The phenomenal growth of the Japanese Communist Party's electoral strength during a period of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity (1961–1974) clearly deviates from Benjamin's and Kautsky's “curvilinear theory” of the economic development and strength of Communist parties. Nor does it conform to Lipset's hypothesis that there exists an inverse correlation between the economic growth and the strength of Communist parties. It is my basic contention that the recent growth in the JCP's organizational strength and electoral successes should be ascribed to the overall deradicalization of the party which has taken place since 1961. The findings of this study as a whole substantiate theories en deradicalization of the Marxist movement advanced earlier by Robert Michels and more recently by Robert C. Tucker, who hypothesized that there exists an inverse correlation between the deradicalization of a revolutionary party and its “worldly success.” His findings also confirm Triska's and Finley's hypothesis that deradicalized Communist parties in the developed countries would become not significantly different from other non-Communist parties either in structure or functions.

The chill that descended on innovative Soviet belletristic literature (and some kinds of historiography) in the post-Khrushchev era has had, as far as the outsider can determine, relatively little effect on social science publication. To avoid misunderstanding, I should hasten to add that social science has always been restricted in the U.S.S.R., on the whole more seriously than belles lettres and history. Whether for this or other reasons, the bulk of what passes for social science among Soviet publications is dreary. Even outstanding social scientists such as Iurii Arutiunian are censured occasionally. In chronological perspective, however, the best work in social science has, I think, shown a continuous evolution since the Stalinist era.

Few people in any NATO country are satisfied with the existing theater nuclear posture and doctrine—yet radical revision is politically impossible. There is a marked absence of consensus within NATO on the proper functions of theater nuclear weapons: to Europeans they are, above all, a near-guarantee of a wider war and symbolic of American commitment (thereby enhancing deterrence), while to Americans they are, essentially, a means for reversing a deteriorating battlefield situation. A guide to the debate of recent years is organized around the systematic discussion of four alternative theater nuclear postures: Current NATO, Revised NATO, The Covering Force, and Battlefield Use. The ideas inherent in, and the means for the accomplishment of each, are presented, as are the claimed advantages and disadvantages. The debate occasioned by the Nunn Amendment has focused attention on the question of the relationship between defensive utility and deterrent value.

In a recent article in this journal, I reported a failure to replicate the positive correlations Bruce Russett found between inequality of land tenure and political instability.2 Unfortunately, two of the instability indicators I used were untransformed counts (Deaths from domestic political violence, 1948–67 and 1961–65), whereas Russett had employed the logarithm of a similar measure. Taking logarithms is advisable when using counts in order to reduce skewness.3 Correlations between inequality and the logarithms (to the base ten) of the Deaths variables (plus one, as the log of zero is undefined) are greater than those I reported, though not so strong as Russett found. For 1961–65, the correlation is .29; for 1948–67, .20. The former is significant at the .05 level; the latter is not. When the Gini coefficients are weighted by the percentage of each nation's labor force in agriculture in i960,4 the correlations with the logged Deaths variables were .63 and .61—both highly significant. These figures especially support Russett's conclusions.