bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
What is Political Thought Thinking of Now? ‐ Reading Notes 1964–1980-
Authors: Ionescu Ghiţa
Published: April 2007

AS I LOOKED AT MY READING NOTES IN ORDER TO RETRACE the evolution of my thought on politics in general, and political thought in particular, over the last two decades or so, I found that my present concern with the reality of modern political thought could be progressively detected in those notes as from 1964. The rest and the bulk of the notes converge in three main themes: my first books on comparative communist politics, my interest in the development of the modern science of politics, and the incessant (pace Tocqueville) reflections on how to reconcile, in logic and in ethics, the variances between the quest for social justice and of that for political freedom in an advanced industrial society. But the post-1964 notes show now, more than I remembered, my early uneasiness about two, albeit different, orientations of modern political thought, or at least of its most popular schools. From one point of view, I felt that we were increasingly estranging ourselves from the existential reality of man. From another, I feared that our present methods of political analysis blur, rather than focus on, the distinctiveness of the politics of the modern industrial society.

These notes, even trimmed and edited, inevitably form an amalgam of impressions, jotted down in a kind of intellectual shorthand, and insufficiently expounded. But as our contributions to this special issue are in the nature of a backward glance, I submit them as they are.
Pure Politics Revisited
Authors: Jouvenel Bertrand de
Published: April 2007

SINCE FIRST I BEGAN TO THINK ABOUT THE SUBJECT OF WHAT I called ‘pure politics’ twenty years ago, it has, sad to say, become more immediate. This is because of something I emphasized at the time: the effectiveness of a dedicated group of activists. Although few in number, the group's intensity of will gives it a formidable strength. It is like a projectile which can easily penetrate the soft body of society. It is the generator of the unforeseen, and ushers drama on to the political stage.

In my book De la Souveraineté (1955), I contrasted two pictures familiar to us since childhood: Bonaparte on the bridge at Arcola and Saint Louis under the oak tree at Vincennes. The first is standing erect, calling on his men to charge; the other is seated, serene, welcoming the various plaintiffs who press towards him and sending them away content. On one side of the diptych we see a leader who exalts, and on the other side an umpire who corrects and conciliates – an agent of momentum and an agent of equilibrium. Bonaparte points to a direction and the narrowness of the bridge is a symbol of the one-way narrow track, the precise intention. In contrast, the oak tree is the centre of a circumference, from every point of which the plaintiffs or suitors could approach, so that the king's attention was called from all sides: he needed the eyes of Argus.
The Fear of Conflict and Other Failings
Authors: Meisel John
Published: April 2007

SCHOLARS RARELY WRITE IN THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR and even less often tackle the examination of ideas or events overtly in the context of autobiographical ruminations. I therefore find myself a trifle ill at ease in trying to express my thought in what is, to all intents and purposes, an unaccustomed mode.
From the Golden to the Dark Decade, From Reforms to Isms and Ologies
Authors: Pinder John
Published: April 2007

THE 1950s WERE A WONDERFUL DECADE FOR APPLIED SOCIAL science: for the belief that reason addressed to economic and social problems can improve the human condition. Compare the 1950s with the 1930s and ask how much of the improvement was due to Keynes and Beveridge. It is inevitable that a generation of debunkers should follow whose answer would be ‘not much’. But that would have seemed a strange conclusion in the 1950s; and the view of the 1950s was surely right. We had full employment in place of 10 per cent unemployment in the 1920s and nearly 15 per cent in the 1930s; and after the first years of post-war reconstruction, it was reasonable to attribute this to Keynesian demand management. We had a safety net through which relatively few fell into poverty; and this was Beveridge's social security and the welfare state.
My Fifty Years of Social Science
Authors: Schapiro Leonard
Published: April 2007

IN STRICT TRUTH, THE FIRST TWENTY OF THE FIFTY ADULT years of my life were spent either in practice at the Bar, or in military intelligence. The latter, and especially in wartime, is, of course, geared to the overriding practical objective of winning a war, though, since I was involved with assessment of the Soviet Union's military strength and achievement, my work provided me with some kind of an introduction to the study of the Soviet Union to which, after the mid-fifties, I was to devote most of my time. But the Bar is far too egocentric an occupation to leave much time for interest in political issues, at most permitting time for the narrow practical pursuit of domestic party politics. For party politics I have never had much appetite – though I did campaign for the Conservative Party in one election.
Social Events and Social Science: a Personal Case Report on Open‐ended Causality
Authors: Seliger Martin
Published: April 2007

