An assessment of the forms in which, and tlie extent to which, the population of the entire world may be coming to participate in a coherent global social system may be made by crude measurement of variations in the degree of autarky, interconnectedness, dependence, interdependence, integration, hegemony, and convergence. In the recent modern era, we can show that interconnectedness has been rising at an exponential rate across numerous dimensions ranging from the exchange of students to world trade. Interdependence is also increasing, but less dramatically. The greater dependence of less developed countries is unmistakable, but integration has advanced very little in the period after World War II. In studying convergence we must differentiate among modes of production, institutional forms, patterns of social relations, the content of popular values, and systems of political and economic control, each of which may change at different speeds and even move in different directions. The argument that there is substantial convergence in political and economic forms at the national level may be seriously challenged. Marked convergence is widely prevalent, however, in the utilization of science, technology, and bureaucratic procedures, and in the consequent incorporation of whole populations into new social roles. These in turn induce new attitudes and values forming a widespread complex or syndrome identified as modern and postmodern. Countervailing tendencies are, however, evident and should be weighed.

In an operational sense, European integration amounts to the transnational harmonization and standardization of diverse national laws, practices, and norms. Insight into the integrative process in Western Europe, therefore, can be gleaned by looking into problems encountered during attempts at transnational harmonization. Case studies of national attempts to implement EEC directives in the fields of regional aid, pharmaceutical marketing, investment control, and fiscal harmonization point up important interplays between regional harmonization and domestic politics. Evidence concerning the politics of regional implementation shows that the ability of an EEC country to contribute to European integration depends fundamentally upon its government's ability to act politically in its domestic arena.

New interest in the domestic sources of foreign policy intersects the notion that arguments about a state's international role are, at one level, arguments about domestic meaning, prohibitions, and responsibility. Even claimed strategic imperatives are neither self-explanatory nor comprehensible only in view of the stringencies of the international arena. Instead, they project a domestic content, referring to (and often transparent in the light of) particular domestic ends, needs, images, or interests. A rule-guided conception of die relation between domestic society and foreign policy is developed, in an analogy widi language and forms of discourse, in which discernible social rules will constrain or constitute a state policy—delimiting conduct, or defining its domestic referents, usage, and social conformity or deviance. Looking beneath the rather disembodied plane of ends and means, explanation begins to resemble an excavation; the state is seen not through the lenses of national security and rational behavior, but in the model and role of a domestic social actor.

The modern state is a theoretical concept and a historical phenomenon which can be examined as force, power, and authority. The foundations of the modern state in China were laid by the Nationalist regime in Nankin after 1927. The Kuomintang's efforts in unification and treaty renegotiation greatly facilitated the labors of the Communists when they came to power. State development since 1949 reflects Nationalist influence in constitutionalism, party role, status of the army, and even world outlook. If the Nationalist and Communist periods are viewed as a continuum, state evolution in modern China appears as a rough recapitulation of the European state's development.

Family planning programs have encountered limited success not only because of our incomplete understanding of the sociocultural context of fertility decisions, but because the bureaucratic structures entrusted with the organizing task are overextended. Since the implementing agencies are themselves a complex part of the wider society in which they operate, there are important advantages to using an open systems perspective in the analysis of the problems of organizing for transactions with the client population. The status quo in family planning does not have to be maintained. Within political systems one can try to increase the organizational capacity to translate policies into action, or one can devise policies which recognize organizational constraints. In order to accomplish either or both of these objectives, a fresh approach to both action and research is necessary.

Primarily by reference to the writings of Charles E. Merriam, the impact of the Chicago school of political scientists on the study of world politics is assessed. Differences between that school's pragmatist pluralism and political realism are examined, as are differences between Merriam's ideal of cross-cutting human associations in a world of shared power and that of advocates of world government. Better adjusted personalities and international civic education would in Merriam's Utopia of science and reason lighten the task of governance within and between states, but he recognized the difficulty of achieving a warless world so long as “the antagonism of value systems which run below the obvious surface of the world” continues.

Packenham's Liberal America and the Third World, although a needed response to more radical critics, does not cut sufficiently deeply into the ambiguities, roots, and patterns of thought of liberal redemptive activism. The problem is to tame rather than to exorcise the redemptive activist belief in a “larger” American interest in the developing world. Modification of the reorientation of American policy articulated by Packenham and the Overseas Development Council is required to: (1) take account of limited agreement upon a conception of global economic equity; (2) develop a more refined response to the excesses of reformist interventionism; (3) avoid the risks of reliance upon a “will and capacity” strategy of developmental assistance. “Proximate pursuit” of the longstanding vision of a world in which the values of liberal democratic order are being increasingly realized constitutes a preferred alternative to both the liberal reorientation and past redemptive activism.