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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Vietnam teach-ins are passé, but severe questioning and criticism persist in both the popular and semipopular press and, significantly, in the imposing array of books issued by commercial publishers. Unlike the realist-idealist dichotomy of the late 1940's and early 1950's, which was confined to the academic community, the result of our present involvement in an Asian war is a debate of national proportions, not only about Vietnam but about the nature of America's role and responsibility in international life and about priorities in domestic and foreign policies. Inevitably, much of the literature is polemical, hammering on the major theme: the Johnson Administration has led American foreign policy astray; thus alternatives must be sought.

There is broad agreement among Western scholars that under the Communists the criminal process in China1 is arbitrary, highly politicized, and responsive to class and status differences among its targets. It is frequently pointed out, quite accurately, that China has no criminal codes and no public-reporter system of judicial decisions and that important substantive laws often are unpublished or, if published, very vague. Theorists of totalitarianism even doubt the existence of legality within such systems.