Revisionism and Its Variants: Understanding State Reactions to Foreign Policy Failure

States respond to failure in different ways. In light of the phenomenon of revisionist states, it is particularly important to understand why some revisionist states revert to status quo pursuits in the face of policy failure, while others pursue revisionism even in the face of external developments that we might expect would push them toward moderation. Domestic structure, domestic politics, and elite ideology each contribute to an explanation of how revisionist states respond to policy failure, but none of these variables alone tells the full story. As is illustrated through case studies of Iranian, Israeli, and Iraqi foreign policy in the 1980s, domestic structure plays the launching role in the analysis of how a revisionist state will behave. Regime type structures the incentives facing leaders and determines whether domestic politics or elite ideology is determinative in predicting a revisionist state's reactions to failure.     

Chernobyl': Observations on the Fifth Anniversary

A Canadian Sovietologist with extensive research experience relating to the accident at the Chernobyl' nuclear power plant in 1986 surveys some of its major consequences in light of new information on the fifth anniversary of the disaster in 1991. The author outlines and analyzes varying interpretations of the cause of the accident (operator error vs. design flaw), the extent and density of the radiation release, and the severity of its impact on public health in contaminated areas. Appropriately noted are the jurisdictional disputes over the clean-up and other remedial efforts-most rooted in the current political crisis in the Soviet Union. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: P20, Q20, Q40.     

Social relations and agricultural production in Nepal's Terai

The analysis of the process of surplus production, expropriation and realisation is central to the understanding of both the development process and the forces which are leading to transformation, particularly those arising from the relations of production [Frank, 1967; Laclau, 1971; Amin, 1974]. A central argument of this paper is that the details of the production relations, especially in agriculture, can vary very considerably, not only for historical reasons, but because of specific conditions in the technology of production and the conditions existing in the economy external to the actual process of production described. Institutions to control labour and property relations which best fit in with the maximisation of the expropriation of surplus value may not be those which are conventionally associated with industrial capitalism. This paper explores surplus production and expropriation in a specific situation: the production of the agricultural surplus in Nepal's Terai, in order to explain the social formations occurring within it.