This article presents an analysis of the postindustrial economy from a political economy perspective. It identifies a set of specific distributional trade-offs associated with the new role played by the services sector as the chief source of employment growth in advanced democracies over the last three decades. It is argued that three core policy objectives—budgetary restraint, wage equality, and expansion of employment—constitute a political “trilemma” that allows only two of the goals to be successfully pursued at the same time. Using a combination of statistical and caseoriented analysis, the authors demonstrate the political and economic salience of the trilemma, the distributional tensions inherent in each strategy to cope with it, and the political-institutional constraints under which these strategies are chosen.

The article reconstructs and explains the patterns of collective protest in four Central European countries: former East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia during the early phases of democratic consolidation (1989–93). The method of event analysis of protest behavior is employed. Content analysis of six major newspapers in each country provides empirical evidence. The examination of data reveals striking contrasts in the magnitude and forms of protests. In each country the policies of the new democratic regimes were contested by different groups and organizations, employing different repertoires of contention. The authors consider propositions derived from four theoretical traditions—relative deprivation, instrumental institutionalism, historical- cultural institutionalism, and resource mobilization theory—to determine which provides the best explanation for the patterns observed in the data set. Three main conclusions are reached. First, the levels of "objective" or "subjective" deprivation are unrelated to the magnitude and various features of protest, which are best explained by a combination of institutional and resource mobilization theories. Second, democratic consolidation is not necessarily threatened by a high magnitude of protest, since the two seem to be unrelated. Third, if the demands of collective protest are moderate and the methods routinized, then protest may contribute to the robustness of a new democracy.

Variation in the need for military and political support from military allies affects the degree to which foreign economic policies will discriminate in favor of military allies and against adversaries and other countries. Powers in need of such support will pursue discriminatory foreign economic policies in order to change the configuration of domestic interests to favor not only closer economic relations but also closer political relations. By strengthening domestic support for an alliance, policymakers make it more difficult for their allies to renege on alliance commitments. Stronger political relations in turn reinforce the deterrent effect of the alliance. Because the net strategic benefits from closer relations in their case are lower, powers that can go it alone without support from allies will refrain from discriminatory policies. Shifts in strategic need make it possible to explain variation in the links between security considerations and foreign economic policies within alliances over time and also across alliances. British grand strategy in the 1930s illustrates how shifts in strategic need influence the degree to which foreign economic policies discriminate in favor of potential military allies.

This review article identifies five research themes in the study of international environmental politics. Among them, the research on regime effectiveness and on transnational networks has the greatest potential for becoming a driving force in the search for new avenues in the analysis of international relations. Although at the moment less is known about regime consequences and the role of transnational networks in international environmental politics than about regime formation, the former two have recently produced research questions and strategies that seem to be promising. However, the study of regime effectiveness and transnational networks requires more sophisticated research strategies in order to realize its full potential. Although the concept of causal mechanisms used in this research strand seems to be an extremely innovative and promising approach, it needs to be developed in more detail and backed up by comparative designs.

The end of the cold war has produced a sustained debate on international relations theory. Some scholars argue that the unexpected and unexpectedly peaceful demise of the post-World War II international order undermines the entire research agenda of the subfield; others maintain that it warrants an adjustment of the balance between theories or theoretical traditions; and still others hold that it has little or no relevance to theory. This essay reviews the debate in light of the new evidence that has accumulated over the past five years. It finds that because scholars rarely make the empirical implications of their arguments explicit, the cascade of new information concerning the event cannot advance the debate. However, the natural focus provided by a sudden and unexpected event of seminal importance and the outpouring of new data suggest the possibility of empirically driven progress in one's understanding of change in world politics. The article concludes with guidelines designed to increase the likelihood of such progress by clarifying the debate in advance of new releases of primary data.