Why is the analysis of Third World foreign policies still labeled the underdeveloped study of underdeveloped countries? Do we know how social cleavages, structures of post-colonial states, and types of dependency influence international behavior and patterns of decision making? Do the barriers to the take-off reside in data problems, lack of sophistication among Third World specialists, or in the state of foreign policy theory itself? Three problems have to be solved if this subfield is to advance conceptually and to provide us with cumulative knowledge about Third World countries: (1) the “what” of foreign policy; (2) the “why” of foreign policy; and (3) the “how” of foreign policy. Despite individual limitations, the authors reviewed here have collectively applied relevant concepts and unearthed needed data. These advances put us on the runway ready for a speedy take-off in the 1980s.

The major cause of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 was the government's inability to satisfy the rising expectations of the Iranian people—especially following the sudden enormous increase in the price of oil in 1973. This cause fits in with the theoretical discussions of revolution by, among others, James Davies, Crane Brinton, Samuel Huntington, and David Apter. Among other contributing factors was the human rights policy of President Carter, which promoted a good deal of confusion and disharmony in U.S. policy toward Iran, encouraged the opposition, and helped to disorient the Shah. The Shah's confusion was aggravated by the shock he suffered when he first realized the extent of the opposition to his regime, and by the state of his health. The outcome of the revolution was also influenced by the Western media.

Because alternative sources of energy cannot be developed fast enough in the short term, the problems of energy security in the next decade will continue to focus on oil. The problem is not that the world will run out of oil in this century, but that low-cost oil is heavily concentrated in the Persian Gulf, an area of domestic and international political instability. The current oil glut and soft markets will not solve the energy security problem. Market forces are a necessary but not sufficient element in an effective strategy for energy security. The same can be said about an effective American military presence in the area. Current enthusiasm for enhancing military capabilities can provide only part of a solution when we are dealing with a transnational system such as international energy. Successful analysis must draw on insights both from traditional realism and from studies of power and interdependence. Theories of interdependence and transnational systems are not based upon a world of detente, but remain relevant to the complex threats to national security we face, such as energy in the 1980s.

All people are entitled to share human rights equally. Claims to respect rights may —indeed often must—be made against “foreign” governments and peoples as well as one's own. As interdependence deepens, more human rights problems require global solutions; yet sovereignty inhibits cooperation. Thus the present international system impedes advancement of human rights. Even within countries, tensions are growing between human rights and national sovereignty because governments can no longer fulfill traditional functions. To prevent a decline in human rights caused by the rising incongruity between the few who make decisions nationally and the many who are affected by them globally, individuals, private organizations, and intergovernmental institutions must play an expanded role in shaping foreign policy making within a new framework of human rights.

Despite increased interest in the political role of the state, attention is currently shifting away from the state's contribution to political development in Wilhelmine Germany. There are, however, a number of unresolved questions concerning the Wilhelmine state bureaucracy's role in German politics that make the abandonment of political analyses of the state premature. Earlier approaches to the Wilhelmine administration have argued that it was either insulated from society or subordinate to dominant social classes. Such monolithic analyses are unable to account for bureaucratic commitments to competing, substantive interests and goals as well as for administrative conflict over such commitments. This problem can be avoided through hypotheses that explain bureaucratic political behavior in terms of class, administrative structure, or ideology. These hypotheses may be of general use for future research on administrative politics in other societies as well as in Wilhelmine Germany.

The study of international relations has been dominated by scholars working in the United States and has concentrated on questions that have been important to the U.S. as it emerged as the leading international power after 1945. These tendencies have limited the questions asked, the concepts generated, and the perspectives relevant to theory building. These limits can only be overcome by integrating the work of specialists from other countries. To this end, recent contributions by a number of French scholars are examined through a review of four publications. They provide a deeper sense of the options open to lesser states than is usually found in American contributions, a greater acceptance of flux and change in the international system, with less weight given to external influences on foreign policy formation and more to domestic politics and to personal relations among political leaders.

In this review essay, recent significant works on the subject of comparative ethnicity are situated in the broader context of cultural pluralism as an emergent interdisciplinary field. The reasons for the crystallization of cultural pluralism as a distinctive field of inquiry are explored. The rise of ethnic studies was obviously triggered by the growing saliency of communal conflict in all regions of the world. The low visibility of such cleavages in the early postwar years may be attributed to conjunctural factors. Important long-term trends include the broadening and deepening of patterns of social communication and competition through urbanization, expanding literacy, mass media, and population movements; these processes are apt to produce heightened communal consciousness and politicization of ethnic cleavages. The great expansion in the scope of state actions raises the stakes in issues of division of the national product and domination of the state apparatus. A large consensus has emerged in the literature as to the situational, contextual, and circumstantial nature of ethnicity. Within the comparative ethnicity literature, an important division has appeared between “instrumentalists,” who stress the pursuit of collective advantage, and “primordialists,” who focus upon the assumed givens of shared culture and the psychological properties of ethnic consciousness.

Who benefits how much from economic development? Three approaches to measuring the income distribution effects of growth are described and contrasted, and the experiences of various countries are classified accordingly. Seven books analyzing patterns of change in income distribution in Asia are reviewed. Although some of the authors feel that “getting the prices right” in a market economy with a minimum of government interference is the way to achieve growth and distributional goals, a better conclusion is that synergism between policy and initial conditions explains the presence or absence of equitable growth.