A Heavy onslaught on the (predominantly American) “scientific” school of students of international relations has recently been delivered to the evident satisfaction and comfort of those who practice or respond most comfortably to the “classical approach.” Still, the defeat of one school—if defeat there was—need not, of course, necessarily redound to the honor of the other, and it is surely worth considering what positive case has been made out on this occasion, explicitly or by implication, in favor of “classicism.” In fact, this article will argue, neither approach is entirely adequate. Neither provides a really firm basis on which to found a coherent and well-integrated field of study or—what is undoubtedly more important—a framework within which the facts of contemporary international life can be selected, compared, and interpreted in a thoroughly valid and enlightening manner.

With the reluctant retirement of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union entered a new phase of collective leadership. Past experience with such periods has led many Western specialists to expect that the collective leadership pattern will lead to the emergence of a single leader, who will hold preponderant power and who will seek to consolidate and strengthen that power, ultimately acquiring something approaching dictatorial authority. The assumptions of this “conventional wisdom” (to borrow a phrase from John Galbraith) are that (i) there is something inherently unstable in a collective leadership pattern, given Soviet conditions; (2) the personal ambitions and power drive of Soviet leaders prevent, in the long run, their acceptance of a situation of shared power; and (3) historical evidence of past breakdowns of collective leadership is applicable to present conditions.

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.”

Almost everywhere in the world man lives in communities, and a vast majority of these communities are not independent political entities but are subject to political control from above. When village communities are under the control of a central authority, there necessarily arises the problem of working out a political relationship between the local communities and the central authority. This relationship is, of course, far from uniform. The modest state of the aboriginal Fiji, where the ruler has little more power than to demand tributes, is a far cry from the modern state of Communist China, which controls practically every sphere of peasant life. A question arises then as to what determines the variation in the political relationships between the village community and the central authority and within the village's internal political structure. The purpose of this article is to explore these determinants and examine their consequences for the village community as a political entity.

For the first time since independence, economic planners in India are experiencing a serious crisis of confidence. Although there has always been some debate on alternative policies and programs, the central assumptions of development planning have remained unchallenged since the 1930's. Now, in contrast, the very core of economic development strategy has become the target of open and bitter criticism. The final draft of the Fourth Five Year Plan has been delayed for more than a year, and the end of fundamental disagreements seems nowhere in sight.

Although the first recorded permanent diplomatic mission was established by the Duke of Milan at Genoa over five hundred years ago, knowledge of the structure and functioning of the global diplomatic enterprise is still extremely limited. The often-cited work of Nicolson provides a historical overview of diplomacy, describes some of the norms of recent practice, and enumerates traits of “the ideal diplomatist.” Morgenthau has analyzed the importance of diplomatic style to international peace, and others have offered valuable descriptions of the diplomatic practice of single nations. Yet there exist no systematic studies of the diplomatic behavior of nations, nor even comparative statistics on bilateral and multilateral forms of international representation.

China has been such a big unit during most of the last two thousand years that it has habitually been thought of in terms of models, whether Legalist, Confucian, Neo-Confucian, or Communist. To put it another way, the remarkable early success of Chinese administrators in setting up and maintaining a centralized bureaucracy was part and parcel of their inveterate penchant for blueprinting the social order. Today "China" is one of the largest concrete referents commonly used in discussions of world politics. Generalizing about China is a particularly daring venture, but it is a game we continue to play because the Chinese have always played it. Before appraising the most interesting recent treatment of China in this customary fashion—Franz Schur-mann's book Ideology and Organization in Communist China—I should like to look briefly at the fashion itself.

What tempts an army to move into politics and ultimately to pass beyond the threshold of legality into the realm of civil disobedience and insurrection? In Latin America and the underdeveloped world, where such occurrences have been common, the phenomenon of military “praetorianism” poses relatively few analytical problems for the historian or social scientist. But the forces in modern democratic societies which lead an army into rebellion are far more complex, just as, fortunately, they arise with far less frequency. In contemporary France the problem of military insurrection is especially complicated, all the more so since the French army, until the era of the Second World War, had always regarded itself as “la grande muette,” suffering but obedient, and the French officer corps had prided itself on its apoliti-cism and devotion to strict professional duty.

In a great many wars—perhaps in most wars since the Middle Ages—one or both of the belligerents could have done significantly more to fight his enemy but chose not to do so. Whether we want to call all these wars “limited,” or only those in which both sides hobbled their military effort, is perhaps a minor matter of terminology.

We may argue about the wisdom of announcing ‘unconditional surrender’ as an aim in the last major war,” observes Schelling in his recent book, Arms and Influence—as one might expect, a brilliant and important study—“but seem to expect ‘unconditional destruction’ as a matter of course in another one” (p. 23). Secretary McNamara does in fact require “adequacy of our forces from the standpoint of convincing others that the initiation of general nuclear war would inevitably bring about” not their facing the choice between capitulation and devastation, but exclusively “their own destruction.” Suppose the enemy underestimates our force and its defenses or exaggerates the obstacles he can put in our path—suppose, that is, we have failed to be “clear and convincing” about our capabilities. Assume that the enemy then attempts to disarm us, disarming himself in the act.