REPRESENTATIVES ARE RARELY REPRESENTATIVE OF THOSE THEY represent. The most widely bruited cause of this paradox is the difference in social class; almost every study of legislators in Western democracies shows that they come from more well-todo backgrounds, are drawn from more prestigious and intellectually satisfying occupations, and are much better educated than their electors. Such contrasts alone would make for a formidable divide between representatives and the represented; but more significant than these external signs is the psychological gulf between politicians and ordinary citizens. For a few, politics consumes the greater part of their lives; for the many, politics is a matter taking up little time and absorbing little emotional energy. The belief systems of the politically active few will usually be complex and highly articulated; of the passive many, shallow and indistinct.

BEFORE WE CAN BEGIN TO EXAMINE THE PROSPECTS FOR Europe's future, we must acknowledge that, for three years now, the European Community (or rather, the European Union) has been in a state of latent, but nonetheless profound, crisis. The problems surrounding the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty revealed this crisis but its roots go much deeper. We have all experienced its manifestations: 1) an economic and social crisis, in the form of the currency upheavals of 1992–93 and the rise in unemployment; 2) a political crisis, following the failures of the European Union in the former Yugoslavia and its complete absence from the scene in Rwanda; 3) an institutional crisis, given the uncertainties posed by the prospect of an enlarged (‘wider’) Europe for the present effective working of the Community, and even for its future in the absence of a clear political will.

MANY COMMENTATORS HAVE VIEWED THE CITIZEN'S CHARTER programme as a cynical exercise, having little to do with either the political participation one associates with citizenship or the establishment of a general bill of rights in the manner of the great Charters of the past. Although these criticisms possess some force, they fail to recognize that a distinctive conception of citizenship and rights underlies the initiative. In section one, we give an outline of this view of the citizen and trace its origins in the New Right critique of the social-democratic theory that predominated during the post-war period. This exercise forms a necessary preliminary both for understanding the objectives of the policy, the task of section two, and for assessing its coherence and plausibility, the aim of section three. We shall conclude that the scheme fails because it either substitutes the market for the state where it is inappropriate or omits to do so where it might provejustified. In these respects, the combination of politics and markets from the mixed-economy perspective of the social democratic conception of citizenship may well be superior.

IN MY GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION/LEONARD SCHAPIRO lecture in 1993 I attempted an incomplete analysis of international economic relations after the end of the cold war, in particular the unexpected tensions and difficulties. The end of superpower confrontation had not only removed one incentive for Western countries to settle their economic disputes. It had also lowered the priority given to security issues, where national governments were in control, and had exposed their dwindling ability to take economic decisions, because of the extent of the interdependence which was the price paid for their prosperity. I could not think of a single area of domestic policy immune from international influence. Professor Susan Strange has developed a more trenchant analysis of this trend in her Government and Opposition/Leonard Schapiro lecture this year.

RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY IS STILL IN A STATE OF FLUX. LIKE the other former republics of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation seeks to come to terms with being an independent state needing to define its national interests and foreign and security policy objectives.

The principal element in the new frame of reference for Moscow is the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union itself. For forty years, most of the territories controlled by Moscow were adjacent to territories protected by the United States, or else to China. The Russian Federation is now virtually surrounded by former Soviet republics, all with deep political, social and economic problems, and some of which are highly unstable and subject to violent civil conflicts. The territory of the Russian Federation itself, about 75 per cent of the territory of the former USSR with about 60 per cent of its population, is still not properly defined, given that significant sections of the borders are purely notional, and the degree of control that Moscow can exercise over the entire Federation is uncertain.