THE OUTLOOK OF ALL MEMBERS OF THE GENERATION OF social scientists contributing to this issue certainly bears the imprint of the upsurge of National Socialism and the chain of events this entailed and which led to the Second world War. On their part, these events are directly embedded in the aftermath of the First World War which began with the Bolshevik Revolution and was in many respects overshadowed by it. Some specificality of my way of relating to the more immediate background is accounted for by the fact that I experienced the events as a German Jew who decided to join in the return to the Jewish homeland, then Palestine. Furthermore, I left Germany in 1936 not only as a Zionist but also as a ‘Bernsteinist’ revisionist who remained unshaken in his belief that ‘Weimar’ had not suffered defeat as the result of a basic systemic weakness of liberal democracy which could accommodate social reform acceptable to an electoral majority. Ineptitude, shortsightedness and above all the lack of toughness of the German leaders dedicated to the democratic republic were one set of factors that made possible the victory of the Nazis.
New Social Factors in the Unrest in Poland
Authors: Woodall Jean
Published: April 2007

THE CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF THE POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS in Poland are innumerable and difficult to unravel. Rightly the Western press has focused on the ideological aspects and on the prominent part played by the Catholic Church. This article chooses to focus more on social factors and on the manner in which traditional forces in Polish society have persisted into the state-socialist period.

While the recent bout of industrial protest in Poland was initially concerned with meat prices, it raised the question of control over much wider aspects of social consumption, and of dissatisfaction on the part of some workers with work-force democracy, and of others with the consequences of economic reform. The Polish industrial manual working class has a complex structure but the gap between it and the white-collar intelligentsia is not wide, and the pull and push of events in the work place can result in a pattern of shifting alliances. This has serious implications for the claim that the long-awaited union of intelligentsia and working class in Poland is at last beginning to appear. In order to put these problems in the right perspective one has to examine three different factors: the economic policy of the Polish Communist government, the new composition of the work force and the new structure of the intelligentsia.
Corporatism as Reductionism: the Analytic Limits of the Corporatist Thesis
Authors: Cox Andrew
Published: April 2007

THIS ARTICLE WILL ATTEMPT TO SHOW THAT WHILE MOST OF the recent writing on ‘corporatism’ is intellectually stimulating it does not enable any fuller understanding of the forces shaping government actions than the ‘pluralist’ and ‘parliamentarian’ theses which it has questioned.
British Scientists and the Bomb: The Decisions of 1980
Authors: Williams Roger
Published: April 2007

THE BRITISH CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT ELECTED IN MAY 1979 had, by August 1980, taken three decisions in respect of nuclear weapons and civil defence which in portent had had few peacetime parallels. These decisions naturally had a technical as well as a political dimension yet, until at least the spring of 1981, the involvement of the British scientific community in public discussion of the underlying issues remained negligible. No similar decisions could be taken, or even contemplated, in the United States without provoking a response both substantial and professional from American scientists. How does one explain the attitude, or lack of it, in this context of their British counterparts? Why, when these decisions were announced, did British scientists behave, or appear to behave, as political eunuchs? Are there no matters which rouse them to political involvement? Or are they perhaps more politically effective precisely because they pursue a low-profile course? These questions are important and it is worth trying to answer them. Before attempting to do so, however, it will be helpful both to identify the British decisions of 1979–80 referred to above, and also to outline such reaction to them on the part of the British technical community as had, in fact, occurred by the spring of 1981.
Politics and Constitution in China
Authors: Fletcher M. D.
Published: April 2007

ONE APPROACH TO STUDYING THE CONSTITUTIONS OF THE People's Republic of China (PRC) has been to conclude that they are really a sham, designed to conceal the absence of citizen rights, and therefore presumably of little benefit as documents for study. Constitutions, however, are forms of political expression, and are perhaps best approached as reflections of changes in policy orientation. Their purposes include the formal institutionalization of past changes, the expression of immediate political priorities and laying the foundations for reorientations in basic policy.
Power‐sharing versus Majority Rule: Patterns of Cabinet Formation in Twenty Democracies
Authors: Lijphart Arend
Published: April 2007

THE TERM ‘MAJORITY RULE’ IS OFTEN USED EITHER AS A synonym of democracy or as one of its defining characteristics. An important contribution that the scholars belonging to the consociational school have made to democratic theory is to point out that this close identification of majorit rule and democracy is fallacious. Majoritarian democracy, of which the Westminster model is the ideal type, is not the only form of democracy; the major alternative is consociational democracy. Furthermore, majority rule is not necessarily the best form of democracy; especially in plural societies - that is, societies deeply divided by religious, ideological, cultural, linguistic, ethnic, or racial cleavages into separate sub-societies with their own political parties, interest groups, and media of communication - consociational democracy is the more suitable democratic model.
The 1981 Elections and the Changing Fortunes of the Israeli Labour Party
Authors: Azmon Yael
Published: April 2007

ONE OF THE INNOVATIONS OF THE 1981 ELECTIONS IN ISRAEL which caught the eye, was the frequent use of ‘this time’ in campaign slogans. ‘This time only the Labour Alignment!’ ‘This time the Likud!’ shouted the slogans from all the billboards. This is an appeal to political support based on a short-term time perspective. This appeal differs greatly from that which characterized the Israeli ideological, mass-membership parties in previous periods.

