Since the ghost of Perón and Perónism has never been laid in Argentina, it is perhaps surprising that more attention has not been paid to the thought and ideology of Perón, particularly as expounded in the Peronato from 1945 to 1955. There is a widely held perception that there is nothing new to say about Peronist ideology, as distinct from the political movement, on the grounds that justicialismo was simply an excuse for pure political opportunism. Though Perón's ideology came to mean pure opportunism in practice, it does not follow that it was devised expressly to provide that result. There was rather more to Peronist ideology than that, as this paper hopes to make clear. Accordingly, we shall advance an argument in four stages: first, to show the relationship of the ideology of justicialismo to the classical tradition in political thought; second, to advance the proposition that Perón sincerely believed in his own ideology; third, to show the extreme flexibility of the doctrine; and fourth, to demonstrate the contradictions that destroyed it as a credible body of thought.

A decade ago it was possible to argue with some confidence not only that the Soviet Union and the United States had spheres of influence but also that they had a tacit understanding about them. The existence of a tacit understanding seemed to be confirmed, for instance, at the time of the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, in that while the United States denounced the Soviet action it nevertheless acquiesced in it. At that time it could be claimed that the Soviet Union had merely acted in eastern Europe in the same way as the United States had on various occasions in Latin America, the most recent being the intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965. Further, the doctrines each power used to justify intervention were alike. The Brezhnev Doctrine justifying the intervention in Czechoslovakia seemed similar to the Johnson Doctrine legitimizing intervention in the Dominican Republic in that both claimed hegemonic rights within a sphere of influence. And from this a reciprocal understanding was inferred about what each would allow the other to do in its respective sphere. Both superpowers denied it. The United States did so because spheres of influence transgress the doctrine of the sovereign equality of states and because the practices associated with them violate the norms of interstate behaviour. The Soviet Union did so because it counterposed the Soviet Union to other socialist States and it would have followed that the Soviet Union would not have been acting, as it claimed, in the interests of socialism.

Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932) is now widely known as the father of revisionism and one of the more important progenitors of democratic socialism. What is often still overlooked is that almost all his theoretical work (an attempt to update the thought of Karl Marx in the light of the changed conditions of advanced capitalism) was done in England during his London exile (1888–1901) and that for the last three decades of his life he was a practising politician who manifested a close, informed and overriding interest in the major political issues of the era. Almost without interruption between 1902 and 1928 he served as a Social Democratic deputy in the German Reichstag, where he functioned as one of the SPD's principal foreign policy and taxation spokesmen. He was most influential within the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) before and during the First World War, increasingly less effective after 1914. An outline of Bernstein's views on German foreign policy during the period when he was at the height of his authority as an active socialist politician thus promises to fill a gap in existing scholarship and to shed new light on the father of revisionism and his progeny.

The rules of international law governing the legality of the use of force by states (ius ad bellum) and the rales by which international law regulates the actual conduct of hostilities once the use of force has begun (ius in bello) have seldom sat happily together. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, some international lawyers took the view that the development of the ius ad bellum by the Charter of the United Nations had rendered the ius in bello superfluous. This view has, not surprisingly, become somewhat less fashionable of late and the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, the 1977 Protocols to those Conventions, and a number of other treaties bear witness to the continuing interest of the international community in regulating the conduct of warfare. Nevertheless, the suspicion remains that ius in bello should have been absorbed by ius ad bellum, that the two subjects are somehow in competition, so that discussion of the former distracts attention from the more fundamental requirements of the latter or implies a lack of confidence in it. Thus, one letter published in The Times at the height of the Falklands conflict castigated international lawyers for engaging in a debate about the law concerning the treatment of prisoners of war on the ground that they should have been devoting their attention to questioning the legality of the whole operation mounted by the United Kingdom.

From its inception Americans have thought of the Panama Canal as one of the outstanding national interests of the United States, and a glance at the map explains why. By cutting out the long haul round South America, the canal markedly reduces the distance by sea from coast to coast, from the Atlantic ports to East Asia and Australasia, and from the Pacific ports to Europe and the Atlantic seaboards of Africa and Latin America. The result has been an immense enhancement of American naval strength and mercantile potential. But the canal also possesses great international significance, as the map again shows. It provides quicker access to the Pacific as far west as New Zealand for traffic from Europe and from most Atlantic ports outside the United States, and it puts the western coast of South America within correspondingly easier reach of the Atlantic littoral. Like the Suez Canal, it has become a focal point of global strategy and commerce, a thoroughfare between the oceans of enormous value to the world at large.

