimes. The nature and scope of such regimes are justified, in part, by the scientific and technological givens with which they are to deal. Increasingly, however, the process of justification is dominated by constructs and arguments taken from systems theory, thus mixing the epistemological styles of the natural and the social sciences. It is often not clear whether justification in terms of systems theory is rhetoric or based on demonstrated isomorphisms. The article seeks to answer this question by presenting a four-fold typology of systems theories together with their assumptions and relevance to the creation of international regimes. The article then examines three specific proposals for international action on science and technology, prepared under OECD auspices, in order to demonstrate the extent to which they rely on systems theory and to determine how persuasive the systemic justification is. The conclusion: there is an inverse relationship between the elaborateness of the systemic justification and the acceptability of the regime on logical, empirical, and moral grounds.

There are at least four approaches useful in predicting what will happen in China after Mao. The “environmental approach” stresses that the Chinese setting—physical, cultural, economic, and international—will govern the courses taken by political actors. The “personality approach” is the opposite, stressing that people, not their surroundings, will determine succession politics. The “societal approach” postulates that it is society (defined as the social environment, including influences from Chinese culture, history, and the structure and operation of Chinese social-political-familial-economic institutions) that is the operationally significant variable. Finally, the “politics approach” assumes that politics itself is the central concern of Chinese life, necessitating a search for general “rules” of politics in China to project the future. These approaches and their implications are each examined in detail, with the conclusion that none is adequate of itself to explain post-Mao politics in China. By combining them, however, it is possible to periodize developments after Mao. Four stages are envisaged. An initial stage would last about three months, during which a collective leadership would form. A second, transitional phase, possibly lasting several years, would be marked by the advent of major policy questions not solvable by Maoist precedent. A third phase would see the emergence of a new leadership, probably operating on a factionalist model. Finally, a fourth stage would be defined after China has returned to normal, “gotten over” Mao's death, and when events are no longer viewable in terms of “succession politics.”

An assessment of the forms in which, and tlie extent to which, the population of the entire world may be coming to participate in a coherent global social system may be made by crude measurement of variations in the degree of autarky, interconnectedness, dependence, interdependence, integration, hegemony, and convergence. In the recent modern era, we can show that interconnectedness has been rising at an exponential rate across numerous dimensions ranging from the exchange of students to world trade. Interdependence is also increasing, but less dramatically. The greater dependence of less developed countries is unmistakable, but integration has advanced very little in the period after World War II. In studying convergence we must differentiate among modes of production, institutional forms, patterns of social relations, the content of popular values, and systems of political and economic control, each of which may change at different speeds and even move in different directions. The argument that there is substantial convergence in political and economic forms at the national level may be seriously challenged. Marked convergence is widely prevalent, however, in the utilization of science, technology, and bureaucratic procedures, and in the consequent incorporation of whole populations into new social roles. These in turn induce new attitudes and values forming a widespread complex or syndrome identified as modern and postmodern. Countervailing tendencies are, however, evident and should be weighed.

Economic reform in Communist states is usually evaluated in terms of a dichotomy between traditional “command” economies and systems in which production and investment decisions are “decentralized” in the hands of immediate producers. This distinction tends to be misleading, especially when applied to multinational and/or federal states. This is the case for two reasons. First, the concept of decentralization may be disaggregated into a number of political and economic policy packages whose goals are not necessarily compatible. Second, differences in policy preferences among sub-national leaders are resolved in favor of a particular set of alternatives by the form of decentralization chosen at the national level. In Yugoslavia, decentralist reforms have subordinated the goal of reducing interregional economic inequality to the goals of rapid and stable economic growth, despite the fact that both “decentralist” goals have been equally espoused by federal planners.

In the Confederal phase of integration in the European Communities since 1969, governments on the one hand have been confirmed as essential actors because of the way in which decisions are taken and because of their reaction to the growing range of interdependencies among member states. On the other hand, they are compelled to enter into alliances with other governments and with other actors within the state: they have lost some of their traditional powers and authority, as nongovernmental actors have increased theirs; the Commission of the European Communities reflects these changes in abandoning its claim to be a European government in embryo. Consequently, governments tend to oscillate, in their policies toward each other, between advanced schemes for integration and the reassertion of their separate interests.

The Vietnam and Algerian wars have demonstrated that the overwhelming conventional military superiority of major powers is no guarantee against their defeat in wars against small nations. For external powers such wars are necessarily “limited,” which constrains escalation above certain levels. With no direct survival interest at stake, fighting the war does not take automatic priority over the pursuit of other social, political, and economic objectives. Prosecuting the war consumes resources—economic, human, and political—which are thus not available for the pursuit of these other objectives. In the absence of a quick victory this creates the potential for those political divisions which historically have shifted the balance of forces in the metropolis in favor of withdrawal. For the insurgents, the fact of invasion and occupation generates cohesion, minimizes constraints on mobilization, and maximizes the willingness to incur costs. Precisely the opposite effects tend to characterize the war effort of the external power. A conceptual framework for the analysis of the evolution and outcome of such conflicts is presented and its applications and limitations discussed.