The change in party slogans is a response to changes in the electorate. These changes in the electorate are most clearly reflected in the magnitude of the ‘undecided‘ vote and of its oscillation between different parties. The ‘undecided’ vote which used to be very low, amounted to about 40 per cent according to polls made in 1977 in the preelection period, and to about 30 per cent in the period preceding the 1981 elections. Moreover, the polls pointed to a particularly great oscillation of the electorate in the pre-1981 election period: the political forecast in December 1980 was around 60 Labour seats and around 28 Likud seats. In the beginnin of June 1981, the pendulum swung. The forecast for Labour fell to 30-33 seats while of Likud rose to 47 or even 49 seats. In the elections the race between Likud and Labour was very close. The results were 47 to Labour and 48 to Likud (as against 32 Labour and 43 Likud in 1977).
The Problem of Party in Modern British History: 1725–1832
Authors: O'Gorman Frank
Published: April 2007

PARTY HAS LOST NONE OF ITS ATTRACTIONS. THE DEVELOPMENT of party is regarded by recent historians, as it was by Namier, as the key to the development of the modern British political system. Indeed, the Whig historians of the pre-Namierite age had made the same assumption. But to what extent is it justified? And to what extent has the continued absorption of historians with the question of party development in British history elicited explanations of that development which are both consistent and adequate?
The Provisional IRA: An Assessment in the Wake of the 1981 Hunger Strike
Authors: Wilkinson Paul
Published: April 2007

THE PROVISIONAL IRA (PIRA) IS THE OFFSPRING OF THE IRISH Republican Army which played such a leading part in the war for Irish independence, 1919–21. Its leaders claim to be the true inheritors of the Irish Republican tradition of struggle against the British, determined to complete the task by expelling the British presence once and for all and thus to ‘liberate’ the whole of Ireland by reunifying north and south and establishing a PIRA socialist state.
The Right to Know: The Unfolding of the Public Records
Authors: Cantwell John
Published: April 2007

IN NOVEMBER 1979 THE GOVERNMENT ABANDONED ITS PROtection of Official Information Bill within a fortnight of its second reading in the Lords. That it should have failed to survive its first encounter outside the departmental world in which it was conceived, came as no surprise to those familiar with what Dick Crossman, in reference to excessive secrecy, once described as the real English disease.
‘Centre and Periphery’ in Indian Politics
Authors: Mehta V. R.
Published: April 2007

IN ONE OF MY BOOKS I HAVE ARGUED THAT ‘MODERNIZATION’ is a process whereby a society becomes increasingly aware of itself, its identity and aspirations, and seeks to make concrete its awareness in terms of seeking equivalence with other nations. The argument of this essay is that while the process of change in India has general characteristics common to other societies, it can never be the same in totality because the initial conditions are so different.
Elections and Parties in Greece
Authors: Featherstone Kevin
Published: April 2007

IN THE SEVEN YEARS SINCE THE FALL OF THE COLONELS' dictatorship in Greece, a new Greek party has established firm political roots. With the accession of Greece to the European Community on 1 January 1981, the new parties have been brought into the Western European political orbit, a development which marks the rehabilitation of a political system ostracized by virtue of its period of dictatorship. Unlike Portugal and Spain, however, which also seek membership of the European Community, the Greek period of dictatorship – lasting seven years post-war – represents much more an historical aberration, for Greece not only has an ancient history which saw the birth of democratic government, it also has enjoyed far more democratic than dictatorial governments in its modern period.
Qaddafi's Theory and Practice of Non‐Representative Government
Authors: Davis J.
Published: April 2007

QADDAFI'S THEORY OF POLITICS AND POLITICAL ORGANIZATION amounts to the assertion that all forms of representation in fact result in unrepresentative government; that therefore they must be unjust; that therefore they must be replaced by nonrepresentative government. The Green Book describes the institutions of such government but is by no means utterly explicit about the relations between institutions, or about the way personnel are recruited to them. To examine what happens in practice at elections, surely critical events in a nonrepresentative system, suggests that Qaddafi is less a Periclean Legislator than an interpreter, casts some light on the theory, and hints at the nature of the concept of political community underlying both The Green Book and contemporary Libyan society.
The Secrecy and Freedom of Information Debates in Britain
Authors: Thomas Rosamund
Published: April 2007

RECENT DEBATES IN BRITAIN ABOUT SECRECY IN CENTRAL government have become immersed in the traditional tension between espionage and secrecy. Espionage concerns spies and others who intend to help an enemy and who deliberately harm the security of the nation. Secrecy means ‘the compulsory withholding of knowledge reinforced by the prospect of sanctions for disclosure’. Leakage of official information may involve persons having no intention of damaging the nation. However, harm to the country may ensue from information getting into the wrong hands, whether by espionage or leakage. Experience of this tension in practice was a major factor leading to the enactment of the Official Secrets Act 1911, with section 1 covering espionage and section 2 unauthorized disclosure of information, with the risk of prosecution for either offence. Journalists in particular are aggrieved that they may be subject to prosecution under the Act used to charge spies and traitors. Jonathan Aitken, one of the journalists prosecuted in 1970 under section 2 of the 1911 Act over extracts from a British diplomat's report leaked to theSunday Telegraphabout the Nigerian civil war, was acquitted and published his own version of the Nigerian case in his bookOfficially Secret(1971), which heavily criticized the Official Secrets Act.
Some Characteristics of Political Science in Japan
Authors: Ishida Takeshi
Published: April 2007