Post-war budgeting for defence in Britain and the United States has become highly complex and politically contentious both for successive administrations and for Congress and Parliament. In the 1950s and 1960s new methods of budgeting were introduced by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) which held out the prospect both of more efficient management of defence programmes and of greater accountability for defence spending to the respective legislatures. Paradoxically, these same methods presented problems to Congress and Parliament and to their defence and financial committees, which were unable to comprehend the new budget techniques. This and other problems produced pressure in the 1970s, in both countries, for the creation of new committees for the scrutiny of defence and other public spending matters. This paper will examine briefly the developments in defence budgeting in Britain and America and assess the advantages they were purported to offer, especially those that relate to defence accountability. It will then examine the responses of Congress and Parliament to them and assess the extent to which new committees, created in the 1970s, were able to draw upon those budget techniques in a way that provided greater accountability of defence.

What do Third World countries want? More wealth. How can they get it? By adopting more economically rational policies. What should the North do? Facilitate these policies. How should the North approach global negotiations? With cautious optimism. What is the long term prognosis for North–South relations? Hopeful, at least if economic development occurs. This is the common wisdom about relations between industrialized and developing areas in the United States and much of the rest of the North, Within this fold there are intense debates among adherents of conventional liberal, reformist liberal, and interdependence viewpoints. But the emphasis on economics at the expense of politics, on material well-being as opposed to power and control, pervades all of these orientations.

The necessity for the United Nations Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) arose from a crisis in relations between the island's Greek and Turkish communities precipitated by an attempt on the part of President Makarios in November 1963 to adjust the 1960 Constitution in such a way as to lessen the influence of the Turkish minority within the state's institutions. An early unsuccessful attempt at mediation by Britain in the first weeks of 1964 (which aimed at a solution within the context of Nato) gave way to Security Council consideration at a series of meetings in February and March which resulted in a motion to dispatch a peacekeeping force.

A study of ethics must be regarded as incomplete if it does not offer tools for analysing moral problems arising in the international context, particularly in an age of growing interdependence between the peoples of the world. Similarly, a study of international relations must be thought to be imperfect if it leaves out normative questions.

To this it may be objected that International Relations is an empirical discipline, and that it can legitimately leave normative considerations to moral philosophers. However, such a division of labour is unfortunately more likely to result in mere division rather than efficient co-operation. Moreover, international relations, the subject-matter, is logically, as well as historically, prior to International Relations, the academic discipline. Therefore, a study of international relations, undertaken by International Relations experts, cannot be claimed to be complete if it neglects those aspects of the subject-matter which have occupied the minds of many thinkers who do not consider themselves as IR specialists.

It is a characteristic of political theory and international politics that certain wellworn stereotypes are perennially wheeled out for generations of students. Some of these may be useful landmarks for scholarship, others offer only partial insights. This paper addresses one of these stereotypes which does not dissolve with more intensive study. It attaches to the Hegelian concept of the state in relation to international politics. I refer to the view that Hegel's concept of the state, elaborated in the Philosophy of Right, is the final unit of analysis for any theory of international politics; that it is impossible to go beyond the nation state; that it possesses a finality in that international affairs are only to be understood through the relation between nation states. One of the conclusions which is sometimes drawn from this stereotype. is that Hegel's account of international politics is Hobbesian in character; that is to say, the relation between states is rather like that between individuals in Hobbes’ state of nature. The ruling principle would thus be that ‘clubs are trumps’; or, more conveniently, that might is right. For an Hegelian there cannot be a legitimate concept of international order, because order only exists in the individual state. Each state has its own legal system and concept of right, therefore the relationship between states is simply the conflict of rights. To put this in a moral perspective: states are neither right nor wrong; this is simply how things are. This has often led to the paradoxical conclusion that Hegel is a realist as regards international affairs, though perhaps a better term would be ‘idealist-realist’. The aim of this paper is to examine the arguments for and against such a stereotype.

