The Contemporary Comparative Politics Series will treat the more enduring as well as the more recent themes, approaches, and problems pertaining to the study of political systems. In all cases, the volumes are pointed toward the following goals; to illustrate the relationship between theory and method without being theoretically pretentious or methodologically self-conscious; to underline the essential interrelatedness between fact and value or empirical and normative considerations in politics; to inform the reader in brief compass and in ordinary language, free from the jargon and neologisms of modern social science. The final and overriding goal of the series is to show what the comparative political scientist does and why this is an activity of intrinsic interest for the reader and considerable utility for society.

For more than a decade the leaders of the United States, Japan, Western Europe and Canada have met annually to discuss international economic and political issues. Hanging Together analyses the history of these seven-power summits and the relations between the Western allies during these turbulent years. New chapters in this edition relate the story of Western economic diplomacy until the Reagan Years. They give lucid accounts of the revamped international economic strategy after 1984 and how the Europeans and Japanese reacted to it. A new introduction and conclusion place the summits in a theoretical framework.