Four types of regimes of historic importance appeared in Europe between the two world wars: pluralist democracy, social or corporatist democracy, traditional dictatorship, and fascism. The vast body of literature that has grown up around them has rarely cast these political orders as historical alternatives to each other, however. When it has done so, it. has normally cast pluralist democracy as the alternative to fascism. Most commonly, this has taken the form of contrasts between Germany and Britain, and has been accompanied by the question, why was Germany not like Britain? Yet, pluralist democracy such as appeared in Britain was actually the least relevant alternative between the wars, for the possibility of stabilizing it where it did not already exist had been foreclosed by World War I. Where liberal parties had failed to establish responsible parliamentary institutions before the war, it would prove impossible to stabilize a pluralist democracy afterward. Henceforth, stabilization would require corporatism—in either its fascist or social democratic variant—rather than pluralism.

This essay starts from two premises: that, as far as the articulation and mobilization of popular interest in the countryside are concerned, the “best teams won” in the Chinese and the Vietnamese revolutions; but that, after the success of the revolution, the popularity and responsiveness of the regimes to the people became more problematic. Together, these premises imply a shift in the relationship of party to people between the revolutionary and postrevolutionary stages. That such a shift occurred in China and Vietnam is not obvious; there were significant continuities of personnel, policies, and ideology across the revolutionary divide. I shall argue that, despite the continuities, the rational basis of party-mass relations was deeply affected by victory. Indeed, the very continuities helped mask a structural flaw in the new regimes that has induced current political and economic reforms.

Corruption—like the weather—is a phenomenon people in the third world talk about a great deal, and, it would seem, do little about. Scholars of political change in the third world share this interest, but—although they are usually not expected to deal with corruption itself —they should move beyond the recounting of vivid anecdotes to a more systematic analysis of the problem. Steps in this direction were made in the 1960s and 1970s, but surprisingly little more work has been done since.

The post-World War II world has seen the transformation of the international system from a configuration with several rival great powers into one with two superpowers and a set of lesser but still substantial powers—second-tier states with democratic politics and mixed economies. One of the recurrent concerns of the latter has been to secure supplies of natural resources. We argue that postwar conditions point to eight elements of prudent resource policy for middle-level powers. Such states should: (i) avoid military means; (2) choose trade partners whose political interests overlap with their own and who enjoy political stability; (3) seek to create in supplier and transit countries a structure of economic interests that will make supply agreements self-enforcing; (4) diversify with respect to commodity dependence, supplier share, and transit bottlenecks; (5) tailor stockpiles to the urgency of demand; (6) exploit technology to reduce dependence and enhance bargaining advantages; (7) encourage the private sector and public enterprises to become intermediaries in the international resource trade; and (8) pursue strategic interdependence among consumer nations by creating multilateral stakes in the maintenance of normal commerce in resources.

Two American debates on foreign policy and national security. The Reagan administration and those who share its ideology see today's Soviet Union as not much different from yesterday's, and yesterday's Soviet Union as not much different from Nazi Germany. Like its progenitors in the 1930s, the modern Soviet Union is a “totalitarian” state, and therefore by nature expansionist, armed to the teeth, disposed to violence, fond of diplomatic tests of political will, and—as a consequence of all these factors —hard to deter and harder to beat. A different view prevails among most of the arms control community, the NATO allies, and some American academics. In its foreign policy, the Soviet Union is seen as a fairly typical great power whose behavior in international politics can be explained by the mixture of fear, greed, and stupidity that has characterized most great powers in the past as they have tried to secure their borders and pursue their interests in a world without law. It does not like to take great risks, it fears war, and it is, at worst, opportunistically expansionist. In sharp contrast to Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union is more conservative than reckless; if anything, nuclear weapons have reinforced this conservatism.