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If burma has needed to prove its right to be considered genuinely neutral in world affairs, it clearly did so in the first weeks of November 1956. At a time when it was engaged in crucial negotiations with Red China over Chinese incursions into its border territories, Burma chose to go on record in the United Nations and in the councils of the uncommitted Asian nations strongly condemning Russian aggression in Hungary along with the British, French and Israeli aggression in Egypt. Despite this, Burma to date has managed to hold its own in the Chinese negotiations.

Asia has too long been the province of unfocused 'scholarship'devoid of any recognizable signif or application, contemporary or otherwise. 2 recent books, Democracy and the Party Movement in Prewar Japan, by R. A. Scalapino, & Nationalism in Japan by D. M. Brown, represent a fortunate break with these traditions. The 1st explains the non-emergence of a democratic party system in terms of the structure of Japanese society & the evolution of Japanese capitalism. The 2nd relates Japanese nationalism at various periods with the soc energies it elicited. The authors suggest that the case of Japan is not sui generis, but that important lessons may be learned with respect to the probable course of democracy in other 'late-developing' Asian states from an analysis of Japanese experience. The present reviewer believes that Japanese development shares 3 important characteristics with the modernization of other Asian states: the outlines & goals of the process have been set by cultural aliens; the soc context of industrialization is widely different from that in the West; the rapidity of change prevents the emergence of sizeable new elites & often leaves an oligarchy in power. From these facts 3 conclusions can be drawn: Western standards of democratic performance are unlikely to be attained anywhere in Asia in the near future; an ultimate boradening of elites is possible; &, the US would save itself much moral anguish if it recognized as a basic premise of its foreign policy the fact that there is no 'free world' in Asia. (AA-AIPSA). Adapted from the source document.

JAPAN'S response to the intrusion of the West, by contrast with the response of China and other Asian nations, has long intrigued statesmen and scholars. Generalizations about Asia, its cultural traditions, its policies, its economic development, are especially difficult to fit to the Japanese. "Japan is of course sui generis," says O. H. K. Spate, the British geographer, and few will disagree.

INDIA'S experiment with democratic institutions is still only an experiment. Although India adopted a parliamentary system when she achieved independence in 1947 and has thus far been able to maintain her democratic institutions with much more success than some other newly independent Asian nations, no observer can have complete confidence in their stability. Indians have had to adjust from the role of natives in a country occupied by an imperialist power to that of citizens in a democracy, and the adjustment has not been easy. Traditional attitudes have a way of persisting and are not always readily accommodated to a parliamentary system of government.

Only the cold war has overshadowed the second most striking political phenomenon of the post World War II scene. The demise of imperial power over vast Asian and Middle Eastern territories and the rise of new independent states is in part the result of the transfer of power from Europe to the United States and the Soviet Union, and in part a distinct phenomenon. The politics of these new states have an increasing interest, partly because of their possible subversion to Communist allegiance, and partly because of the desire to assess the possibilities of successfully transplanting democracy. Emphasis on the danger of subversion intensifies interest in the political processes in these non-western countries; but the context of these politics, i.e., that which may be subverted, is the primary concern of the discipline of comparative government.Political scientists have been among the last to extend the area of their research to non-western countries. They have been preceded by travelling diarists, students of comparative religion, archaeologists, historians, and latterly, anthropologists. From these sources much material, though of varied and uneven quality, exists to start with. A few political histories, fewer studies of various aspects of non-western politics, and still fewer studies of the contitutional development of these areas supplement these resources. Materials are scantiest for the Middle East.