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A central issue in the analysis of military regimes in Latin America is their policy impact. How successful are military governments in promoting economic development? How do their policies and performances compare with those of civilian governments? The sheer volume of research on the causes of military takeovers in Latin America implies that regime changes have important consequences. Yet to date we are far from having satisfactory answers to the questions posed above. As a recent study of public policy in Latin America noted, "If students of Latin American politics were to inventory verified propositions regarding the performance of Latin American regimes, the resulting list might not exceed zero" (Ames and Goff 1975, p. 175).

This article consists of a treasury of details regarding the Knights of the Order of St. John ranging from information about the recruiting of new Knights to the type of authority that it imposed upon Malta during its stay (1530-1798). Koster also discusses the religious affiliations that the Order carried with it. At the end is a detailed bibliography of this document. ; N/A

International regimes are attitudinal phenomena. They are thus subjective and exist primarily as participants' understandings, expectations or convictions about legitimate, appropriate or moral behavior. Regimes are identified and their tenets described by studying records of participants' perceptions gleaned either from interview transcripts or from appropriate documents. Theorizing concerning international regimes currently focuses upon identifying analytic characteristics that might become bases for comparative empirical studies and foundations for generalization. Particularly promising are comparisons of international regimes with regard to specificity, formality, modes of change, and distributive bias. The regime that buttressed late 19th century European colonialism is compared to the international food regime of the present day with respect to these analytic features. Observations on the two cases suggest reasons why some international regimes are durable and others fragile, why some invite wide compliance and others provoke deviation, and why some change while the international structure of power remains constant but others change only after the weak become strong.

Twentieth-Century history provides ample evidence of the variable nature of the authority of political regimes, yet contemporary social scientists devote much more attention to the potential sources of legitimate authority than to the causes and consequences of its absence. In order to understand the very different types of authority that a regime may display, and changes in its authority through time, we must be able to account for the repudiation of regimes as well as for their legitimation. Moreover, it is necessary to explain why so many regimes long remain in intermediate categories, neither fully legitimate nor fully repudiated. The purpose of this paper is to differentiate among the types of authority of a regime, to analyze differences in dynamic changes in authority, and to propose hypotheses specifying influences upon the ability of a regime's leaders to obtain support and compliance from its nominal population.