“The national interest” is frequently criticized in the contemporary study of international relations as an ambiguous term that lends itself to the support of unethical state policies by justifying single-minded national selfishness. This article argues that much of the criticism of the national interest on normative grounds in fact derives from confusion over the meaning of the concept. It separates two meanings — national interest as the common good of the national society, set off from the international environment, and national interests as the concrete objects of value over which states bargain, within that international setting. It surveys six views of the link among the national interest, the international society that legitimates various state interests, and the demands of ethical action, and concludes that statesmanship which relies on both definitions of national interest can provide the best guide to ethical state conduct within the “anarchical society” of international politics.

Many of the debates among competing paradigms in political science are concerned with peripheral elements rather than the basic assumptions of the paradigms. Since the major assumptions of any paradigm are rooted in metaphysical theories of the nature of reality, tests of one paradigm are likely to deal with phenomena that may not be considered in another. The article outlines the main metaphysical theories —materialism, idealism, and dualism —then proceeds to demonstrate that the primacy of matter versus ideas is central to paradigms of explanation in one area of political science, namely, theories of urban unrest. A survey of competing theories highlights the metaphysical assumptions and methodological preferences of each contending paradigm. The article argues that more attention should be paid to the metaphysical assumptions of paradigms in order to sharpen the focus of the research agenda.

This article explores the Spanish franquist regime's attempts to resolve a succession crisis, as the death of Francisco Franco appeared imminent in the late 1960's. It argues that Franco established the mechanisms for a smooth succession to the posts of head of state and head of government. However, these mechanisms failed to achieve Franco's major goal: the continuation of authoritarian rule after his death. Ironically, Franco's apparently ingenious “solution” to the dilemmas of succession facilitated a democratic transition that would have horrified the dictator.

The integrity with which a thinker, a political decision-maker, or a society can claim to hold to the just war tradition depends upon the readiness to draw and to implement the consistent negative conclusion, when the honest application of the classical “just war” criteria renders a negative reading on the justifiability of a given (or contemplated) military enterprise. The most qualified just war thinkers stated this conclusion firmly in the 1950's, but others have not pursued the theme with equal consistency.

Conceptualizing the state-society relationship in order to explain its byproduct underdevelopment in all peripheral countries presupposes agreement on the definition of underdevelopment. Such agreement is possible only by making the concept less abstract. Dominant paradigms which have conceptualized the state-society relationship and attempted to explain underdevelopment have not generally been successful because of their failure to make operational the concept of underdevelopment and the corollary of their excessive reliance on “regional or local differences.”