Despite progress in negotiating treaties to ban deployment of particular classes of weapons, such as the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, the "qualitative" arms race remains largely uncontrolled. Supposed theoretical obstacles, based on various versions of technological determinism, need not be a barrier to practical efforts, however. The reasoning usually cited to explain the competition does not preclude agreement to control it. The varcous perspectives on weapons procurement—realist, action-reaction, bureaucratic politics, technological imperative, and economic—are, as the case of the Strategic Defense (...) Initiative indicates, all subordinate to the "primacy of politics. " Given political will, even the qualitative arms race is amenable to control. (shrink)

Over the past 50 years, Louis Hartz’s reinterpretation of American political thought has had considerable influence – both in shaping later studies and provoking rebuttals. Drawing on Tocqueville’s observation that Americans were fortunate in having been ‘born equal’ instead of having to become so by revolution, Hartz compared American political thought with that of Britain and France in order to show that America has been enthralled by an ‘irrational Lockianism’. Although criticisms need to be taken into account, and the thesis (...) modified to take account of subsequent developments, it remains an indispensable and illuminating frame of analysis. (shrink)