In recent years there has been a marked tendency to assess French foreign policy in terms of continuity and change in the aims, organization and actions associated with General de Gaulle and his pursuit of national independence. Analysts have found that in spite of major personality differences between de Gaulle, Pompidou9 Giscard d'Estaing and Mitterrand, and a presidential system of government that maximizes the opportunities for personal direction,, there has been paradoxically a high degree of continuity in French foreign and defence policies. Until recently it was possible to account for this by emphasizing the influence of the GauIIist party in government and the National Assembly, but now that it is no longer the largest party nor enjoying a share in power it is necessary to seek other explanations for continuity in policy. Moreover, the return to power in 1981 of men of the Fourth Republic who continue to maintain many of their predecessors’ policies reveals the inadequacy of Gaullism as a basis for analysis and the need for terms of reference allowing for a longer view of the French role in world affairs. If that role has been so consistent in spite of changes in society, economy, political leadership and even regime is it not time to seek reasons for continuity by analysing external influences on French foreign and defence policies in the light of international relations theory? This is particularly appropriate in view of current French interest in systemic approaches to international politics. The intention here is to examine some relevant developments in the theoretical study of the international system and to consider their implications for existing interpretations and future study of French foreign policy and its claim to independent The French case is of obvious relevance to the situation of other middle-sized powers pursuing an ambitious role in world affairs, yet finding access to power and independence severely restricted.

It may come as a surprise to many that the international community through the mechanisms and methods of international law should seek to involve itself in the techniques of war-making to the extent that it does. We all accept that international law is deeply concerned with the prevention of the use of armed force and most people are aware, if in a rudimentary fashion, of the categories of aggression, self-defence, use of force to protect nationals and so forth. It would be a cause of great amazement should the rules and techniques of international law not be heavily engaged in constraining as far as possible the impulses of states to resort to the use of force. It is rather different to find international law actually descending to the battlefield, tacitly acknowledging its own failures, and attempting to pontificate on the types of weapons to be used in the destruction of life and property. Or is it? The same general concerns that impel international law to restrain states from using violence against each other are also operative when one considers the methods of warfare, despite the irony.

One of the most striking differences between British defence policy since 1945 and military policy during the inter-war period has been the acceptance by post-war Labour and Conservative governments of the value of undertaking a continental commitment. During the 1920s and 1930s Britain clearly retained a close interest in European affairs but consistently steered away from any form of major military involvement on the continent,, In traditional terms policy makers continued to recognize the importance of maintaining a favourable Balance of power in Europe and preventing any hostile state from dominating the Low Countries, At the same time there was also a fundamental political assumption that Britain and France would be in alliance in the event of renewed German aggression in Western Europe. Until Munich, however, the emphasis in defence planning centred on home and imperial defence. True, there were those in the defence establishment who recognized that Britain's vital interests were closely linked to Western Europe and who advocated serious preparation of an expeditionary force. But even they failed to recommend the kind of highly mobile mechanized force for specialized European operations which might have avoided the magnitude of the disasters which befell British forces in 1939–40. After Munich the British government did arrive at a recognition of the importance of some form of continental commitment but by then it was clearly too late either to create an expeditionary force of the kind required or to supplement Britain's military weakness through the establishment of an effective western alliance system.

History is too important to be left to the historians. An individual or a society lacking an awareness of the past is as deprived as those who remain strangers to the world of imaginative literature. Moreover, anyone tempted to rely totally upon the pronouncements of professional historians for their ideas about earlier events still has to choose (even though the process is not always a conscious one) from among a wide range of versions and verdicts emanating from the ranks of those historians themselves.

The aim of this short paper is to explore the concept of ‘general’ rules of customary international law (i.e., rules in principle binding upon all states, as contrasted with ‘special’ rules binding only on a few states, usually on a regional or local basis), and-the tension which exists between that concept and the consensual basis of customary international law. It will be suggested that it is possible to hold a view of international law which denies the general applicability of most rules of customary law and preserves its consensual character, while admitting that a few rales of truly general application do exist which, however, must derive their binding force from outside the framework of consensual law creation.

‘Very often it was no more than a phrase used to inhibit thought. Frequently appealed to, it was seldom analysed in real depth or formulated with genuine rigour. Writers tended to shy away from the questions it raised and the difficulties it involved.’ Professor Anderson's somewhat bleak statement about the eighteenth century use of the theory of the balance of power in international relations relects the tendency of writers concerned to analyse theories of international relations to concentrate on the opinions and writings of prominent intellectuals, eminent jurists, distinguished writers and famous statesmen. It is the intention of this note to draw attention to less eminent sources for eighteenth century views on international relations, and to suggest that far from being constrained by an inhibiting model of international relations, that of the balance of power, interpretations of European developments were aided by the very ambiguity and flexibility of the concept.