This review evaluates two recendy published works on East German political recruitment from the vantage point of future comparative research on the role of the G.D.R. within the European postindustrial order. The conclusion presents several possible ways of providing a larger comparative framework for the future study of the East German polity.

Fernand Braudel's immense history of international politics in the sixteenth century s i significant for analytic social scientists from two standpoints—methodological and substantive. Although Braudel does not pretend to present a theory of history or international relations, he utilizes a broad range of geographic and economic theory to provide a novel conceptual framework. He devotes particular attention to defining boundaries in time and space. Braudel is highly innovative in his use of quantitative techniques, as in his analysis of communications potentials to delineate the spatial configurations of the sixteenth-century world. Just as Braudel's eclectic methodology suggests alternatives to approaches dominant in North American social science, his substantive emphasis on the pre-eminence of Latin civilization during the formative period of the modern Western world provides an impressive alternative perspective to the Whig interpretation of sixteenth-century history which has generally prevailed in English-speaking countries.

The evolution of theories of political development has gone full circle with its current “return to Europe” and to history. Scholars are once more examining the early state-building process and especially the extractive and repressive activities of its military, bureaucratic, and taxation systems. A geographical and historical model of the timing of state formation in Europe since 1500 reveals situations and necessities that explain much of the history of various European states. The changing dynamics of collective action and violence since 1830, moreover, reflect the underlying transformation of society and organizational life. But it is still too early to attempt an exhaustive synthesis of the different theories of crisis and political change.

Both the public and the academic response to terrorism has been ahistorical, exaggerated, and closely associated with congenial political postures; moreover, the academic perspective is conditioned by the nature of individual philosophy. The books under review examine the subject from several points of view, in which the conventional means of social scientists have been wielded to mixed advantage. Since there are no agreed definitions, no accepted limits to the subject, and no very effective academic approach, the situation seems unlikely to improve dramatically in the near future.