Throughout the 1950's, students of communism almost invariably emphasized the “totalitarian” characteristics of Communist states, a conceptual orientation that coincided with and reinforced the foreign policy of the cold war. T h e doctrines of containment and massive retaliation could be justified most easily if the targeted enemy was considered the embodiment of the unremitting evil suggested by the totalitarian label.

After a virtual neglect for several decades, in the last twenty years renewed interest has been shown in a general theory of social behavior. Most of this theoretical work has depended on two main postulates. One is the functionalist (sometimes called structural-functional) approach to the explanation of social institutions, based on the assumption that the social institutions of a given society can best be understood in terms of their social functions, that is, in terms of the contributions they make to the maintenance of social systems as a whole. For lack of an established technical term, we shall call the other postulate the conformist approach to the explanation of individual behavior: it is based on the assumption that uniformities of individual behavior in a given society can best be understood in terms of certain commonly accepted social values, which most members of the society tend to internalize during their socialization process.

When violent political uprisings are anticipated by potential participants, politically responsible decision-makers, and scholarly observers, and do not occur, and when violent revolutionary uprisings suddenly erupt that no one, including most of the participants, expected, serious questions are raised as to the adequacy with which the conditions of spontaneous political violence are understood and analyzed by scholar and policy-maker alike—at least in particular cases. The problem is compounded when other cases are correctly predicted, as sometimes happens.

The purpose of this paper is to show some political consequences of the impact of industrialism on Israeli society, and the influence of some of the original trends of agrarian Zionism on Israel, a state increasingly relying on industrial power and institutions.

Developments in the Cuban revolution between mid-1959 and early 1960 demonstrate both the interaction between the international and domestic systems and the bargaining process involved in Cuban efforts to secure Soviet support. Until the dispatch of First Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan to Havana in early February 1960, the Soviet Union had been hesitant about revolutionary Cuba. The radicalization of the revolution which preceded Mikoyan's visit, therefore, stemmed not only from Fidel Castro's perception of opposition to his regime and from his need to ensure revolutionary momentum, but also from his efforts to increase Cuba's bargaining leverage with Moscow. In turn, the Cuban Communists served as a key linkage with Moscow and, most important, as an aggressive negotiating agent for Castro. In formulating their response to revolutionary Cuba, the Soviets were thus forced to contend with covert and overt pressures from Castro and his Communist allies.

Few theorists today admit to a belief in the “idea of progress.” But, if the literature in comparative politics in the past several years is any guide, virtually all political scientists now believe in the concept of “modernization.” Modernization theory is being invoked to compare traditional and modern societies, to analyze the evolution of individual political systems, and to appraise the effectiveness of political institutions in one or several political systems. All of the problems and subjects of political science are now being reexamined in terms of some concept of modernization.

In early spring of 1968, French political observers found the most lively issue of debate in the question of whether or not the nation was bored as a result of the political and economic stability insured by the Gaullist regime. One noted French political scientist in contributing to this debate wrote: “What is certain is that the France of 1968 does not seem able to give itself the luxury of a political scene as passionate as that of Czechoslovakia, as dramatic as that of the United States, or as glorious as that of Vietnam. Neither the agitation of a minority of the students of a few universities, nor certain workers’ demonstrations, nor the discontent which reigns in Brittany affects seriously our political life.” In a few weeks student riots and a general strike provoked the most serious political crisis in the years of the Fifth Republic and brought France to the brink of civil war.

In Gabriel A. Almond's famous typology of political systems, first expounded in 1956, he distinguishes three types of Western democratic systems: Anglo-American political systems (exemplified by Britain and the United States), Continental European political systems (France, Germany, and Italy), and a third category consisting of the Scandinavian and Low Countries. The third type is not given a distinct label and is not described in detail; Almond merely states that the countries belonging to this type “combine some of the features of the Continental European and the Anglo-American” political systems, and “stand somewhere in between the Continental pattern and the Anglo-American.” Almond's threefold typology has been highly influential in the comparative analysis of democratic politics, although, like any provocative and insightful idea, it has also been criticized. This research note will discuss the concept of “consociational democracy” in a constructive attempt to refine and elaborate Almond's typology of democracies.

Much of the most interesting work in political science in the last decade or so has been concerned with processes of modernization, institution-formation, and sociopolitical change at large. In fact, modernization and political development have been, along with system analysis, the most important themes of the new political science. In this article we are addressing ourselves to this developmental revolution in political science. We propose to argue that the idea of analyzing and classifying nations on the basis of the stage of modernization reached has long-standing historical connections with a tradition that goes back to social Darwinism and beyond. But it must be emphasized from the outset that this argument is not intended as a criticism of the new political science.

Until recently it has been taken more or less for granted by many students of the subject that totalitarian polities will not in the long run tolerate any form of pluralism in their power structure. Lucid and convincing arguments have been constructed to support this contention, in studies of the several historical manifestations of totalitarianism. Implicit in these speculations was the more general view that it is in the very nature of power, and especially political power, that it will not gladly suffer any rivals. In the West the very virtues of democracy have been defended precisely on the grounds that democracy tends through its procedural commitments to diffuse power, to counteract, as it were, the inherent tendency of power toward infinite selfaggrandizement.

