Political parties learn from foreign incumbents, that is, parties abroad that won office. But does the scope of this cross-national policy diffusion vary with the party family that generates those incumbents? The authors argue that party family conditions transnational policy learning when it makes information on the positions of sister parties more readily available and relevant. Both conditions apply to social democratic parties. Unlike other party families, social democrats have faced major competitive challenges since the 1970s and they exhibit exceptionally strong transnational organizations—factors, the authors contend, that uniquely facilitate cross-national policy learning from successful parties within the family. The authors analyze parties’ policy positions using spatial methods and find that social democratic parties are indeed exceptional because they emulate one another across borders more than do Christian democratic and conservative parties. These findings have important implications for our understanding of political representation and of social democratic parties’ election strategies over the past forty years.

The idea of “policy science” is not a new one. In fact, it is organic to the Western tradition. Its first, incomparable formulation is found in Plato's Republic; policy, the Platonic Socrates says, can be reasonable and sound only if it is based upon the fullness of scientific insight and knowledge. According to the Platonic conception, it is not even enough to apply scientific knowledge, gathered by specialists, to practical policy problems which the rulers are to decide. Rather, the rulers themselves must acquire all the scientific knowledge needed to frame reasonable policy. The duality of the “expert adviser” and of the “decision-maker” who merely listens to him is implicitly rejected in the Republic. The ruler himself must be the knower. For the decisive thing is not knowledge in the abstract, knowledge as something impersonally available and ready to be picked up; it is knowledge conceived as the quality of a soul. According to the Platonic (and Aristotelian) view, knowledge is not an alien material “contained” in the mind, but the “form,” the ideal essence of the mind itself, so that a mind that knows belongs to a different species than the mind that lacks knowledge. In acquiring knowledge, the mind becomes essentially transformed, it acquires a new form; this is the original meaning of the term “information.” In its Platonic sense, then, the idea of “policy science” refers to the soul of the ruler, which must be the highest species of soul.

However much men differ about what constitutes good government, they agree that it is conducive to economic development. It is sometimes taken for granted that the first step on the road to economic development is the establishment of an effective government that is determined to achieve such development. Thus Dr. Nkrumah enjoined his followers: “Seek ye first the kingdom of politics and all else shall be added unto you.” Students of economic development might not think the matter is as simple as that, but they still spend most of their time in search of government policies conducive to economic growth; they ask how economic plans can be improved, when governments can best rely on private initiative, and so on.

This article points out and analyzes some overt and implicit family imagery underlying political and economic discussion in one passage by Mao Tse-tung, and discusses the value of such analysis. Along the way, some methodological questions—the significance of form and content in such “content analysis,” and verification of the findings—are also considered.

When Philippe Herreman of Le Monde spoke of Tunisia's “confiscated revolution” in 1958,1 he was referring to the rivalry of President Bourguiba and the vigorous union leader Ahmed Ben Salah. Three years later their differences were overcome and Ben Salah emerged as Minister of Planning and Finance, one of the most powerful positions in the government. The social revolution envisaged by the highly privileged and colorful labor leader in 1956 had been confiscated in 1958 and became the cornerstone of Tunisian domestic policy in 1961. Such have been the gyrations of the one-party system in Tunisia and in other African states.

“WE ARE living in an age in which all roads lead to communism,” Molotov proclaimed confidently in 1947. Kaganovich re-echoed him in 1955 by maintaining that “if the nineteenth century was a century of capitalism, the twentieth century is a century of the triumph of socialism and communism.” This serenely optimistic viewpoint sees the victory of communism as all-inclusive, leaving no room for any mutual adjustment between the Communist and non-Communist worlds. Indeed, the First Secretary of the CPSU, Nikita S. Khrushchev, has repeatedly made it clear that the concept of coexistence relates simply to a transitory phase prior to the final assertion of the Communist mode of life over the entire globe. It would be idle to dismiss these claims as mere expressions of blind fanaticism, for whatever the element of fanaticism in the thinking of Soviet leaders may be, such proclamations of faith in final victory are also supported by observation of recent trends in world affairs.

EVER since the Berlin blockade of 1948–1949, the author has been asked on a number of occasions to explain how the zonal boundaries in Germany came to be drawn and why Berlin was left as an island in the Communist sea. A brief and simple answer was found to be impossible for several reasons: First, the Department of State does not have all the pertinent records, since the Department was not included in all of the negotiations on this subject. Second, some parts of the story do not seem to be documented adequately in any official records, with the result that certain aspects of the subject are open to controversial interpretations. Third, not only is the story of these negotiations complicated in itself, being woven from several separate strands, but it can only be explained in the larger framework of the overall planning for the occupation of Germany. Despite these many limitations and difficulties, the author has felt that he should attempt to set down as complete and objective an answer as he could to the persistent queries which this subject has evoked. The result is the present article.

The relative success of post-Mao reform in China has raised a number of questions regarding the neoclassical perspective: How could China have achieved rapid economic growth without privatization? Why have Chinese officials not been resistant to market reform? What makes the Chinese state developmental rather than predatory? The four recent works reviewed in this article attempt to answer these questions by moving away from the neoclassical approach, yet none offers a better alternative. The search for the secret of China's economic “miracle” must be continued.

