Soviet foreign policy underwent a significant change in orientation in the early 1970s. Emphasis on the pursuit of a new, more constructive relationship with the United States gave way to a primary focus on competition with the U.S. for influence and strategic presence in the third world, and there was a notable reduction of traditional restraints on the conduct of that competition. The article focuses on Soviet policy in the region and the period in which this redirection of policy was first manifested—the Middle East between the June 1967 and the October 1973 wars; it explains this major change by an analysis of the divergent images of the United States and of U.S.-Soviet relations that were held by Soviet elites, and the outcome of conflict among holders of the respective images.

During the decade of the 1950's, considerable popularity was won for the idea that the restructuring of the world economy into regional blocs would mark a great forward step in international economic relations, and might also help resolve certain major international political problems. As the new decade begins, and as a new Administration takes office in Washington, it is timely to reappraise the validity of this idea. To do so is not to suggest that regionalism is the most important aspect of foreign economic policy for the new decade. There come readily to mind at least five other major topics: aid for economic development; stabilization of international markets for primary products; the policy of advanced industrial countries toward imports of low-wage manufactured goods from developing countries; the treatment of trade and aid activities of the Communist bloc; and the reduction of the balance-of-payments deficit of the United States. With respect to broad structural relationships, however, the future of economic regionalism is evidently a matter of special importance.

ARE regional and global approaches to world order compatible or competitive ? Policy-makers and scholars pose this question with increasing frequency. Yet too often assessments of the relative capabilities of regional and general international organizations fail to distinguish the different demands such issues as threats to the peace or modernization create for widely divergent institutions. Enthusiasm for regionalism waxes and wanes with events. As Inis Claude observes, “The advocacy of regionalism can be, and often is, as doctrinaire and as heedless of concrete realities as the passion for all-encompassing organization.”

Realist approaches to international politics raise the possibility that external policies based on expanding military power may undermine the economic bases of that power. The links between external strategy and economic performance can be classified as fiscal (macroeconomic effects), structural (microeconomic and structural effects), and protectionist (effects on foreign economic policy). The case of prewar Japan suggests that, for countries at an intermediate position in the international power hierarchy and in the international division of labor, the positive effects of external ambition on economic performance may dominate. Other cases—National Socialist Germany, contemporary developing countries, and the postwar superpowers—seem to confirm that international position is a principal determinant of these effects.

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.

The fact that most Arab countries recently celebrated the centenary of Lenin's birth with varying degree of fanfare only underlines their relative impermeability to his teachings. The fanfare was not in all cases inversely proportional to the country's implementation of practical ideology, but the latter is in scarce evidence. Few of the leadership groups have assimilated the Leninist prescription to unite practice with theory, much less devised or adapted an ideology which is “practical” in the sense of legitimating particular political strategies or tactics in a logical and systematic way. Nor have they, except possibly in Tunisia, developed the necessary concomitant of practical ideology, namely a durable political organization which articulates and implements it.

The weapons succession process is an analysis of military-technological change that draws upon classical economics and recent theories of bureaucratic politics. The analysis focuses on the institutional mechanisms for reconciling the demand for weapons with the supply of weapons. In wartime, the demand for weapons, determined in battle, shapes military-technological change. In peacetime, different styles of military-technological change depend on different types of supplier institutions; military-technological change is described as “baroque” in the West and “conservative” in the Soviet Union. The essay speculates about the implications of different styles of military-technological change for economic development and for arms limitation.

This essay reviews three recent books on foreign policy decision making. Collectively, they sharply modify conventional realist analysis by emphasizing the possibility of choice, the necessity of analyzing relationships at the level of a dyad of states rather than at the level of either individual states or the entire international system, and the cognitive processes by which choices are made. But their substantial challenge to realism falls short of the next step necessary, namely, more fully developing a theory of how domestic political processes affect the choice of whether to use military force.

These first three volumes of a promising series are strong evidence that the policy sciences of development are beginning to emerge as an identifiable problem-oriented frame of reference, intersecting every specialized field of knowledge. The goals of development are gaining clarity; the historical perspective deepens; the interdependence of conditioning factors is better understood; the probable lines of future growth are more fully projected; and the invention and evaluation of policies designed to maximize or at least to achieve minimum results are forging ahead. The editors of each volume have woven theory and data into coherent patterns, and many essays—such as the chapters by Marx, Riggs, Lerner, and Pool—are sharply centered on the hitherto underdeveloped topics with which they come to grips. The Almond-Coleman model of political development lurks meaningfully in the wings.

Several hours before his assassination in 1948, Mahatma Gandhi submitted his proposal for revisions in the party constitution of the Indian National Congress. He suggested that the Congress dissolve, since partisanship appeared to him wrong, and convert itself into a Lok Sevak Sangh, an apolitical people's service association. The Congress did not in the event obey the testament, but no one thought the proposal funny or outrageous. More recently, a General Secretary of the Congress reiterated the non-partisan point of view underlying this proposal when he questioned whether the role of an opposition party was meaningful in India, and when he supported the idea of “a common national programme acceptable to all political parties, on the basis of which the administration of the country could be carried on.” “The Panchayat system in India,” the Secretary said, “was essentially based on this very principle of synthesis rather than antithesis. Economically underdeveloped countries like ours can hardly afford the luxury of opposition only for the sake of opposition.”

THE purpose of this article is to analyze in a preliminary way some of the basic sociological problems of bureaucratic political systems—legitimation, autonomy, and political struggle. For reasons which will be specified later—not least among them, reasons of space—we shall limit our discussion to pre-modern, historical societies, such as the ancient empires (especially the Egyptian), the Byzantine, Chinese, and Ottoman Empires, and some of the European countries in the age of absolutism. By way of introduction, we shall endeavor to discern some common characteristics in all these political systems, and the main differences among them; and then inquire into some of the sociological conditions that are related to both the common features and the chief differences.

