Recent refinements in social science thinking about power could be used to revitalize this approach to understanding international relations. The relevance of scholarly work on the causal concept of power is explored with regard to the following topics: potential vs. actual power, interdependence, military power, positive sanctions, the zero-sum model of politics, and the distinction between deterrence and compellence. The tendency to exaggerate the fungibility of power resources, the propensity to treat military power resources as the1 “ultimate” power base, and the emphasis on conflict and negative sanctions at the expense of cooperation and positive sanctions, are still common in international relations scholarship. The most important need is for recognition that the absence of a common denominator of political value in terms of which different scopes of power can be compared is not so much a methodological problem to be solved as it is a real-world constraint to be lived with.

Weber's understanding of bureaucracy, despite substantial qualification and revision, remains the dominant paradigm for the study of administration and formal organizations. We continue the process of revision by accepting his ideal-typical concepts of bureaucratic and patrimonial administration, but subject them to theoretical and historical reinterpretation and application. Our reading of historical change as it relates to bureaucracy leads us to question Weber's interpretations. His conceptualization of bureaucracy in terms of rational-legal-authority and formal rationality fails to take account of the existence and use of power within and outside of organizations, and of the persistence of patrimonial features. The use of power produces conflict and pathologies. When these serve the legitimate values and interests of participants and actors in the organizational environment, they can have benign consequences. The persistence of patrimonial features, rather than signalling the survival of dysfunctional atavisms, can promote administrative effectiveness by mitigating conflict and promoting organizational loyalty, discipline, and efficiency.

National leaders are frequently surprised by the actions of other governments. This paper explores the structure common to problems involving the use of resources for achieving surprise. Such resources include deception through double agents and through sudden changes in standard operating procedures. Still other resources for surprise include cracked codes, spies, and new weapons. Since surprise is usually possible only by risking the revelation of the means of surprise, in each case the same problem arises: when should the resource be risked and when should it be maintained for a potentially more important event later? A rational-actor model is developed to provide a prescriptive answer to this question. Examining the ways in which actual actors are likely to differ from rational actors leads to several important policy implications. One is that leaders may tend to be overconfident in their ability to predict the actions of their potential opponents just when the stakes get large. Another implication is that, as observational technology improves, the potential for surprise and deception may actually increase.

As a vehicle for the growing association of southern nationalists and Marxists, dependency theory is an important part of the history of our times, something much more than a school of academic writing. Whatever the varieties of analysis existing within this school (and there are many), a major historiographie shortcoming is common to most of its literature: having grasped the Hegelian insight that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, dependencistas exaggerate the point, making the mistake of refusing any autonomy, any specificity to the parts (southern countries) independently of their membership in the whole (the imperialist system established by the North). A better approach to the study of the place of the South in the international system is to emphasize the variety of state structures present there with their different abilities to mobilize forces internally and translate this into international rank. Southern advances are more substantial than many realize; the essay concludes that southerners should pay more attention to the real room for initiative and maneuver they have, but which dependency theory systematically overlooks. Most of the illustrative examples concern India, the Ottoman Empire, and Latin America before World War I.

Because of its parsimony and power, deterrence theory is the most important American theory of international relations. Yet it has many faults. The boundaries outside of which it does not apply are not clear; it does not tell how a state can change an adversary's motives; it does not deal with the use of rewards. Current scholarship of the third wave of deterrence theory, including George and Smoke's Deterrence in American Foreign Policy, has increased our knowledge by providing empirical evidence on when and how deterrence fails. Examination of the details of decision making reveals the ways in which attempts to deter can go wrong. Recent work stresses the role of each side's intrinsic interest in an issue, and argues that earlier formulations of the theory exaggerated the importance of commitment. The third wave also introduces a larger political element by focusing attention on states' goals and the context of their behavior.