DESPITE THE UBIQUITOUS PRESENCE OF JAPANESE CARS AND motorcycles in Europe and America, the products of Japan's social science have rarely been exported. In view of this, before dealing with the present state of political science in Japan, it would be better to begin with some explanation of its historical background.
The EC Crisis over the Budget and the Agricultural Policy: Britain and its Partners in the Late 1970s and Early 1980s
Authors: Taylor Paul
Published: April 2007

BRITAIN HAS BEEN ACTIVELY TRYING TO ALTER THE BUDGETary arrangements of the European Communities in order to reduce the size of its net contributions since the Labour government of Harold Wilson succeeded Edward Heath's Conservative government in February 1974. This effort has been based upon the perception that Britain's net contribution to the budget – the balance of gross contributions and receipts – was excessive compared with that of its partners. Britain has been the largest net contributor, yet has a per capita gross national product which places it with the less prosperous member states.
Political Science in France
Authors: Dreyfus François G.
Published: April 2007

AT FIRST SIGHT ONE MIGHT BELIEVE THAT THE REPORT ON THE teaching of social sciences in the world prepared in 1951 by William Robson, at the invitation of UNESCO for the International Political Science Association, is still valid today in what it says about the situation in France. In fact, because of the strong traditions in the French universities, the teaching of and research in political science in France have not made the progress which had been hoped for, in spite of the continuing efforts of successive governments. Nevertheless, since the mid-1960s a major effort has been made. Some 40 chairs and nearly three times as many lectureships and assistant lectureships have been created and several large research centres have been set up, particularly in Paris where, alongside the venerable Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, many teams have been established, notably at Paris I, Paris II and Paris X, comprising lawyears, sociologists and historians.
Portrait of the Entrepreneur as a Young Man
Authors: Stacey Nicholas
Published: April 2007

ONE OF THE EXPLANATIONS FOR THE MUTED UPSURGE OF business creativity in Britain is that the cultural milieu remains largely antipathetic to the entrepreneur and to a lesser degree to business. This anti-entrepreneurial heritage is over a century old and cannot be easily eradicated; it will take probably another decade or so of earnest reconsideration of the British industrial malaise and the application of appropriate remedies to bring about a discernible and measurable revival of the industrial spirit. As entrepreneurial activity can speed up the process of industrial revival, the more entrepreneurs surface to create new, viable businesses the better; thus the task of finding and encouraging the entrepreneur assumes new importance; I propose to illustrate ways of approaching this objective.
More Order Than Progress? The Politics of Brazilian Positivism
Authors: Merquior J. G.
Published: April 2007

IN BRAZIL, THE RISE OF SCIENTISM AS AN IDEOLOGY IN THE 1870s was part and parcel of a changing social setting. The great war with Lόpez's Paraguay, a big financial burden and no easy victory, laid bare several bottlenecks in economy and society. By the end of the conflict, comprehensive claims for modernization had entered the agenda of new political parties, reformist, liberal and republican. In the huge post-bellum tropical Empire (1870–89) a protracted poIitical struggle for the abolition of slavery, mounting pressures from urban groups claiming a number of liberal reforms, and the growth of umilitarynrest (the ‘Military Question’, 1883–86) tended to dovetail, thereby threatening the monarchy. Intellectually as well as politically the halcyon days of peaceful monarchic rule (1845–68) were gone. The liberal-conservative compromise was doomed. Its would-be philosophical expression – the pious eclecticism of Cousin's Brazilian disciples – began to falter under the combined assault of readers of Darwin and Renan, Spencer and Haeckel – and, last but not least, Comte.
The American Congressional Election: Reagan’s Recalcitrant Economy
Authors: Mansfield Harvey C.
Published: April 2007

IN THE CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION OF 1982 RONALD REAGAN asked the American people to ‘stay the course’, and they have just responded with a definite negative that is nonethless difficult to interpret. The results were bad for the Republicans: a 26-seat loss in the House of Representatives, creating a 99-seat Democratic majority and ending the de facto Reagan majority there; and a loss of seven state governors together with many state representatives. The Republicans held their margin of eight in the Senate.
Political Science in the United States: The Discipline and the Profession
Authors: Dreijmanis John
Published: April 2007

