READERS OF GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION WILL NOT BE strangers to the events of November that led to a crushing defeat for the Democrats and the first all-Republican Congress in a very long time, if for no other reason than that they have read my colleague Harvey Mansfield's account in the winter issue. There was quite a lot of conservative gloating in November and December (and why not?). There is a little less now that the Gingrich revolution has begun to face up to the two dauntingly unalterable realities of American politics: the reality of the centre and the reality of divided government.

CANADIAN POLITICAL ARITHMETIC IS A TRICKY BUSINESS. IN Canadian politics, as in Alice's Wonderland, things become ‘curiouser and curiouser’. In suggesting, on the eve of the October, 1993 Canadian federal election, that it looked like ‘the Liberals’ election to lose’, I thought I had gone out on a limb. Brian Mulroney, who by the date of his departure was regarded throughout English Canada with almost universal antipathy, had retired. With their new leader, Prime Minister Kim Campbell, at the helm, polls published at the time the election was called indicated that the ruling Conservatives were favoured by 36 per cent of leaning and decided voters, as compare to 33 per cent for the Liberals. The Tories could win, or at least deny the liberals a clear majority.

WHEN RAWLS FORMULATED HIS VIEWS ON SOCIAL JUSTICE IN the 1950s and 1960s, leading to the publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971, he based his theory on a simple but unconditional assumption, namely, that justice is the first virtue of social institutions. This assumption Rawls considers to be beyond doubt, so much so that in the very first page of his treatise he claims that ‘laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust’.

Largely as a result of Rawls's A Theory of Justice, over the last 25 years questions of social justice have dominated most debates on political theory. And while vast quantities of ink were expended over philosophical discussions on significant but detailed aspects of Rawls's theory, principally on the plausibility of his meta h sical assumptions on individuals and human psychology, it is unfortunate that not enough attention has been paid to Rawls's initial recommendation of adopting normative criteria as a tool for evaluating political institutions.

HERE I WILL SHOW THE STRANGENESS OF ALEXIS DE Tocqueville's account of the doctrine of interest rightly understood. He affirms that doctrine, but not for the sake of interest. He wishes to preserve the greatness and the misery of the Americans’ very intense self-consciousness, and to keep open the possibility of spiritual responses to that experience.

EDWARD SHILS WAS A PROLIFIC, FORMIDABLE AND unconventional sociologist. Sustained by his immense learning and extraordinary memory, and following the traditions of Max Weber and of the Chicago School, he brought other disciplines (notably European social and political thought) to bear upon his sociology. Over his long and productive lifetime he held positions in the most distinguished of universities: in England these included the LSE, Manchester and Peterhouse, Cambridge. He regularly spent about half of every year in Cambridge. Above all he was a loyal and long-serving teacher at the University of Chicago where he was distinguished service professor and had been among those who established the Committee of Social Thought. His scholarship was recognized in the USA by the invitation of the US National Council on the Humanities to give the prestigious Jefferson Lecture in 1979 and in Europe by the award of the Balzan Prize for service to general sociology in 1983. Government and Opposition has itself lost a most valued contributor and member of its Advisory Board.