Every profession is occasionally inflicted with challenges which loom large. The challenge may take the form of a book which purports to produce a fundamental revision—in economics these would include Keynes' General Theory, Hicks's Value and Capital, Samuelson's Foundations; or, in the narrower field of international economics, Meade's Trade and Welfare. Or it may be a methodological revolution. Or both. Older members of the profession may try to ignore the challenge. And some of these challenges, ignored, oblige by disappearing. Others have to be faced, sooner or later.

Aside from language, students of international relations in the United States and Great Britain have several things in common: parallel developments in the emergence of international relations as a field of study after World War I, and more recent efforts to broaden the field by drawing security issues and changes in the international political economy under the broad umbrella of “international studies.” But a review of four recent books edited by British scholars demonstrates that there is also a “distance” between British and American scholarship. Compared with dominant trends in the United States, the former, though hardly monolithic and producing a rich and varied literature, is still very much attached to historical analysis and the concept of an “international society” that derives from the period in modern history in which Britain played a more prominent role in international politics. Because trends in scholarship do, in fact, reflect national political experience, the need continues for transnational cooperation among scholars in the quest for strong theories in international relations.

The massive effort in the United States to develop the study of the Chinese Communist regime and movement began in the wake of the postwar upsurge in the development of the social sciences, particularly in the field of comparative politics. Inevitably, it has come under the controlling influence of the exciting intellectual ferment in these disciplines. With the publication of Chalmers Johnson's Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power (1962) and Franz Schurmann's Ideology and Organization in Communist China (1966), the study of contemporary China can be said to have begun its drive to maturity.

The author analyzes the basic quanititative methodologies employed in the open literature to assess conventional forces and evaluates the extent to which they can be used to set military requirements with a new degree of reliability and accuracy. The recent proliferation of literature on conventional forces has begun to fill an important gap in the strategic studies field. Insufficient understanding of essential elements of ground combat, the context sensitivity of key variables, and inaccurate and unreliable data bases mean, however, that the output of both static and dynamic methodologies contains high levels of uncertainty. This seemingly irreducible uncertainty precludes the use of existing models to make definitive judgment about military needs. Nevertheless, because such uncertainty enhances deterrence, it may not only be unavoidable, but also preferable.

During the Indian Independence struggle, Mahatma Gandhi devised a shrewd ideological version of the concept of social trusteeship, rooted firmly in the strong religio-social traditions of India. Gandhian trusteeship was criticized, but for the most part it functioned effectively to gain and hold for the Independence movement the support of several sectors of India's highly segmented society. Significantly, moreover, many of those who most vehemently criticized Gandhian trusteeship have expressed their acceptance of this idea since Independence.

American academic literature on foreign policy witnessed, in the 1960's, a continuing flow of studies of the Soviet case, as indeed of other cases. It also witnessed a flow of studies of another, newer, and broader type—studies of theoretical bent concerned with the construction of general analytical models of foreign policy behavior.

The financial difficulties of the United Nations have become one of the pressing issues of contemporary international affairs. They have roots that extend to the heart of the politics of the Organization and its procedure. Beyond this they raise serious questions about the ability of the institution to function effectively in the future. To grasp the complex problems associated with the UN financial situation it is necessary to view the matter in some perspective.

There is a sizeable number of separatist movements in contemporary political life. Some of them have attracted widespread support, others have not; some are surrounded by violence, others are not. It is the combination of the size and tactics of separatist movements that we wish to examine. Our purpose is to inquire into the conditions that enable regional separatism to attract widespread support without also eliciting violence. Our conclusions will be based on one separatist movement that managed to accomplish this feat, the Scottish National Party.

This review article interprets Michael Walzer's Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality as a radical argument for community. It demonstrates the continuity between this volume, in which the particular community and its own moral understanding is the foundation of justice, and Walzer's study of international relations in terms of universal human rights m Just and Unjust Wars. It questions the appropriateness of Walzer's conception of community, of membership, and of shared moral understanding for heterogeneous and differentiated modern societies, and in particular for the United States. It defends liberalism, with its indirect market relations and legal formalism, against Walzer's communitarian challenge, with its substantive agreement among members about the meaning, value, and distribution of goods.

The distribution of ethnic groups throughout South Asia constitutes the region's single most significant strategic factor. Other factors, varying in importance according to specific location and time, do, of course, interact with the ethnic factor. Thus, the topographic, political, economic, and transportation maps all contribute essential elements to our knowledge of the region. Nevertheless, the settlement pattern of distinct culture-groups, as defined by the language and dialect maps, is clearly the most critical of all tangible phenomena.

The field of modern civil-military relations is not a totally fresh one, still unexplored. Kurt Lang's 1969 bibliography on military sociology lists over one thousand items—books, articles, and unpublished material—and this catalogue includes only the material available in English. His section on civil-military relations lists some 250 items,1an impressive accumulation in a supposedly new field.