WRITINGS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE FREquently deal with either the discipline or the profession. There is also a tendency not to relate political science to national and international political, intellectual and educational developments. In this article political science is treated as a discipline and a profession and viewed to a more significant degree than is usually the case as the dependent variable rather than as an independent one. Although political science in the United States is being dealt with, and the emphasis is upon the post- 1945 period, it is worth remembering that the ‘content and style of political science in any country is no less international in character than it is national. At the very least differences in national styles (as well as content) are a function of international styles as the latter are mediated by national factors’. There is in the United States neither a single school of political science nor a unitary style or content.
The Economics of Berberism: the Material Basis of the Kabyle Question in Contemporary Algeria
Authors: Roberts H. J. R.
Published: April 2007

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A MAJOR ‘KABYLE QUESTION’ IN Contemporary Algerian politics was made manifest in the spectacular events of the spring of 1980. In an earlier article I suggested that the reason why most observers did not anticipate this development was because of their failure, on the one hand, to appreciate the specificity of the Kabyle case – the extent to which it departs from the sociologists' stereotype of Berber societies – and, on the other hand, to recognize the leading role played by the Kabyles in the national revolution and, in consequence, the significance of their subsequent eviction from commanding positions in the Algerian political elite. The practical substance of the Kabyle question itself was referred to only in passing and remains to be dealt with. Why is Kabyle particularism, which in itself is nothing new, now taking the form of ‘Berberism’, that is, not only opposition to the Arabization policy of the Algerian government but also the demand for official recognition of the Berber language? Why, moreover, has ‘Berberism’ become a popular force in Kabylia, capable of mobilizing, on occasion, support throughout Kabylia and from all classes of the population, when it was previously confined to an unrepresentative coterie of intellectuals and remains so confined in respect of the other Berberophone populations of Algeria and Morocco? The answer to these questions lies in the singular economic history of the Kabyle population.
Sweden’s Public Sector Crisis, Before and After the 1982 Elections
Authors: Walters Peter
Published: April 2007

‘WHEN THE SWEDES BEAT A RETREAT FROM KEYNES THAT surely signals a climacteric.’ Thus Andrew Shonfield clinched his argument that the unwillingness of the industrialized countries to offset the deflationary consequences of the 1979 oil shock reflected a general crisis of confidence in the principles of the mixed economy. The loss of Keynesian innocence in the 1970s came to different countries in different ways. In Sweden it came comparatively late and abruptly when, in 1980, after six years in which public expenditure had grown from 46 per cent to 64 per cent of GDP, the coalition non-socialist government acknowledged that the budget deficit, amounting to 10 per cent of GDP, had reached crisis proportions. From 1980 the problem of curbing the recalcitrant deficit became a corner-stone of the non-socialists’ economic policy. Eschewing any increase in the tax-burden, which it was committed to reduce, the government launched a comprehensive attack on public spending. Its persistence on this course in the face of protests that it was eroding the welfare state and tolerating rising unemployment was a major factor in its defeat in the general election of September 1982.
Begin’s War and the Future of Judaism
Authors: Pinto-Duschinsky Michael
Published: April 2007

THE 1982 WAR IN THE LEBANON AND ITS BLOODY AFTERMATH were not accidents of history. They resulted from the takeover of the Israel government and the world Zionist movement by Menachem Begin's Revisionists. This group of Zionist extremists (Dr Chaim Weizmann's description) had been derided and excluded from power for over 50 years. In 1977, they won their first Israeli general election and set about realizing their radical programme.

This article will discuss the roots of Begin's War and the challenge of the Begin revolution to world Jewry. First, it will review some of the available evidence about the fighting and the extent of civilian casualties. This review will throw light on Mr Begin's motives for launching ‘Operation Peace for Galilee’.
The Neglected(I) Carlyle’s Political Philosophy: Towards a Theory of Catch‐ All Extremism
Authors: Mendilow Jonathan
Published: April 2007

IT IS A TRUISM TO STATE THAT ALL AGES ARE AGES OF TRANsition, and that the clash of tradition and experiment never ceases. Nevertheless, there are periods when history seems to collapse in on itself, and the time-span of change so contracts that revolution, not only political, becomes almost a norm. Since the Industrial Revolution many writers have dealt with the ideological reaction to the predicaments of rapid social change. J. S. Mill described the English public of his day as caught between two warring camps of the ‘Men of the Past’ and the ‘Men of the Present’, those who wish to return to the certainties of an earlier age, and those who wish to hasten change in the hope of a better future. Such a division is clearly simplistic, but it expresses the sense of bifurcation in society. ‘Past’ and ‘Present’ serve in this context as omnibus terms for multi-dimensional complexities which allow ample scope for individual selection, organization and evaluation.
The Neglected (II) Kropotkin
Authors: Miller David
Published: April 2007

