Showing papers in "World Politics in 1960"

Why The Government Budget Is Too Small in a Democracy

Abstract: In a democratic society, the division of resources between the public and private sectors is roughly determined by the desires of the electorate. But because it is such a complex and time-consuming task to acquire adequate political information, the electorate is chronically ignorant of the costs and benefits of many actual and potential government policies. It is my belief that this ignorance causes governments to enact budgets smaller than the ones they would enact if the electorate possessed complete information. Yet these undersized budgets stem from rational behavior by both the government and the electorate; hence they are extremely difficult to remedy. Furthermore, the resulting misallocation of resources becomes more and more serious as the economy grows more complex.

The Intellectuals in the Political Development of the New States

Abstract: The gestation, birth, and continuing life of the new states of Asia and Africa, through all their vicissitudes, are in large measure the work of intellectuals. In no state-formations in all of human history have intellectuals played such a role as they have in these events of the present century.In the past, new states were founded by military conquest, by the secession of ethnic groups led by traditional tribal and warrior chiefs, by the gradual extension of the power of the prince through intermarriage, agreement, and conquest, or by separation through military rebellion. In antiquity, the demand that subjects acknowledge the divinity of the Emperor was no more than a requirement that the legitimacy of the existing order be recognized.

Swords and Ploughshares: The Turkish Army as a Modernizing Force

Abstract: Military predominance in public life has a long and strong tradition in Turkey. Lybyer has told us: “The Ottoman government had been an army before it was anything else. … in fact, Army and Government were one. War was the external purpose, Government the internal purpose, of one institution, composed of one body of men.” And Gibb quotes el-Gazali, at the end of the eleventh century: “Government in these days is a consequence solely of military power, and whosoever he may be to whom the holder of military power gives his allegiance, that person is the caliph.”

The Role of Traditionalism in the Political Modernization of Ghana and Uganda

Abstract: Social analysts have long been preoccupied with those features of traditional culture and belief which affect the direction of change and the receptivity of a society to innovation. In spite of the very considerable literature concerned with acculturation, there have been few efforts to examine different types of traditional systems with respect to the problems they pose for political modernization. We attempt this form of analysis here. The plan is to examine two countries, Ghana and Uganda, which are engaged in the effort to build a national society. Each is experimenting with constitutional forms and each has had to deal with the problem of traditionalism.

Partisan Foreign Policy: Britain in the Suez Crisis*

Abstract: Often as foreign policy may be the subject of partisan discussion in modern democracies, important international commitments are usually made only with support, or the expectation of support, from the great bulk of the political community. This has surely been the ordinary American and British pattern, labeled bi-partisan, non-partisan, or extra-partisan. We assume that political support extending well beyond the ranks of the party in office is essential for a successful foreign policy, and especially for a substantial military venture. Even the American decision to defend South Korea, while it was necessarily made by the Democratic administration before any apparent political consensus and while it eventually involved the United States in an unpopular war, was never in itself a partisan policy which Republicans as a group refused to support. The one outstanding recent instance of a truly partisan foreign policy is Britain's Suez action of 1956. As the significant deviant case, it provides useful insights into the process by which an alternative to the usual bi-partisan arrangement is developed and conducted. Specific questions concern the making of the Suez intervention decision, the nature of parliamentary support for this decision, the role of party loyalty in maintaining such support, and the significance of partisan opposition.

National security policy as a field for economics research

Abstract: Problems of national security are in no sense novel for the application of economic analysis. Adam Smith, in a well-known passage in The Wealth of Nations, was concerned with the allocation of resources between "defense" and "opulence"-what we would call the problem of the size of the national security budget. There has been great interest among economists, especially during and following the First and Second World Wars, in problems of industrial mobilization during war, including the associated problems of economic stablization. In fact, to many economists during the past generation this set of mobilization problems constituted the economics of defense. Books were published with titles like Economics of Defense that dealt with little else. My principal theme in this research note is that changes in the technology of war have so degraded the significance of wartime mobilization problems that these are no longer very interesting or important for economic policy research; but that these same changes in technology have brought to the fore a new set of problems that constitute an opportunity for and a challenge to economists. I am referring, of course, to the development of nuclear weapons and advanced systems for delivering them at great distances-long-range bombers, nuclear-powered submarines, and intercontinental missiles. I will here simply state, without attempting to marshal the evidence,' * This article was written at the request of the Committee on National Security Pol