Students of world politics have tended to assume that states act as units. Yet trans-governmental relations—direct interactions among sub-units not controlled or closely guided by the policies of cabinets or chief executives—are frequently important. Trans-governmental relations are facilitated by extensive personal contacts among officials and by conflicts of interest between departments or agencies within modern governments. International organizations can play important roles in transgovernmental networks by (i) affecting the definition of issues; (2) promoting coalitions among governmental subunits with similar interests; and (3) serving as points of policy intervention in trans-national systems. As policy interdependence among developed-country governments becomes more extensive and complex, these roles of international organizations are likely to become increasingly important. Internationalism of this relatively informal, non-institutionalized type is not a “dead end.”

In an operational sense, European integration amounts to the transnational harmonization and standardization of diverse national laws, practices, and norms. Insight into the integrative process in Western Europe, therefore, can be gleaned by looking into problems encountered during attempts at transnational harmonization. Case studies of national attempts to implement EEC directives in the fields of regional aid, pharmaceutical marketing, investment control, and fiscal harmonization point up important interplays between regional harmonization and domestic politics. Evidence concerning the politics of regional implementation shows that the ability of an EEC country to contribute to European integration depends fundamentally upon its government's ability to act politically in its domestic arena.

The new Asian and African states have laid much stress on human rights, but have often not lived up to them. The basic right of self-determination has been limited to colonies only. Democratic institutions have generally given way to authoritarian regimes, often run by the military, with popular participation denied rather than encouraged. The right to life, liberty, and security of person has been grossly violated in the cases of millions of refugees, temporary and permanent, in Africa and the Asian subcontinent. Many hundreds of thousands have been killed in domestic conflicts, as in Indonesia, Nigeria, and Burundi. One of the results is the emergence of a double standard: an all-out African and Asian attack upon the denial of human rights involved in colonialism and racial discrimination, but a refusal to face up to massive violations of human rights in the Third World itself.

New interest in the domestic sources of foreign policy intersects the notion that arguments about a state's international role are, at one level, arguments about domestic meaning, prohibitions, and responsibility. Even claimed strategic imperatives are neither self-explanatory nor comprehensible only in view of the stringencies of the international arena. Instead, they project a domestic content, referring to (and often transparent in the light of) particular domestic ends, needs, images, or interests. A rule-guided conception of die relation between domestic society and foreign policy is developed, in an analogy widi language and forms of discourse, in which discernible social rules will constrain or constitute a state policy—delimiting conduct, or defining its domestic referents, usage, and social conformity or deviance. Looking beneath the rather disembodied plane of ends and means, explanation begins to resemble an excavation; the state is seen not through the lenses of national security and rational behavior, but in the model and role of a domestic social actor.

This study is an attempt to generate a theory of nationalism through a synthesis of the conflict and integration theories of nationalism. On the premise that conflict and integration theories have tapped different aspects of the same phenomenon, a more powerful theory of nationalism may be distilled. Such an endeavor, however, requires the inclusion of concepts and relationships heretofore neglected in the literature of nationalism, e.g., the concept of relative deprivation.

Classic, optimistic, post-World War II development strategy (whereunder the new states, catalyzed by temporary, modest injections of foreign aid, were to achieve accelerated growth, improved mass welfare, and national self-reliance) already was in trouble before it was overtaken by growing awareness of natural-resource scarcities. But, at least in their Limits-of-Growth version, the latter seem to challenge the strategy fundamentally. Six hypotheses for reconciling scarcities and development are: (1) world zero population growth needs urgent promotion; but (2) there is no comparable early need for arresting global economic growth; (3) the poor countries, along with more equity, need faster growth and therefore continuing regularized net transfers from the rich; (4) the rich, while sharing some of their growth dividends with the poor through scarcity-related market adjustments, will keep growing enough also to provide net transfers; (5) the oil crisis is so extreme a case of the problem that it confuses more than it teaches; (6) in a system that is still nation-state dominated, the mixture of cooperative and conflicted scenarios for promoting development in a context of scarcity may veer toward the former as affluent decision makers are “subverted” into planetary perspectives.