PETER ALEKSEYEVICH KROPOTKIN WAS BORN IN MOSCOW IN 1842, the youngest son of a noble Russian family whose origins could be traced back to the Middle Ages. He died in 1921 in a small village some forty miles to the north of that city, a radical critic of the Bolshevik regime and a symbol for all those who believed that the Bolsheviks had perverted the original aims of the Russian Revolution. In the course of his life he had spent a long period of exile in Western Europe, had been imprisoned both in Russia and in France and had achieved international celebrity in two separate fields. The first was geography, where in particular his research on the structure of the mountain ranges of Northern Asia radically changed the received views of the scientific community. The second was the European anarchist movement, in which Kropotkin played a prominent role both as a revolutionary activist and a theoretician. Indeed these two careers were not as mutually irrelevant as they might at first appear, since the most distinctive feature of Qopotkin's anarchism was the attempt he made to place anarchist ideas on a scientific foundation, borrowing especially from the then-fashionable theory of organic evolution. In the assessment that follows I shall look first at his exposition and defence of anarchist principles, then at his efforts to place those principles in a framework borrowed from the natural sciences and finally offer a critical verdict both on the principles themselves and on the attempt to use evolutionary theory to back them up.
Are We All Latin Americans Now?
Authors: Apter David E.
Published: April 2007

TAKE AWAY ITS EXOTIC AND ITS MAGIC, THE MARVELLOUS despair ofCien Años de Soledad, the Latino troubadours like Atahualpa Yupanqui who sing of peasant rebellions, love of land and patrimony, and sudden death; take away as well the tourists, the scenery, the churches, the romantic rebels and the outrageouscaudillos, and indeed the whole vast mad throng of images which foreigners hold about Latin America, and we come to the heart of the matter, one unique theme, one common denominator, or perhaps better, one refrain, or one implicit major premise about the hemisphere. It is that everything has been tried and nothing works. Or, nothing works as it should. Even that which starts well won't last. Enterprises fail unless foreign owned and operated.
Islam in Politics: The Case of Turkey
Authors: Sunar İlkay , Toprak Binnaz
Published: April 2007

ONCE IRAN HAD CALLED FOR AN ISLAMIC REVOLUTION, THERE was speculation that the message might elicit a similar response elsewhere in the Islamic world. In fact, soon after the events in Iran, a group of foreign journalists arrived in Turkey and rumour had it that they had come to report on the Islamic revolt expected in Turkey as well. The expected, however, did not take place: instead, had the journalists stayed on, what they would have witnessed was the breakdown of democraci, and the installation of authoritarian rule by the staunchest de enders of secularism, the Turkish military. Islamic politics had been instrumental in exacerbating the democratic crisis, and hence the military takeover was partially directed against the Islamic politics of the National Salvation Party (NSP) and the street politics of radical Islamic groups. Islamic politics was strong enough to figure in the equation of democratic breakdown, but far too weak to detonate an Islamic revolution.

The purpose of this essay is to look into the nature of Islamic politics in Turkey in terms of its past ventures in society, its recent involvement in party politics and its prospects for the future. Our fundamental assumption is that the specific characteristics of Islamic politics in Turkey are closely bound up with the state-dominant nature of Turkish political culture and society. More specifically, we attempt to show that changes in the nature of Islamic politics and movements, their organization, aims and strategies, have been in large part shaped by the changing structure and ideology of the state and the centralist elites.
The Neglected (III) Jacob Burckhardt ‐ Defender of Culture and Prophet of Doom
Authors: Mommsen Wolfgang J.
Published: April 2007

IN THE STRICTEST MEANING OF THE TERM, JACOB Burckhardt , the eminent historian and widely acclaimed expert on European art, cannot be considered a neglected author. Yet nor does he belong to the mainstream of European political thinking; he is to be found on the sidelines as a remarkable, but somewhat erratic, figure, representing a unique sort of extreme cultural criticism directed against modernity.
Is There a ‘Road to Serfdom’?
Authors: Barry Norman P.
Published: April 2007

A PREDOMINANT THEME OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY CLASSICAL liberal thought is the claim that piecemeal acts of intervention by government in a free economy and society will, if continued over an unspecified period of time, bring about the transformation of that society into a totalitarian regime in which all but the most trivial decisions affecting an individual are taken by the state. The crucial feature of the liberal's argument is that this process generates an outcome which was not intended by the originators of the acts of intervention: it is the method or mechanism of intervention itself which produces a state of affairs undesired by both non-statists and (at least moderate) collectivists alike. Thus, in addition to general economic and moral arguments that a classical liberal might raise against, say, a nationalized health service, he also maintains that an abridgement of the right to provide health care privately, which the collectivist does not value, must set in motion a process which culminates in the direction of medical personnel, and the prevention of the emigration of doctors by the state, to which, presumably, the moderate collectivist would himself object.
The Neglected (IV) Charles Péguy
Authors: Manent Pierre
Published: April 2007

