Although presidential succession in Mexico is shrouded in mystery, this article suggests an indirect method of understanding the politics surrounding that process. The fundamental framework of presidential politics has changed in the 1970s from populist redistribution to oil patronage. Such a change has involved the collapse of traditional, party-led populism at the end of the Echeverria presidency and the reorientation of the Mexican economy during President Lopez Portillo's “Alliance for Production,” made possible largely by the oil boom. The conservative tone of Lopez Portillo's administration, combined with the relative strengthening of the state via increased public spending, has shaped policy choices for the new president, Miguel de la Madrid. The conjuncture of the collapse of populism and the rise and fall of the oil-boom economy results in a state whose political flexibility is limited by the weakness of “new populist” politics, while oil patronage is reduced by fiscal constraints and external payments crises.

The explanation of the rise and fall of the world system's leading powers in terms of uneven economic development tends to overlook the role of the creation and management of public credit and national debts. Prior to 1815, the Netherlands and Great Britain owed a significant proportion of their respective victories over the larger and wealthier states of Spain and France to the development of competitive financial capabilities. Winning, however, leads to higher absolute debt burdens which, prior to 1945, encouraged postwar reductions in governmental expenditures. In this fashion, world leaders have contributed to the erosion of their preponderant capability positions before the emergence of international rivals. These ideas are elaborated within the context of George Modelski's long cycle of world leadership theory and through a brief review of war-related financial problems between 1500 and 1815 and the consequent development of national debts. The longitudinal analysis of British and American public debt data provides collaborating empirical support.

The origin of the state, long at the center of political science, can be greatly illuminated by the contemporary approach in evolutionary biology known as “inclusive fitness theory.” Natural selection is now analyzed using cost-benefit models akin to rational actor models in economics, game theory, and collective choice theory. The utility of integrating these approaches is illustrated by using the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons to outline a general model for the evolution of political and legal institutions. This perspective also shows how traditional political philosophers explored “archetypical” problems that are easily translated into scientific terminology. It is thus possible to link biology to the study of human behavior in a nonreductionist manner, thereby generating new empirical hypotheses concerning the environmental correlates of social norms. Ultimately, such a unification of the natural and social sciences points to a return to the classical view that law and justice are not matters of pure convention, but rather are grounded on what is right “according to nature.”

State institutions and organizations in Black Africa are less developed than almost anywhere else, and political instability has been prevalent. Yet, these serious empirical weaknesses have not led to enforced jurisdictional change. In order to explain the persistence of some of the weakest states in the world, the authors argue that state jurisdictions in Black Africa have been maintained primarily by the international society of states. Unlike the states that formed in Europe at an earlier period, many Black African states evolved—and survived—in the absence of effective national governments. Whereas state jurisdictions and international society once were consequences of the success and survival of states, today in Black Africa—and perhaps elsewhere, especially in the Third World—they are more likely to be conditions.

This interview-based study analyzes the attitudes and negotiating behavior of 80 individuals, principally from less developed countries (LDCs), who were participants in international economic negotiations in 1976. Some of the more important findings are: (1) negotiators' views are more diverse than analyses of roll-call votes would indicate; (2) the positions that countries take appear to be firmly grounded in national political processes and in pragmatic conceptions of their national interests; (3) negotiators from LDCs with higher per capita GNP are more likely than those from LDCs with lower per capita GNP to perceive the negotiations as being polarized, to regard social issues as important elements of development strategies, and to take advantage of regional cooperation in negotiating; they are less likely to have negative views toward transnational corporations.

Economists have only recently begun to characterize the behavior of the state as rentor profit-seeking. One of the ways in which the rent-seeking state may maximize the resources it extracts from taxpayers is through diversification of the tax revenue base. Empirical evidence presented in this paper may help to explain the extent to which countries are able to engage in this form of rent seeking. The highly developed country's ability to diversify its tax base is constrained by the ease of exit of taxable assets from its jurisdiction; with the exception of this limitation, countries with more diversified tax bases collect more revenue relative to national income. This conclusion does not hold, however, for geographic diversification (i.e., federalism). The case is different for developing countries: although they may have a more diversified tax base than developed countries, they are unable to exploit it because of administrative weakness; therefore, rent seeking on the part of the state may be predicted by more conventional factors such as income or trade.

American foreign economic policy between 1887 and 1934 was shaped in important ways by the international economic structure and the position of the United States as a “supporter” within it. As Britain's hegemony declined, and particularly after it joined the United States as a supporter just prior to World War I, American foreign economic policy became more liberal and active. Once Britain was transformed from a supporter into a spoiler in the late 1920s, leaving the United States as the sole supporter within the IES, both the international economy and American policy became more unstable and protectionist. During the 1970s, the United States, West Germany, and France all emerged as supporters within the IES, indicating that a moderately stable and liberal international economy may continue to exist in the future.