Arms Control: Proposal for a Special Surveillance Force

Abstract: This article proposes that there be discussed with the Russians the establishment (for each of us, separately, and perhaps for other countries) of a Special Surveillance Force . Its function would be to observe the enemy's behavior, at the enemy's invitation, and to report home instantly through authentic channels. The purpose is to help tranquilize crises that threaten to erupt into general war, particularly crises aggravated by the instability of strategic deterrence—by the urgency, if general war seems imminent, of starting it before the enemy does.

The Study of Contemporary Chinese Politics: Some Remarks on Retarded Development

Abstract: Aretrospective assessment at mid-century might have suggested that the course of Chinese history between 1900 and 1950 recorded only two events of enduring political significance: the first, the fall of the Ch'ing dynasty in October 1911 and, with it, destruction of the imperial system which had lasted for two millennia; the second, the establishment of the People's Republic of China in October 1949 and, through it, commitment to accelerated modernization and forced industrialization along lines similar to those plotted earlier by the Soviet Union. Simultaneously, assessment of the future might well have concluded, with prescience born of objectivity, that the effect of the Chinese Communist explosion on both Chinese and world politics would merit a major effort on the part of American social science research.

On the International Implications of Outer Space

Abstract: Though only a few years old, the Russian-American “space race” is in full swing and it is clear, even at this early stage of outer space technology, that it will present both countries with new opportunities and new dangers. From the American viewpoint we are especially interested in these related questions: First, how will outer space activities affect the external situation within which the United States seeks to promote its security and welfare? Second, how can the United States manipulate space developments in order to improve its security and welfare? And third, how should the United States concert its space policy with other elements of its foreign, defense, and domestic policies

The Marxist View of Russian Society and Revolution

Abstract: “The victory of communism is inevitable.” This claim has been made since the consolidation of the Soviet Union, and it has been restated with relish by the Kremlin's supreme spokesman during his recent visits abroad. It rests on the argument that Russian society, in accordance with the Marxist-Leninist doctrine, has advanced from feudalism to capitalism and socialism, blazing a trail along which all other countries are bound to go. Thus the superiority of the Communist regime is asserted not merely on the basis of operational successes, but with reference to historical considerations which are ascribed to the “classics” of communism, and ultimately to Marx and Engels.

What Interdependence for NATO

Abstract: In NATO's early days statesmen spoke glowingly about subordinating national military interests to a truly international “balanced collective force,” a goal similar to classic free trade in its promise of mutual gain secured at the cost of dependence upon foreigners. Naturally, in so nationalistic a field as defense, achievement fell far short of this sweeping aspiration. But we are ill-placed now to belittle either the slogan or the degree to which we realized an international division of military labor. Nowadays the slogan is “interdependence,” but in practice this seems to mean performance deviating still more widely from the goal of integrated defense.

The Nature of Industrial Societies

Abstract: T HE two volumes under review are welcome additions to the surprisingly small number of studies of advanced or industrial societies. In widely dissimilar ways, both books provide information that is much needed. Unfortunately, most of the popular theories of the social system are based on material gathered from the study of small societies: either from observation of small (often minute) groups encompassed by larger social systems, or from studies of the somewhat exotic societies favored by anthropologists. The validity of these theoretical models, when applied to industrial societies, remains problematic; and the information reported in these books suggests a number of comments on this important and controversial issue.

Political Ideology and Economic Progress: The Basic Question

Abstract: In the underdeveloped countries—where live most of the world's people—the hope for economic progress now flames with great intensity. The new international capital facilities of the postwar period, the new programs for sharing modern science and technology, the new interest of wealthy lands in progress in the poor countries—all these present the latter with an opportunity to be rid of the poverty and squalor of their material existence. Their eyes naturally turn to the more developed countries for capital and technical knowledge, and for ideas.

