Under development and modes of production: A reply to Nicos Mouzelis

What follows is a reply to a number of points raised by Nicos Mouzelis in his review of my book, From Modernisation to Modes of Production: A Critique of the Sociologies of Development and Underdevelopment (Macmillan 1979, £4.95 paper) in The Journal of Peasant Studies, Volume 7, No. 3, April 1980. I focus on Mouzelis’ arguments that my framework for analysing Third World societies is ideological and reductionist. I try to show how the analysis put forward in my book can be used to analyse what for me is the central problem of ‘development ‘ ‐ namely the relations between the restricted and uneven capitalist development characteristic of Third World societies, their class structures, forms of state and development strategy. I also examine the relevance of Mouzelis's alternative ‐ of inter‐relating structuralist and action perspectives ‐ and suggest that the framework put forward in my work can deal more adequately with the issues raised by Mouzelis in his review. I agree with Mouzelis that the most fruitful debates in the Sociology of Development currently centre on the relevance of the Marxist approach, and view my comments here as part of this wide‐ranging, continuing debate, of which my work forms a part.     

Ethics and public policy: an analysis of a research tradition ∗

This article focuses on the relevent scholarly literature devoted to ethics and public policy. A literature search revealed an extensive body of research which lacked a coherent ordering. This article provides a model to understand a field of academic inquiry which has a rich tradition.     

The Arab‐Israeli peace process: A house built on sand?

While the Declaration of Principles agreed between the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in September 1993 was widely welcomed as the major breakthrough in the seemingly intractable Arab‐Israeli conflict, progress proved to be difficult, uncertain and, at times, bloody. This article places the agreement in the context of previous peace endeavours in an attempt to explain why the apparent early promise proved so difficult to sustain.     

Approaches to the Politics of Systemic Economic Reform in the Soviet Union

Political support for economic reform in the USSR is evaluated at five different levels of Soviet society, or more properly, of the political-administrative hierarchy: the top leader (Gorbachev himself), the collective leadership (Politburo), the bureaucracy, knowledge specialists (intelligentsia), and the population at large. Attitudes and motivations within each group are examined in order to demonstrate how interest group relations in the Soviet Union have made and will continue to make basic economic change a protracted, complex, and unpredictable process. journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: 052, 113.