the articles which make up this issue of the IDS Bulletin. They come from different sources and express variety of viewpoints. Four of them (Fontaine,Booth, Harriss and Manor) were presented as papers to a workshop on 'The Developmental State in Retreat' held at IDS on 30 June-! July, 1987. Mick Moore's article is a critical rejoinder to the debate on the state in Africa which was published in the January 1986 issue of this journal. Gordon White's article could be grouped with the first four since, while it was not presented at the workshop, it too deals with the 'retreat of the state', albeit in the highly specific Chinese context. Roberts's article, in contrast, represents a somewhat isolated, if not eccentric, approach to understanding the peculiar experience of economic policy reorientation in contemporary Algeria.