The issue of nuclear proliferation is replete with problems to which there are no surefire solutions. In this essay, this troublesome terrain is examined in three different but complementary ways: first, through case studies of the nuclear dealings of the U.S. with India and Pakistan; second, in a broad review of incentives toward and dampers on the spread of nuclear weapons; and third, in terms of implications for national policy.

Hong Kong's postwar economic “miracle” has been sustained by a minimally integrated social-political system, the two constituent parts of which are a laissez-faire bureaucracy and a “self-sufficient,” atomistic Chinese society. Until recently, this system has operated to keep politically salient issues to a manageable minimum. Secular, asymmetrical changes, however, have opened up cracks in the system; their disruptive effects have become increasingly visible. Because of its overly rapid economic growth, the organizational fabric of the Chinese society has worn away, making it more dependent on the government for need satisfaction. Together with the administrative imperatives befitting a complex industrial society, this dependence furthers the emergence of a professionalized and expanded bureaucracy. The problem of linkage between the government and the Chinese society is aggravated by the inadequacy of existing intermediary devices. As a result, a new style of politics is emerging in Hong Kong, reflecting its troubled structural conditions.

While development strategies of international assistance organizations and governments of less developed states have become more complex over the past decade, the methods of planning and management used during the 1960s and 1970s to formulate and implement policies have become less effective. Synoptic planning and scientific management techniques are used to control development activities rather than to facilitate and encourage the flexibility, experimentation, and social learning that are essential. The prospects of improving control-oriented administration are constrained by difficulties in defining objectives; lack of appropriate data; inadequate understanding of local social and cultural conditions; ineffective means of controlling behavior; the dynamics of political interaction; and low levels of administrative capacity in developing countries. Changes that must be made include: recognizing explicitly the uncertainty and complexity of development problems; managing development activities as policy experiments; building widespread administrative capacity; relying on adjunctive and strategic planning; simplifying analytical techniques; creating incentives for error detection and for innovation; and viewing effective program and project management in new ways.

The adaptation of the United States to its declining role as a superpower is examined through an inquiry into the belief systems of the society's leaders. Three sets of mutually exclusive domestic policy belief systems are identified, along with three sets of mutually exclusive foreign policy belief systems. The degree to which they are linked to each other is explored, and the connections are found to be tenuous—suggesting that the cleavages at work in American society are more enduring and less subject to change than may be readily apparent. The last section of the paper uses more recent data from a sample of American leaders to examine the degree to which foreign policy belief systems are susceptible to change over time, allowing for an analysis of the extent to which the hostage crisis in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan affected pre-existing belief systems. The overall finding is that the impact was negligible, and that foreign policy belief systems are largely resistant to change.

A number of options were available to the Reagan Administration for achieving the President's stated objective of deep cuts in nuclear weapons. However, various deep-cut proposals can have dramatically different prospects of being negotiated successfully, as well as varying impacts on strategic and crisis stability. Moreover, some arms reduction proposals may not be compatible with programs to accentuate nuclear war-fighting capabilities, another objective of the Reagan Administration. In rejecting the SALT II framework for reductions, the Administration set aside a relatively quick way to achieve reductions, although not of the kind championed by the President. Instead, a more ambitious approach was chosen-but one that has provided few positive incentives for the Soviets to reach agreement. If the U.S. position is seriously held, the prospect is for lengthy, acrimonious, and inconclusive negotiations.

Organizing interests in Western Europe is part of the third wave of interest group studies to appear since the development of professional political science at the turn of the century. The first wave was mainly an American phenomenon; the second an effort to export interest group studies to Europe and elsewhere as part of a movement intended to encourage greater realism and less ideologism in European and comparative political studies. The Organizing Interests team has produced a useful book focused in substantial part on the theme of neocorporatism. The authors have not connected their work with the substantial body of earlier interest group research.

Soviet policies with regard to neutrality in postwar Western Europe have developed from largely unsuccessful influence attempts into more realistic and acquiescent lines seeking to find a balance between operative aims and actual leverage. There has been a change from ideologically motivated opposition toward conditional support and flexible search for areas of common interests, and from basically unrealistic grand designs to recognition of the status quo. The Soviet posture toward potentially neutral blocs and disparate neutralist trends in Western Europe has primarily been characterized by a wait-and-see attitude. In order to make Soviet policies and postures understandable, it is necessary to combine the concept of the U.S.S.R. as a rational bloc leader interested above all in weakening the opposite bloc with that of a world power interested mainly in international stability and prevention of war. The popular Western hypothesis that the Soviet union is acting on a design that would incrementally neutralize the whole of Western Europe is difficult to test; even if there were such a design in reserve or in the experimental stage, its degree of crystallization and internal integration would have to be low.

