Two approaches to the theory of international relations at present compete for our attention. The first of these I shall call the classical approach. By this I do not mean the study and criticism of the “classics” of international relations, the writings of Hobbes, Grotius, Kant, and other great thinkers of the past who have turned their attention to international affairs. Such study does indeed exemplify the classical approach, and it provides a method that is particularly fruitful and important. What I have in mind, however, is something much wider than this: the approach to theorizing that derives from philosophy, history, and law, and that is characterized above all by explicit reliance upon the exercise of judgment and by the assumptions that if we confine ourselves to strict standards of verification and proof there is very little of significance that can be said about international relations, that general propositions about this subject must therefore derive from a scientifically imperfect process of perception or intuition, and that these general propositions cannot be accorded anything more than the tentative and inconclusive status appropriate to their doubtful origin.

Political modernization involves, let us assume, three things. First, it involves the rationalization of authority: the replacement of a large number of traditional, religious, familial, and ethnic political authorities by a single, secular, national political authority. This change implies that government is the product of man, not of nature or of God, and that a well-ordered society must have a determinate human source of final authority, obedience to whose positive law takes precedence over other obligations. Rationalization of authority means assertion of the external sovereignty of the nation-state against transnational influences and of the internal sovereignty of the national government against local and regional powers. It means national integration and the centralization or accumulation of power in recognized national law-making institutions. Secondly, political modernization involves the differentiation of new political functions and the development of specialized structures to perform those functions. Areas of peculiar competence—legal, military, administrative, scientific—become separated from the political realm, and autonomous, specialized, but subordinate, organs arise to discharge those tasks. Administrative hierarchies become more elaborate, more complex, more disciplined. Office and power are distributed more by achievement and less by ascription. Thirdly, political modernization involves increased participation in politics by social groups throughout society and the development of new political institutions—such as political parties and interest associations—to organize this participation. Broadened participation in politics may increase control of the people by the government, as in totalitarian states, or it may increase control of the government by the people, as in some democratic ones. But in all modern states the citizens become directly involved in and affected by governmental affairs. Rationalized authority, differentiated structure, and mass participation thus distinguish modern polities from antecedent polities.

Political theorists from Plato to the present have concerned themselves not only with the nature of the polity as we know it, but with how it came to be, what purposes it serves, and by what stages it has developed. The last item, however, has more often than not been slighted. This lack now forces itself on our attention for an obvious reason: Never before have so many “new states” come into being in so short a span of time and never before have students of politics been provided with so many living examples of states at all stages of development, many of them conspicuously failing to perform vital functions, frequently to the extent that disorder and violent change prevail.

The idea that interest groups may play a significant role in Communist politics has, until recently, not been seriously entertained either by Western political scientists or by Soviet legal specialists. The concept of “totalitarianism” that has dominated the analysis of communism in the West has seemed to preclude the possibility that interest groups could challenge or affect the single ruling party as the fount of all power. The uniqueness of a totalitarian system has been deemed to lie in the very totality of its political power, excluding, as it were by definition, any area of autonomous behavior by groups other than the state or party, and still more, preventing serious influence by them on the process of decision-making. Marxist theorists, starting from different presuppositions, have assumed that the single ruling party, the organization of the working class, best knew the “real” interests of the people as a whole, and have denied the possibility of fundamental conflicts of interest within the working class, or between it and associated friendly classes such as the peasantry. Within the ruling party itself, groups or factions opposing the leadership have not been admitted in theory or permitted in practice.

IF a central problem for any nineteenth-century thinker was that of defining his attitude toward the French Revolution, a central one for contemporary man is his appraisal of the Russian Revolution. The latter problem is even more critical, for nearly one billion people explicitly claim to be heirs and defenders of the Russian Revolution. Forces called into being by the upheaval of 1917 are even more forcefully mobilized and tangibly powerful than those called into being by the French Revolution of 1789 and the “age of the democratic revolution.” Thus, as we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the Revolution of 1917 and the volume of writings threatens to reach avalanche proportions, it might be well to take a critical look at the historical studies and reflections that have been called forth in what might well be called the age of the totalitarian revolution.

The origin of wars is to be found … in the minds … of men,” said Frederick S. Dunn in the course of his argument that the United Nations should improve educational opportunities and raise living standards throughout the world. Such reforms, he believed, would alleviate ignorance and mass dissatisfaction, two of the principal causes of war. But Dunn's statement, in the light of recent research, also lends itself to a totally different interpretation.

These seven recent works typify a cross section of scholarly publication on the Chinese People's Republic, its history, present operation, and prospects. Taken together, they provide the basis for some remarks on the study of Chinese “political culture.” Rather than attempt a full review of the individual works, this brief article will examine some of their assumptions and indirectly comment on the literature they represent. Each book reflects a prodigious scholarly effort and has received in various other journals a complete appraisal of its intellectual value. In general it may be fairly said that these volumes do not constitute significant breakthroughs of knowledge. They do, however, bring together and analyze important bodies of data on Communist China.

Many students of world politics take their subject so seriously that they often mistake their conception of reality for reality itself. There may be an objective truth about any given event or trend in world affairs, but the observer must use some method to comprehend it and, in so doing, he inevitably renders the truth subjective. The “established facts” of world politics are, in effect, no more than widespread agreement—what I shall call an intersubjective consensus—among actors and experts as to the existence and relevance of particular phenomena. Total comprehension of the realities of world politics can thus only be approximated. The greater the intersubjective consensus, the greater the comprehension and the more “real” the reality.

The Zulu kingdom is not extinct. It survives in the imaginations of many Bantu people, and remains latent in their social practices. Historically, it is as old as modern France, but it remained an independent state for a brief seven decades, its glory ending in the Zulu War of 1879. The period is spanned by the reigns of five monarchical figures: Dingiswayo (c. 1808–1818), who laid the foundations; Shaka (1816–1828), who established the kingdom and ruled at the zenith of Zulu power; Dingane (1828–1840), who continued the despotism as European settlers began to entrench upon the Zulu domain; Mpande (1840–1872), whose sovereignty was limited by accommodation first to Boer, then to British, power; Cetshwayo (1872–1884), who sought to break free but lost independence in a war against the British. Shaka stands out as the greatest of them all—both Romulus and Napoleon to the Zulu people—and his legend has captured the imaginations of both European and African writers, inspiring novels, biographies, and historical studies in several tongues. As a violent autocrat he is both admired and condemned: admired by those who love conquerors, condemned by those who hate despots. The internal transformations wrought by his regime were accompanied by enormous devastation and dislocation throughout South and Central Africa, disrupting a third of the continent. Some estimates of the slaughter in Shaka's total wars and in the mass migrations caused by them have placed the number of dead at close to two million. It is also estimated that by 1820 Shaka had deprived some three hundred tribes of their independence, had commanded a force of more than a hundred thousand warriors, and had brought half a million souls under his rule. Several of his generals fled with their armies to make empires of their own. Thus, even after his day had passed, Shaka's influence remained, for his model of military despotism was replicated in kingdoms such as the Matebele under Mzilikazi in Southern Rhodesia and the Gasa (Shangane) under Soshangane in Portuguese East Africa, and in several groups of Ngoni north of the Zambezi River. These kingdoms for some years preserved the Zulu pattern, coupling internal despotic power with external military terrorism.

AS the revived study of the politics of tropical Africa by Americans enters its second decade,1 scholars have on the whole tempered youthful enthusiasm with an adolescent awareness of the complexity of their subject.