Positions taken by delegations in the U.N. General Assembly during debates of the Sixth and Seventh Special Sessions are analyzed to determine clustering on economic issues and their sources. Third-World states took positions consistently distinct from those of Eastern and Western countries, and economic attributes appear to explain this. Differences within the Third World were not consistent, however, and were more apparent in the Seventh Special Session. Divisions found between Third-World states on issues such as resource allocations and monetary reform included: states with slow versus fast economic growth rates; states dependent on Western versus Eastern aid; and regional differences. Neither OPEC nor a “fourth world” appeared distinct from the Third World as a whole. Coalitions, varying by issue, appeared to overlap to build the Third-World “bloc.”

The success of the European Economic Community often has been hailed as the most important development of international relations in the West in the last century. Even if the EEC does not progress beyond the point it has already reached, it is probably the most integrated union ever to have been formed among nation-states. Moreover, observers have been impressed by the momentum the EEC has had until recently, leading most of them to expect that its level of integration will continue to rise and its scope of unification to grow. Much of the credit for the success of the EEC is often attributed to “background” factors, to the fact that the member countries share the same European tradition, have a sizable Catholic population, are in a similar stage of economic development, have a similar civilization, and so forth.

Four issues must be articulated and related in order to create a general theory of revolution: revolutionary leadership and organization, mass participation, the nature of revolutionary action, and system response. Recent studies of the Iranian revolution provide abundant descriptive materials relevant to the last three issues, but little to illuminate the nature of the leadership of the revolution or its organization. Few of the studies attempt to analyze their materials in a theoretically useful way. A psychoanalytical interpretation of revolutionary action and of the Shah's response is one way of moving toward a general theory. His leadership failure, explained in terms of his personal history and character structure, is a powerful way to account for the revolution itself as well as for its outcome.

In his pioneering essay, “The Element of Decision in the Pattern of of War,” Theodore Abel argues, on the basis of twenty-five sample studies, “The rational, calculating decision for war is reached far in advance of the actual outbreak of hostilities,” and “in no case is the decision precipitated by emotional tensions, sentimentality, crowd behavior, or other irrational motivation. In every case, the decision is based upon a careful weighing of chances and of anticipating consequences.” This thesis—that a state selects an action of war from a number of alternatives in a conscious decision to maximize its goals after a careful weighing of available means and of possible consequences—may be applied as a conceptual scheme which we could term the rational calculation model.

Do online social networks affect political tolerance in the highly polarized climate of postcoup Egypt? Taking advantage of the real-time networked structure of Twitter data, the authors find that not only is greater network diversity associated with lower levels of intolerance, but also that longer exposure to a diverse network is linked to less expression of intolerance over time. The authors find that this relationship persists in both elite and non-elite diverse networks. Exploring the mechanisms by which network diversity might affect tolerance, the authors offer suggestive evidence that social norms in online networks may shape individuals’ propensity to publicly express intolerant attitudes. The findings contribute to the political tolerance literature and enrich the ongoing debate over the relationship between online echo chambers and political attitudes and behavior by providing new insights from a repressive authoritarian context.

The 1967 lightning victory of Zahal, the Israel Defense Forces, was the result of a philosophy that had considered military effort as an instrument of nation-building from the very beginning of the Zionist movement in Palestine. In 1948, the Israeli War of Liberation thrust the army into prominence, and from then on army leaders have been influential in the governmental and economic elites committed to rapid modernization. The Sinai victory in 1956 and the third military success in Sinai, Jordan, and Syria in 1967 further enhanced Zahal's reputation. Although Israel's standing army is no larger than 80,000 men, one-seventh of the country's total Jewish population of 2.5 million is on active military reserve. Given these conditions, it is natural to wonder what impact the army has had on the political life of Israel.

The single-party system of Nasser's Egypt belongs to a political genre widespread in Africa. It is a collaboration movement in which a nationally dominant leader enters into an “alliance” with regionally and locally influential persons; the party organization serves as a kind of “formal contract” between them. As a rule, the alliance is tacit in nature, based on each side's reading of political realities, and therefore tending both to be ad hoc and to involve a limited degree of direct interaction. The collaboration movement may be described as a transcendental organization with which individuals willing to deal with and support the regime may affiliate without necessarily making a total commitment to the movement.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of behavioralism upon the study of the United Nations as reflected in journal articles published during the period 1950-1969.

Scope and Method of This Study

In recent years students of politics have become increasingly self-conscious about the spread of behavioral methods and viewpoints within the discipline. A great deal of energy has been expended in explaining what behavioralism is, defending it, attacking it, or trying to reconcile it with more traditional approaches.

Settlers flocking to boomtowns on the American western frontier were faced with the same task that communities in weak states across the globe face in contemporary times: self-governance. Peer sanctions can enforce cooperation in these environments, but their efficacy depends on the social networks that transmit information from peer to peer. The author uses a game-theoretic model to show that peripheral network positions can generate such strong incentives to misbehave that persistent cheating occurs in equilibrium. The model reveals that groups maintaining high levels of cooperation that face shocks to their strategic environment or to their network can ratchet down into less cooperative equilibria in which the most peripheral become ostracized. Furthermore, population change that features rapid growth, high turnover, and enclave settlements can undermine cooperation. The insights from this article help to explain the trajectory of cooperation in the mining towns of the Wild West in which high levels of cooperation deteriorated as the population surged, and help to make sense of why only certain nonwhite settlers were targets of hostility and racism.