SITUATIONS IN WHICH VIOLENCE IS THE RESULT OF THE USE OF massive force in international conflicts is not the primary concern of what follows. It should be kept in mind, however, that war constitutes the outer limit, quantitatively, of political violence. However, internal war, that is organized, large scale armed conflicts between groups within a political system or order, manifesting the breakdown of such an order, is part of our concern. Violence is related to the maintenance of political power, although this sort of violence is more usually spoken of as ‘force.’

THE DESTINY OF THE SO-CALLED SOCIALIST SOCIETIES OF EASTERN Europe is one of the great questions of our time. The communist counter-reformation may plunge Eastern Europe into the same kind of somnolent torpor which the original Counter-reformation imposed on Southern Europe, and from which it has not yet really recovered. The abortive Prague Spring will remain a good source of evidence for what countervailing forces are available, which could possibly save Eastern Europe from such a fate. It was a revolution of intellectuals, a fact which may perhaps have always augured ill for its final outcome, though it was a hopeful sign for the quality of its literary and scholarly accompaniment.

COMPARATIVE POLITICS IS EVERYTHING – OR IT IS NOTHING. Superficially, these appear to be the only logical positions that can be maintained when considering the relationship of comparative politics to the various areas and divisions of the discipline of political science. The now old-fashioned use of the title to indicate either a small number of country studies loosely linked by structural comparison, or a somewhat broader field of institutional comparison, whatever the pedagogic arguments of coherence or convenience, possesses neither logical boundary nor scientific integrity. Yet once that treacherous one step further is taken in the directions of functional comparison, or, further, consideration of the ‘comparative method’ itself and the distinctions between comparative politics and, say, political theory, political sociology or political analysis disappear completely.

IN THEIR ANALYSES OF TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY AND THE TECHNOlogical state contemporary Western writers reveal a wide spectrum of opinions, and this article must evidently consider some at least of these, though unfortunately none at great length. First, the anguish of Arendt: