SINCE MONTESQUIEU, WRITERS ON POLITICS HAVE BEEN aware that there might be an association of particular moral qualities and beliefs with particular political regimes. The association between virtue and republican governments, although duly recorded by students of Montesquieu's thought, has however been passed over. The disposition to participate in politics, the sense of political potency or impotence, certain traits of personality such as could be summarized in the term ‘authoritarian personality’, etc., have all been studied by theorists of democracy. Virtue, or public spirit or civility, has been neglected.

I would like to take up Montesquieu's theme once more. I wish to enquire into the place of virtue or what I call civility in the liberal democratic order, which Montesquieu referred to as the republican type of government. Latterly the term ‘civil society’ has come to be used very loosely as equivalent to ‘liberal democratic society’. They are not entirely the same and the difference between them is significant. In civility lies the difference between a well-ordered and a disordered liberal democracy.

THE POLITICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL MAP OF EUROPE CHANGED dramatically during 1989 and 1990. Recent developments have totally demolished the old rules and beliefs that have guided relations between nations. Although some scholars have even argued about the final victory of liberalism, contemporary international relations are nevertheless far from unproblematic. The internal development of former European socialist societies is not yet complete and the North-South conflict seems to be intensifying. Relations between small and big nations still often threaten stability in the contemporary world.

A favourite American cliché insists that everybody and everything has a price. For the purposes of this letter, that turns out to be rather too true. During the summer and into the autumn of 1990, the United States was consumed with three kinds of prices: the price of art, the Pryce of art and the price of oil which may also be the price of war.

OF ALL THE REMAINING COMMUNIST PARTY STATES THE Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) would appear to have the most to fear from the 1989 democratic revolutions that swept Eastern Europe. The regime of Kim I1 Sung remains unmoved and unreformed, but is certainly not unconcerned about the events that have taken place among its former socialist bloc allies. To an outside observer the Pyongyang regime gives the impression of being almost frozen in time, with no real progress having taken place in either the economic or political spheres over the last twenty years. When the Ceauaescu regime in Romania crumbled amid bloodshed in the closing days of the 1980s, many analysts’ attention turned in great expectation to the autocratic regime of the world's longest-serving political leader. The epitaph of the Kim regime was being prepared in earnest. Although the last twelve months have hardly been reassuring for the Kim Regime, communist party rule has been maintained and Kim's personal standing inside North Korea remains intact.

IN RECENT YEARS QUESTIONS ABOUT THE EXTENT AND nature of gender differences in political participation have proved controversial. Within the literature we can identify three main perspectives. The traditional view, common in the 1950s and 1960s, was that women tended to be less involved and interested in most conventional forms of political life, whether in terms of elected office, party membership, interest group activity, or campaign work, and, to a lesser extent, in voting. The paucity of women in parliamentary elites therefore seemed consistent with their general lack of interest in political life. Debates about the causes of the participation gap tended to revolve around the relative importance of gender differences in structural life-styles (domestic constraints, socio-economic resources, and organizational affiliations) and/or political attitudes (sex role socialization, political efficacy and confidence). The traditional perspective may have become less popular but it continues to receive support from some recent studies.

THE QUESTION ‘WHO WON THE COLD WAR?’ IS STILL BEING debated. In a way it is certainly right to say that communism is collapsing and that Western capitalism has won the cold war. The Soviet Union (I shall not analyse here the situation in other socialist countries) has in fact recognised the complete failure of its economic system. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) has lost ground during the relatively free elections in various Soviet republics, etc.

Yet we have to take into account that the cold war was largely a war of words, a war of ideas, and in some respects the Soviet Union has done well in the global ideological contest. For a country with a scarcity of food and most elementary consumer goods and with an extensive past record of repression and direct terror it has been extremely successful in establishing its image as a stable and peace-loving partner in the international arena, as a society which is capable of producing more humane, caring, intellectual and trustworthy leaders than most other countries. It is a remarkable achievement and it is even more remarkable that this ideological success has emerged from the ruins of the dull and rigid Brezhnevist ideological machinery.

THE 1990 MAY DAY PARADE IN MOSCOW'S RED SQUARE provided an extraordinary spectacle of the growing dilemma faced by the Soviet leadership. Mikhail Gorbachev, flanked by members of the Politburo, stood atop the Lenin Mausoleum while below an angry crowd of demonstrators booed, jeered and defiantly waved placards and portraits of opposition politicians. It was an historic occasion, reminiscent of the last days of the CeauSescu regime in Romania. Not since Lenin's day had there been a public demonstration of this kind in Red Square. This was the first time since the Bolshevik Party appropriated the International Labour holiday to celebrate its own power that the May Day parade had been disrupted. The symbolic significance was all too apparent: the key event in the calendar of Soviet political ritual had been visibly wrecked, the communist leadership had appeared weak and isolated, and even at the sacred heartland of Lenin's shrine Gorbachev's authority was being challenged and undermined by an angry Soviet public. From being a symbol of workers’ solidarity and Soviet military might, May Day had become further testimony to the crisis of legitimacy in the Soviet regime.