As the consequences of science and technology impinge more and more on international relations, states attempt to deal with the promise and dangers implicit in these consequences by the creation of international regimes. The nature and scope of such regimes are justified, in part, by the scientific and technological givens with which they are to deal. Increasingly, however, the process of justification is dominated by constructs and arguments taken from systems theory, thus mixing the epistemological styles of the natural and the social sciences. It is often not clear whether justification in terms of systems theory is rhetoric or based on demonstrated isomorphisms. The article seeks to answer this question by presenting a four-fold typology of systems theories together with their assumptions and relevance to the creation of international regimes. The article then examines three specific proposals for international action on science and technology, prepared under OECD auspices, in order to demonstrate the extent to which they rely on systems theory and to determine how persuasive the systemic justification is. The conclusion: there is an inverse relationship between the elaborateness of the systemic justification and the acceptability of the regime on logical, empirical, and moral grounds.

The Vietnam and Algerian wars have demonstrated that the overwhelming conventional military superiority of major powers is no guarantee against their defeat in wars against small nations. For external powers such wars are necessarily “limited,” which constrains escalation above certain levels. With no direct survival interest at stake, fighting the war does not take automatic priority over the pursuit of other social, political, and economic objectives. Prosecuting the war consumes resources—economic, human, and political—which are thus not available for the pursuit of these other objectives. In the absence of a quick victory this creates the potential for those political divisions which historically have shifted the balance of forces in the metropolis in favor of withdrawal. For the insurgents, the fact of invasion and occupation generates cohesion, minimizes constraints on mobilization, and maximizes the willingness to incur costs. Precisely the opposite effects tend to characterize the war effort of the external power. A conceptual framework for the analysis of the evolution and outcome of such conflicts is presented and its applications and limitations discussed.

The new Asian and African states have laid much stress on human rights, but have often not lived up to them. The basic right of self-determination has been limited to colonies only. Democratic institutions have generally given way to authoritarian regimes, often run by the military, with popular participation denied rather than encouraged. The right to life, liberty, and security of person has been grossly violated in the cases of millions of refugees, temporary and permanent, in Africa and the Asian subcontinent. Many hundreds of thousands have been killed in domestic conflicts, as in Indonesia, Nigeria, and Burundi. One of the results is the emergence of a double standard: an all-out African and Asian attack upon the denial of human rights involved in colonialism and racial discrimination, but a refusal to face up to massive violations of human rights in the Third World itself.

Before one can make conclusive statements about the causes of western imperialism, one must comprehend the network of political processes and administrative relations by which expansionist demands were fed into the political systems of imperial powers. The channels followed by demands which led to British and American imperial expansion are mapped through reference to historical studies based on a wide range of primary source materials. Expansionist demand channels are studied within the framework of Easton's concept of the political system, and of linkage theories concerning the relation of national political systems to the extra-societal environment. The British and American systems provide contrasting examples of simple and complex linkage. American expansion can be studied within the simple domestic-international linkage framework developed by contemporary authors; to comprehend the process of British expansion, one must consider the complicating factor of local imperial demands.

The Cuban missile crisis has become something of a misleading “model” of the foreign policy process. There are seven central tenets of this model, each of which was considered “confirmed” by the “lessons” of the Cuban crisis: (1) Crises are typical of international relations; (2) Crises are assumed to be manageable; (3) The domestic sector is not especially critical in “crisis management”; (4) Crisis management is the practical ability to reconcile force with negotiation; (5) The process of crisis negotiation is not only manageable but can be “won”; (6) The Soviets seldom negotiate except under duress; (7) Crisis management can and must be a civilian enterprise. After the crisis, there were the beginnings of detente with the Soviet Union. The test-ban treaty, the hot line, and a more civil exchange between the two powers are widely believed to stem from die favorable resolution of the missile crisis. Yet the model and its inherent assumptions on the meaning of Cuba can be challenged. Nevertheless, Cuba stands as a watershed in the cold war and in the history of the international system.

The rapid spread of judicial review around the world has resulted in several studies of constitutional courts in various countries. Because of their differing methodological approaches and analytical frameworks, these studies are of limited theoretical value and, in some instances, only incidentally relevant to politics. Nevertheless, they constitute a foundation on which to build a meaningful and unified body of knowledge in the developing field of comparative judicial politics. Three research directions are proposed as a means of accomplishing this objective: to classify judicial review on a worldwide basis and chart its relation to legal and political variables; to systematically study the political roles of courts of judicial review in individual countries; and to embark upon cross-cultural studies of constitutional doctrine.

The concept and institutions of an international civil service have been studied by numerous authors. The works reviewed in this article, by Brian Urquhart, Shirley Hazzard, Henry Cabot Lodge, Richard Symonds and Michael Carder, and Alexander Szalai with Margaret Croke and Associates, are all related to the UN Secretariat, its successes and its failures. The practice of multilateral diplomacy as conducted by the Secretary General of the UN, personnel policies and national interference in the UN administration, relations between the international Secretariat and member governments on the one hand and with the media on the other, as well as the role of international civil servants in promoting social reform are discussed. The works under review are found to contain conflicting images of the UN and its Secretariat.