Policies may be characterized in several distinct and competing ways: as best resolved by professional expertise, as fit for political determination, as properly treated in terms of legal rights, as appropriately subject to bureaucratic norms, or as sensibly left to market determination. The consequences of the choice among these frameworks is apparent in contrasting the British and American approaches to a particular policy issue, the education of handicapped children. That analysis reveals the utility of maintaining a policy scheme which builds in a tension among the competing frameworks.

Estimates of the extent to which Third World countries have experienced slower rates of growth than those in the industrialized West since i960 indicate a weak relation between initial wealth and subsequent economic growth that follows an inverted U-shape pattern: while the lowest growth rates are found among the poorest countries of the Third World, the highest growth rates are found not in the industrialized West, but in the wealthiest Third World countries. Drawing on contending arguments associated with modernization and dependency perspectives, the relationship between foreign investment and growth within the Third World is examined. Results undermine the idea that foreign investment inhibits growth, suggesting instead that flows of foreign investment may facilitate growth, especially among the initially wealthier countries of the Third World.

In an effort to explain U.S. ocean policy making, four analytical perspectives are applied: statism, international interdependence, bureaucratic politics, and domestic politics. In each of these perspectives, structures, processes, and actors are singled out that may have an impact on the policy-making process. The statist perspective can explain the importance of security interests and of access to resources, but it cannot account for some of the major changes in U.S. ocean policy during the 1970s. The perspective of international interdependence introduces some of the international constraints and explains the use of linkage strategies. But only domestic politics, which played an increasingly important role during the period, can explain the enactment of the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976. One of the general conclusions is that the policy-making system is structurally biased toward subnational and parochial interests. For this reason, policies of the world-order type are likely to be frustrated.

What determines the occurrence, the scope, and the timing of major changes in foreign policy? In approaching this question, the author focuses on the “stabilizers” of foreign policy-that is, on the factors blocking, reducing the scope of, or delaying adaptation to new conditions, learning from negative feedback, or change in response to other disturbances. A framework for the analysis of stability in foreign policy is proposed. Several hypothetical stabilizers of foreign policies are discussed; they are grouped into administrative, political, cognitive, and international categories. Finally, the framework is applied to the problem of East-West detente.

The literature on women's roles in economic and political development, and on the impact of development policies on women, illuminates both the process of modernization and the nature of male-female relations. Three main kinds of approaches-liberal modernization theory and its feminist critiques, socialist approaches and their feminist critiques, and an eclectic “female sphere” position that emphasizes the need to replace male-dominated theory and practice with female experience and values-are discussed. Each approach has a distinct view of the causes, consequences, and significance of women's inferior status during modernization, and each proposes different strategies of change. The clarification of theoretical differences suggests new opportunities for productive research with implications for public policy.

The authors of the two volumes under review present different approaches to an analysis of the foreign policy of the People's Republic of China. Gurtov and Hwang stress the importance of national interest and the interaction of domestic factors and foreign policy; they make a connection between China's sensitivity to external threat and its reaction to it, especially at times of domestic political weakness. Armstrong asserts that ideology has played a major role in Chinese foreign policy making. In both volumes, case studies are cited to support the authors' hypotheses. The article concludes that national interest is the principal factor determining the foreign policy of the PRC. Mao Zedong's thought continues to play an important role in Chinese thinking; it is concerned with domestic economic and social change and not with the internal affairs of other countries.