Fundamental to modern politics is the fact that politics of security and diplomacy are central to society. Historically, foreign and security politics have been the main priorities of the political center, conducted primarily on that level. Since 1945, these political centers have gained predominance in die U.S. In the absence of well-integrated political elites, a highly centralized political party or parties, and powerful and permanent bureaucracies and civil service, the presidential political center has become the pivotal political center with almost exclusive control over foreign affairs and national security. The locus and degree of power widiin the American political and constitutional context, rather than elite orientations and practices, are identified to explain who dominates American foreign policy.

The modern state is a theoretical concept and a historical phenomenon which can be examined as force, power, and authority. The foundations of the modern state in China were laid by the Nationalist regime in Nankin after 1927. The Kuomintang's efforts in unification and treaty renegotiation greatly facilitated the labors of the Communists when they came to power. State development since 1949 reflects Nationalist influence in constitutionalism, party role, status of the army, and even world outlook. If the Nationalist and Communist periods are viewed as a continuum, state evolution in modern China appears as a rough recapitulation of the European state's development.

Decentralization is widely advocated as a means of alleviating the perceived central stultification of modern nation-states, especially those lacking federal constitutional structures. The experience of a separate administrative and decision-making structure in Northern Ireland is examined in an effort to gain an insight into the advantages and weaknesses of decentralization in practice.

Before one can make conclusive statements about the causes of western imperialism, one must comprehend the network of political processes and administrative relations by which expansionist demands were fed into the political systems of imperial powers. The channels followed by demands which led to British and American imperial expansion are mapped through reference to historical studies based on a wide range of primary source materials. Expansionist demand channels are studied within the framework of Easton's concept of the political system, and of linkage theories concerning the relation of national political systems to the extra-societal environment. The British and American systems provide contrasting examples of simple and complex linkage. American expansion can be studied within the simple domestic-international linkage framework developed by contemporary authors; to comprehend the process of British expansion, one must consider the complicating factor of local imperial demands.

An extensive literature analyzes military participation in Latin American politics. Case studies and a few comparative works undermine the faith of a decade ago—that military involvement in Latin American politics would decline as a result of economic development, social modernization, military professionalization, and American influence. Attention has turned increasingly to die variety of military involvements: direct and indirect; personal, factional, and institutional; intermittent and long-term; reformist and regressive. Analyses stressing the confluence and interaction of macro-social factors with those internal to the military institution seem most persuasive in explaining the diverse political roles played by Latin American officers. One central proposition which deserves further research is that the relation between the levels of military institutionalization and the institutionalization of civilian political procedures importantly affects these varying roles.

The Cuban missile crisis has become something of a misleading “model” of the foreign policy process. There are seven central tenets of this model, each of which was considered “confirmed” by the “lessons” of the Cuban crisis: (1) Crises are typical of international relations; (2) Crises are assumed to be manageable; (3) The domestic sector is not especially critical in “crisis management”; (4) Crisis management is the practical ability to reconcile force with negotiation; (5) The process of crisis negotiation is not only manageable but can be “won”; (6) The Soviets seldom negotiate except under duress; (7) Crisis management can and must be a civilian enterprise. After the crisis, there were the beginnings of detente with the Soviet Union. The test-ban treaty, the hot line, and a more civil exchange between the two powers are widely believed to stem from die favorable resolution of the missile crisis. Yet the model and its inherent assumptions on the meaning of Cuba can be challenged. Nevertheless, Cuba stands as a watershed in the cold war and in the history of the international system.

Family planning programs have encountered limited success not only because of our incomplete understanding of the sociocultural context of fertility decisions, but because the bureaucratic structures entrusted with the organizing task are overextended. Since the implementing agencies are themselves a complex part of the wider society in which they operate, there are important advantages to using an open systems perspective in the analysis of the problems of organizing for transactions with the client population. The status quo in family planning does not have to be maintained. Within political systems one can try to increase the organizational capacity to translate policies into action, or one can devise policies which recognize organizational constraints. In order to accomplish either or both of these objectives, a fresh approach to both action and research is necessary.

The theory of international relations of a new type characterizes Soviet-East European relations. Six functional aspects include pragmatic adjustments to polycentric communism; theoretical provisions for a transitional phase prior to the realization of communism on an international level; emphasis upon the East European subsystem as an indispensable core of Soviet national security; organizational efforts toward economic and political integration through COMECON and WTO; Communist summit conferences to forge and publicize unity; and the internationalist duty of socialism with special military obligations toward the territorial defense and security of Marxist-Leninist regimes. Faced with the unacceptable costs and military risks in forcibly expanding the international socialist system, the Soviets have concentrated on the maintenance of their East European subsystem: for as long as the Soviet Union maintains its exclusivist Marxist-Leninist doctrine, Eastern Europe will constitute the only dependable source of regime security and ideological fulfillment for the CPSU.