With The growing academic and governmental interest in quantitative research on nations, it is becoming increasingly important to separate substantive findings from the technical arcana in which they are embedded. In recognition of this need, this report extracts and consolidates the major results of the Dimensionality of Nations (DON) project.

The Don project (6) has been in existence since 1962 and is now in its second phase. Phase I of DON defined the major dimensions of variation among all nations for the mid-1950's and the grouping of nations on these dimensions. During this phase much of the methodological underbrush surrounding the use on cross-national data of its major mathematical model—factor analysis—was cleared away, and some measure of control was developed over problems of error and noncomparability in the data.

The publication of John Conway's book, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933–45 may be a suitable moment for a comprehensive look at the wider subject of Nazism and Christianity and the recent literature about it. Ever since Rolf Hochhuth's Deputy with its travesty of the tragedy of the Jews of Europe, the world has resounded with clamor about the silence of the Deputy of Christ at the time when the blood brothers of the founder of the faith were being slaughtered.

Agap seems to exist between present theory of international regional integration and political reality. The theory explains, generalizes about, or predicts regional integration almost exclusively on the basis of processes and factors internal to the region under consideration. When theory considers phenomena outside the region, they usually appear as residual categories which are left insufficiently examined and about which we know little. Moreover, theory has remained relatively silent about the role of the superpowers.

The appearance of major studies by Karl Deutsch and Ernst Haas in the late 1950's won for integration theory a prominent position among the contemporary approaches to the study of international relations. A decade later its achievements are very much a matter of debate. While many students of integration theory have been led, by disappointment with results, to focus their attention on smaller and more manageable units, such as local communities and city-suburb relations, others continue investigations at the international level.

Twentieth-Century history provides ample evidence of the variable nature of the authority of political regimes, yet contemporary social scientists devote much more attention to the potential sources of legitimate authority than to the causes and consequences of its absence. In order to understand the very different types of authority that a regime may display, and changes in its authority through time, we must be able to account for the repudiation of regimes as well as for their legitimation. Moreover, it is necessary to explain why so many regimes long remain in intermediate categories, neither fully legitimate nor fully repudiated. The purpose of this paper is to differentiate among the types of authority of a regime, to analyze differences in dynamic changes in authority, and to propose hypotheses specifying influences upon the ability of a regime's leaders to obtain support and compliance from its nominal population.

Foreign aid can be “related” to intervention in many ways. Some argue, with Senator J. W. Fulbright, that aid tends to precede intervention and to increase the probability of intervention.1 Others would say that aid follows intervention, contending, for example, that American aid to Vietnam was evidence of a prior diplomatic commitment. Still others see aid as an alternative to intervention—if we give aid now we are less likely to have to intervene in the future. Another group would contend that the aid-giving process may constitute intervention. It is with the views of this last group that most of this article deals. In examining them, we shall focus on three topics: (i) the links between foreign aid and influence; (2) the links between particular types of aid and what is often called intervention; and (3) the possibility of functional equivalents for aid that do not involve intervention. There are some conceptual problems, however, that we must address first.

The focus of this article is upon the compliance-inducing mechanisms present in any political system. The notion of compliance relationships is central to all conceptualizations of the political system and its functions, as it is related to all political ‘primitives” such as power, influence, authority, etc. Political systems exist above all for the purpose of establishing compliance with some set of norms or values. The primary institutional form reflecting the performance of this function is government. Members of governmental institutions attempt to maintain the compliance system (a) because of the security of habits, and (b) because they share the same set of norms or values. For a number of reasons the efforts of these actors to maintain the compliance system may not be coordinated: they may or may not act ‘rationally” according to the criteria of rationality applied, but the end product of their activity is a stream of demands for compliance that is oriented toward the enhancement of a desired normative system.

International agreements perform functions worthy of the closest attention of the student of international affairs. They are a principal tool of diplomacy and the aim of most negotiations. Many such agreements are not intended to create legal relationships, and the demarcation line between legally binding agreements and other consensual relationships is correspondingly hazy and uncertain. International agreements have not, however, received in recent times nearly the degree of attention devoted in international studies to “force” and “power.” This is so despite the fact that they generally reflect the participants' power calculations and shared expectations. They are an essential mode of guidance and regulation in international relations, helping to shape decisions and claims sometimes even in the course of armed conflicts. International agreements loom large in the actual experience of statesmen, jurists, and military men—their conclusion, their application, and their breach represent complex political decisions with frequently serious outcomes leading to shifts in power relationships.

The virtually simultaneous appearance of new editions of Hannah A Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism and Carl Friedrich's and Zbigniew Brzezinski's Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy affords an opportunity to reopen the question of the utility of the classical theory of totalitarianism in systematic comparative political analysis. The original editions of these two volumes went far toward shaping lay and academic understandings of totalitarianism in the 1950's; in addition, most subsequent general scholarship on totalitarianism has been written implicitly or explicitly in the light of—if not in reaction to—these two earlier works.

Foreign aid can be “related” to intervention in many ways. Some argue, with Senator J. W. Fulbright, that aid tends to precede intervention and to increase the probability of intervention. Others would say that aid follows intervention, contending, for example, that American aid to Vietnam was evidence of a prior diplomatic commitment. Still others see aid as an alternative to intervention—if we give aid now we are less likely to have to intervene in the future.