CHARLES PÉGUY IS CERTAINLY NOT FORGOTTEN. IN DEATH, as in life, he remains a controversial figure. A man of passion, he still arouses passion in others. Even today, at least in France, a book on Péguy is almost certain to give rise to polemics. The details of his political, sentimental and religious life are scrutinized in minute detail. What is most often neglected, what is not taken seriously in this stormy celebrity, is the thinker or, if you like (Péguy would have liked), the philosopher. His views on the city and the Church, on Sophocles and on the Gospels, on the modern world and what makes it move, on men and gods, are sometimes very profound and beautiful. So many writers who are greatly inferior to him now occupy a major place in the text-books of philosophy, sociology and historiography that it is only fair to deal, even if only briefly as here, with Péguy's thought. He himself would have liked to be considered from this angle: was it not the ambition (one of the ambitions) of his life to finish a thesis on the place given to history and sociology in modern times? Although unfinished, the few hundred pages which he left are rich enough to show that he was one of the most enetrating critics of the historical and sociological points of view which dominate modern consciousness.
The 1982 Elections in Brazil
Authors: Mendes Candido
Published: April 2007

THE RESULTS OF THE BRAZILIAN ELECTIONS OF 15 NOVEMBER 1982 made irreversible the trend towards abertura in the country with the longest experience of technocratic development in the Third world.

Regarded as an almost impossible achievement by political analysts, these elections became a model of a genuine ‘decompression from the top’. The system neither lost its grip during the process nor did it back down from its purpose of an almost full return to direct elections for the executive in the Brazilian Federation, making ample use of the president's involvement in the contest.
Opening through Elections: Will the Brazilian Case Become a Paradigm?
Authors: Lamounier Bolivar
Published: April 2007

SINCE 1974, A PROCESS OF POLITICAL ‘OPENING’ HAS BEEN taking place in Brazil. But it was only after 1978, when the amnesty law was passed and exiles be an to return, that a majority of observers and academic analysts convinced them-selves that that process was real. The Brazilian regime can still be described as military-based and authoritarian, but now the so-called abertura has become meaningful enough to direct our attention to a different set of questions: why did such changes take place, contrary to most predictions, journalistic as well as academic, of the late 1960s and early 1970s? Why have elections pla ed such a decisive role in them, again contrary to most predictions? Are the fruits picked in this example of redemocratization really ripe to be enjoyed? Can the other countries subject to military-authoritarian rule in the Southern Cone equally aspire to them – that is , to orderly but yet significant steps toward an eventual demise of their authoritarian systems?
The Brazilian Political System: Trends and Perspectives
Authors: Lafer Celso
Published: April 2007

IN 1964 THE BRAZILIAN POLITICAL SYSTEM UNDERWENT A basic change. The populist republic (1946–64), which had paved the way for both a formal and an informal extension of political and economic franchises, after the success of Kubitschek's administration (1956–61) and Quadros's resignation (1961), collapsed as a result of decisional paralysis. The economic challen e of accumulation and the political challenge of social justice led, in the early 1960s during the Goulart administration, both to a fragmentation of power and to radicalization. The more demands multiplied, the more the government hesitated, feeding the anxiety of different political grou s in society. The result was a growing distrust of the politicafsystem. Distrust in turn not only prevented a coalition in support of a consistent governmental programme but also brought about an intensification of conflictual demands. This self-sustaining mechanism of decisional paralysis was interrupted by the emergence of what has been called by Juan Linz and Guuermo O'Donnell ‘a bureaucratic-authoritarian regime’.
The October 1983 Elections in Argentina
Authors: Di Tella Torcuato S.
Published: April 2007

THE ELECTIONS IN ARGENTINA HAVE BEEN A SURPRISE TO everybody. The results, contrasted with those of 1973, were the following:
The Argentine Process of Demilitarization: 1980–83
Authors: Makin Guillermo
Published: April 2007

THE FOREIGN ADVENTURISM OF THE ARGENTINE MILITARY may have made a few minds more cautious about automatically welcoming the advent of any other future military regime. This point was made more than a decade ago by Stepan in his seminal work on the military in Brazil; what he said then could have been said of most military regimes anywhere:

Whatever the future outcome, it is clear that the attraction of military rule – its presumed stability, unity, and ftvity of purpose – has been largely illusory. Even more importantly, the difficulties encountered by the highly professional army of Brazil, with its technocratic civilian allies, illustrate that there can be no apolitical solution to the problems of political development.
Democratiation in Brazil and Argentina: Some Reflections
Authors: Philip George
Published: April 2007

THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF SOUTH AMERICA COULD ALMOST be written in terms of military coups and returns to barracks. In Argentina, to take only the period since the Second world War, the military has relinquished power in 1946,1958, 1963, 1973 and 1983 (launching coups in 1955,1962,1966 and 1976). The military in Brazil, although less hyperactive than in Argentina, has relinquished power to civilians in 1945, 1955 and, incompletely so far, since 1982, while taking over government in 1954 and 1964. It seems therefore – rather paradoxically for some earlier writers on comparative politics (as was noted in the introduction) – that it is possible to speak of a military-civilian political system operating in much of South America. This features periods of military as well as civilian rule and operates largely because of a high degree of military self-confidence and the willingness of many civilians to contemplate military rule, even over a long period, with equanimity. A mere military coup, or return to barracks, need not imply a change in the political system itself. This point is not tautologous; the politica system may undergo genuine change, but only if civilian attitudes to the military (and willingness to accept military intervention) and military attitudes to civilian politics chan e fundamentally. Is there any sign that this has happened or is about to happen in the cases of Brazil and Argentina?
The Contradictions of Modern Societies
Authors: Elster Jon
Published: April 2007

