THE REFERENDUM PROVED THAT THE BRITISH PEOPLE DID NOT WANT to leave the Community. But neither the government's presentation of its case nor the people's response to the campaign indicated any demand for changes in the Community, other than a loosening of some of its rules and a strengthening of the intergovernmental aspect at the expense of the supranational. Yet M Ortoli called the referendum result a ‘point of departure’ for the Community; the French are interested in resuming progress towards monetary union; the Germans are talking of more political integration; and on the continent there are high hopes of ‘European progress’ following the Tindemans report on European Union. Are we, then, heading for another great clash between static British and dynamic continentals?

ANALYSTS OF THE ISRAELI POLITICAL SYSTEM HAVE COMMONLY attributed the stability of the polity to factors closely associated with the role played by the various Israeli parties in the state's economic and social life, and/or to the existence of a dominant, institutionalized state-building party. The consociational approach ought to help to clarify those factors which have maintained the stability of the coalition system which has governed the state of Israel since its establishment in 1948 and whose roots may be traced back as far as 1933 and even earlier.

The consociational model and the theory of elite accommodation have been elaborated in an effort to explain the maintenance of continuing political stability in what at first glance would appear to be societies deeply divided along social, economic, ethnic, religious and ideological lines. Political stability in fragmented societies from this standpoint rests on the overarching commitment of the political elites to the preservation and maintenance of the system and their readiness to cooperate to this end.

A DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTIC OF BOTH THE AMERICAN CIVIL Liberties Union and the National Council for Civil Liberties (hereafter ACLU and NCCL) is their attempt to be comprehensive in coverage. Both organizations are concerned with spectrums of civil liberties questions and civil rights issues at different levels of discourse and practice. These may range from the promotion and protection of freedom of speech and assembly as fundamental rights to their particularist application in regard to demonstrators and demonstrations, from insuring due process of law to seeking equality before the law, from advocating citizens' rights for more information from government to protecting their rights to privacy. They may also be involved in issues that are not concerned with civil liberties, a priori, but have implications for civil liberties. On any given question, there may be other civil liberties spokesmen with whom they may cooperate, compete or confront. In carrying out their brief both the ACLU and the NCCL engage in public campaigns, litigation, lobbying, case work, direct representations, educational and research activities.

AMBIGUITIES OF MEANING ARISE IN ALMOST ANY DISCUSSION OF comparative politics. In talk about the political responsibility of public officials it seems even harder than usual to be sure that one is not slipping from one meaning of responsibility to another oneself, harder yet to be sure that others are talkin about the same thing. Responsibility is a term used in politics, philosophy and law, and though there may be links between, for example, the debate about free will and individual responsibility and certain legal concepts, the philosophers' and the lawyers' discourse is quite different. The study of politics, for its part, involves many disciplines. Here, among other things, we may find ourselves concerned with the broad ideological and constitutional principles upon which the political system rests, with an institutional examination of the machinery of government, with the laws that regulate administrative practice, with the beliefs and behaviour patterns of administrators, and with broader philosophical questions about the nature of ‘good’ government. Given these different approaches, the word responsibility is bound to be used in a variety of senses and, within each, because our vocabulary is not legislated for us, there are bound to be shades of meaning that vary with the user.

FOR CONVENIENCE, I HAVE CHOSEN THE CONCEPT ‘SCIENCE’, ALTHOUGH the phrase ‘science policy’ would have expressed more clearly the relationship between scientific activity and its political causes and effects. The term ‘science’ is generally taken as free of any axiological or ontological value. The ‘liberal’ tradition assigns it an objective and neutral character, a point of view defended for instance by Karl Popper and Michael Polanyi whose search for truth and scientific work is situated above the political or ideological planes. Marxist ideology, however, places science on the level of beliefs, thus perpetuating 19th century ‘scientism’ and the vast positivist movement which, in a teleological way, bases the hope of a solution to all human problems on the development of science. ‘Objective Science’, ‘Scientism’, ‘Scientific Socialism’ are brand labels. But in all political systems, the combination of ideologies and of the resources created through scientific research confers a symbolic value upon science: that of the final means by which humanity will be saved or which will trigger off the ultimate catastrophe.