The article examines Japan's diplomatic style and rhetoric, actual policies, and underlying attitudes toward North-South problems, focusing on her reactions to demands for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) by the LDCs. The conventional classification of Japan as “right-wing conservative” is shown to be misleading. Her policies are often less conservative than her rhetoric. As a result of her success as a recently developed country, her close observation of the industrialization of Asia's newly industrializing countries, and her status as a still growing latecomer—experienced in “structural adjustments” for her own benefit and faced by growing protectionist pressure from other developed countries—Japan is perhaps the most realistically optimistic of the states concerned about the prospect of the NIEO demands for a “new division of labor” and “structural change.” It is possible that Japan will assume some activist role as a mediator in the North-South dialogue, perhaps in the quiet areas of negotiation and policy formulation rather than in the arena of public diplomacy such as summit meetings.

The role in public policy of organizations—broadly defined to include bureaucratic and corporatist, as well as autonomous, organized interests—merits attention as a form of political participation characteristic of a wide variety of societies. Various forms of corporatism have emerged in recent years to play an increasingly important role in most West European societies. In Japan and the United States, organized interests are still mediated primarily by the political parties, but in these countries also there is an increasing reliance on organizational participation. Organized interests play an important role in contemporary authoritarian states, and provide a common denominator for comparisons with other political systems. Special cases of organizational participation that have received considerable attention include the role of the military as a form of bureaucratic politics in many countries, and the decision-making function of organizations in the international system. A better understanding of organizational participation as the most appropriate basis for the comparative study of contemporary political systems calls for further research along several lines: for example, the direct influence of organized interests on governments; the interaction of corporatist and autonomous organizations with bureaucracies; comparisons of organizational participation in societies with differing institutional heritages; and the role of organizations in the international system.

The public choice model of urban residential location offers an opportunity to integrate economic and political models of migration, and thus has broad applicability as a positive model of both individual behavior and national policies relating to international migration. The authors describe the basic economic model of the urban migration process and explore its dynamics. They utilize this model to explain the migratory behavior of individuals and groups and the reactions of national governments, whether “sending” or “receiving” the migrants. Finally, they examine the policy implications of such a model.

Kenneth Waltz's recent book, Theory of International Politics, is one of the most important contributions to international relations theory since his Man, the State and War. It picks up where the earlier work left off: with the structure of the international system serving as the basis for explaining a variety of international outcomes. The most profound and perhaps the most perplexing outcome Waltz attempts to explain is the lack of fundamental change in the international polity. The author argues that Waltz does not fully succeed in this endeavor for three reasons. First, his definition of structure fails to capture so momentous a change as that from the medieval to the modern international systems. Second, his application of the structuralist method leads him to ask questions in such a way that the answers systematically understate the degree of potential change in the contemporary international system. Third, his model of structural explanation turns out to allow only for a reproductive logic but not for a transformational logic. With the epistemological underpinnings of his theory thus biased against the possibility of change, it is not surprising that Waltz finds the likelihood of future continuity compelling. In the spirit of constructive criticism, this review article tries to amend and augment the theory in a manner that is not incompatible with its basic realist precepts.

A review of the recent literature reveals that during the 1970s there were three major positions in the North-South debate over the New International Economic Order (NIEO). Each represented a relatively coherent perspective on and strategy for reforming the international economy. The Structuralist position, advocating the NIEO, captured the allegiance of much of the South (the developing countries). The Functionalist position, supported by most of the governments of Northern capitalist societies, rejected the NIEO and sought to promote stable and dependable change through the specialized international agencies, such as the IMF, in which the North has considerable influence. A third position, with nongovernmental adherents from both North and South, urged Neofunctionalist reform directed toward global human rights, both civil and economic. Each of these perspectives represented a significant aspect of the actual condition of the international order, but none had the capacity to carry out its strategy. The result has been stalemate both in the negotiations for a NIEO and in the debate over the direction future international change should take.

Four issues must be articulated and related in order to create a general theory of revolution: revolutionary leadership and organization, mass participation, the nature of revolutionary action, and system response. Recent studies of the Iranian revolution provide abundant descriptive materials relevant to the last three issues, but little to illuminate the nature of the leadership of the revolution or its organization. Few of the studies attempt to analyze their materials in a theoretically useful way. A psychoanalytical interpretation of revolutionary action and of the Shah's response is one way of moving toward a general theory. His leadership failure, explained in terms of his personal history and character structure, is a powerful way to account for the revolution itself as well as for its outcome.