MANCUR OLSON HAS WRITTEN A BOOK IN THE GRAND tradition, trying to explain how societies are undermined by their own success. In his own words, there is an ‘internal contradiction’ (p. 145) in the development of stable societies. I want to discuss Olson's views in the light of other works in the same tradition, works that also set out to explain how success tends to be self-defeating in various ways. Among the classics of social theory, I have singled out the writings of Marx, Veblen and Schumpeter. A contemporary work that suggests itself for the same kind of comparison is the recent book by Douglass North, Structure and Change in Economic History. Before I go on to compare Olson'stheory with these competing explanations, I must briefly set out the main elements of the theory itself. This must of necessity be a very simplified statement, but the later discussion will allow me to add some nuances.
The Neglected (V) Gobineau and the Illusions of Progress
Authors: Biddiss Michael
Published: April 2007

WHEN IN OCTOBER 1982 LE MONDE COMMEMORATED THE centenary of Arthur de Gobineau's death, it borrowed as headline Jean Mistler's description of him as ‘le plus grand méconnu du dix-neuvième siècle’. Despite its hyperbole, that judgment is useful in alerting us to an absorbing case partly of neglect and partly of misrepresentation, and to the circumstances under which this pioneer of Aryan racist ideology was posthumously rescued from the first of these fates only at the price of condemnation to the second. There are both personal and public reasons why Gobineau has proved so difficult for his own contemporaries and for posterity to assess. Much of the problem arises from the enigmatic complexity of the man himself: a figure (in Jean Gaulmier's phrase) ‘tantôt fascinant, tantôt insupportable’, a self-styled aristocrat, a charming yet fiercely pessimistic autodidact, an energetic novelist, poet and dramatist as well as diplomat, journalist, historian and orientalist, and someone who bore the stamp both of polymath and of charlatan. But the image has been blurred also because of the impact of wider historical experience, concerning above all the record of Franco-German mutual hostility. From whichever side of the Rhine they came, the attempts at viewing Gobineau through the gunsmoke of 1870–1 were already confusing enough even before the turmoil of 1914–18 further obscured the scene. Further misperception thrived once Nazism started to implement across France and Europe at large a vision of Teutonic racial destiny which was widely, yet wrongly, taken to reflect directly Gobineau's own ideas. The points of disjunction between those beliefs and what actually became known as ‘gobinism’ need to be recognized. Even so, that awareness is enhanced by acknowledging also that Gobineau's whole mode of thinking about race made him singularly liable to such distortion. In short, he himself had quite gratuitously created his very own hostages to intellectual fortune.
The Classical Method of Political Science, and its Relation to the Study of Contemporary Politics
Authors: Beiner Ronald
Published: April 2007

THE CONTRAST BETWEEN CLASSICAL POLITICAL SCIENCE AND its modern counterpart may help to illuminate certain serious deficiencies in the contemporar study of politics. It will wide diversity of research under the rubric of ‘contemporary political science’; nonetheless, it is possible to delineate a characteristic set of features inherent in a prevailing understanding of politics that is indeed recognizable, and is deserving of deep critical scrutiny. Futhermore, these features may be effectively exposed by a systematic contrast with the very different procedure of the classical study of politics. In particular, the latter poses major challenges to contemporary modes of political inquiry at the following critical points. First, political science must abandon claims to approximating natural science, though not necessarily ceasing to aspire to comprehensive knowledge. Second, an instrumentalist conception of political community should not be considered in any way primary or paradigmatic; the question of the nature of the association must be guided by the question of the ends for which it exists. Third, social theory operates by searching for principles of coherence, and analyses social relationships in terms of their coherence or incoherence. Fourth, the decisive basis of political science is not the distinction between fact and value, or between means and ends, but the distinction between part and whole.
The American Election: Entitlements Versus Opportunity
Authors: Mansfield Harvey C.
Published: April 2007

IT IS NO EXCEPTION TO THE CONTINGENCY OF HUMAN THINGS that events can occur as expected: this happens so as to lull US for the next surprise. ‘A good election for poll takers’, said one headline, of Reagan's lopsided victory. His 18-percentage point margin was exactly predicted by Gallup and roughly approximated by others in a ten to 25 point range of misses. Once again it was confirmed that science can give mathematical expression to our expectations in politics. But the expected result was also a welcome sign that the American polity was healthy enough to reelect a president in whom few - and those more his supporters than his opponents - could have been disappointed. A people's ability to express gratitude to its leaders is more than a measure of political stability: it is one end of political stability and when exercised is the most ennobling act of popular sovereignty.