Comparisons of United States and USSR National Output: Some Rules of the Game

Abstract: How large is the Soviet gross national product (GNP) relative to our own? A third as large? Half? Two-thirds? Which of the estimates is correct? As the unique solution, none of them, unfortunately. Nor need we search for other numbers: these are probably the best of the lot, and in any case, the reply would be the same. The problem is not one of data, or of definitions, or of estimating methods. Such problems do exist and present difficulties of their own, but the inescapable and immovable barrier to the unique solution in US-USSR national output comparisons is the crucial fact of differences in the structures of the American and Soviet economies. In general, in comparisons of different economies or of the same economy at different times, diverse structures create what the economist calls an “index-number problem.” The worst of it is, the “problem” is insoluble.

The Bolshevik Past as the First Secretary Likes It

Abstract: The leaders of all modern states have appreciated to some extent the role played by historical studies in determining a citizenry's world outlook. The keenest sense of awareness has been exhibited by the authoritarian rulers, the self-chosen “men of destiny” who have felt compelled to fulfill—and to generate enthusiasm for—a “historic mission” whose execution would benefit a select people or mankind in general. Thus did the archracist among this century's European despots reflect on April II, 1942, with regard to his new subjects in the east: “To teach the Russians, Ukrainians and Kirghiz to read and write will eventually be to our own disadvantage; education will give the more intelligent among them an opportunity to study history, to acquire an historical sense and hence to develop political ideas which cannot but be harmful to our interests.”

The New Face of Soviet Totalitarianism

Abstract: Nothing pricks one's curiosity more than the inner operations of a power system. And in the case of Russia the incentive to speculate on “what really goes on” in the councils of the Kremlin is enhanced by the supersecrecy in which the highest level of Soviet politics is enveloped, by the dramatic shifts of policy and sudden displacements of leading personalities, and by a natural apprehension about the operations of a totalitarian regime which may at any moment threaten or transform our daily lives.

Political Behavior and Politics

Abstract: THROUGHOUT the history of the study of politics, theories of political society have been based on theories of human nature. Thus the study of the psychology of political behavior lies firmly within the tradition of political thought. But a gap has developed between our theories of individual political behavior and our theories of how political society (or, to use the current term, the political system) operates. If we are to develop a science of politics-that is, a science that deals with the total political process on both the individual and the system level-we shall have to close this gap. Studies of the psychology of political behavior have asked a number of the right questions about the nature of Political Man: Is he rational, or does he behave the way he does because of social and psychological pressures he knows little about? Does he vote the way he does because of his social class, because his friends vote that way, or because his father voted (or didn't vote) that way? Does he know anything about the issues of politics? Does Political Man lust unceasingly after power? Or is his political lust merely the sublimation of some primitive childhood lust? These are important questions, and studies of the psychology of politics have given us important and fascinating answers to some of them. But though much is said' on the various social and psychological influences that lead to a particular voting choice, there seems to be little concern over who won the electioni.e., what the effect of all this is on the political system. Moreover, the converse question of the impact of the political system on individual political behavior has received less attention than it deserves. By sticking too close to the non-political forces that impinge on the individual and by ignoring for the most part the interrelationship between an individual's political behavior and the political system in which he lives, the study of political behavior has divorced itself somewhat from the study of politics.

Historia Mentem Armet: Lessons of the Past

Abstract: It is a distressing paradox of our time, when we are concerned as never before with military problems on whose solution may depend our national existence and even the survival of civilization, that we should turn our backs on history and deny that the lessons of the past have any validity for the present.There are many reasons for this. The problems we face are enormously complex and highly technical; the weapons on which we must rely and which threaten our existence are so revolutionary in character as to make past experience seem highly irrelevant. And there are few to tell us that this is not so, for military history has never really been seriously studied in this country. The historian has stood on the sidelines while his academic colleagues, the political scientists, the economists, the physicists, and others, have become increasingly active, officially and unofficially, in the study of national security problems.