THE LABOUR PARTY WAS DECISIVELY DEFEATED AT THE 1979 general election. The Conservatives not only won 70 more seats than Labour but its lead of 6.9% was considerably bigger than that of Harold Macmdlan in 1959, while the swing away from Labour to Tory was the largest since 1945. What is even more depressing is that the Labour share of the poll was its lowest since 1931.

POLITICAL SCIENTISTS HAVE ARGUED AND WRITTEN AT LENGTH on theories of integration and their application to the European Communities, in particular whether its development sùpports the tenets of functionalism, neo-functionalism or inter-governmentalism, and how far each of these theories has lain behind the Community's progress. Whatever views may be held on this, one feature of the European Communities is undeniable and that is its basis of parliamentary democracy. In fact, a system of government involving responsibility to a parliament elected by direct universal suffrage, is perhaps the only indispensable criterion for membership of the European Communities. Negotiations may take place to cope with economic, social or demographic diffiulties, often very considerable in countries applying for membership, but if the applicant is not a parliamentary democracy, as this term is understood in Western Europe, then in practice negotiations cannot even begin. This is illustrated by the attitudes which have been adopted by all the Communities’ institutions and member-governments towards the applications of Greece, Spain and Portugal first to become associated with and later to join as full members. These applications were only considered after dictatorships in each of the countries concerned had ended.

WE HAVE ENTERED UPON A NEW STAGE IN POLITICAL SCIENCE as well as in the study of world affairs, the stage of large-scale computer-based world models. These models became practicable because of three changes. First, thanks to the United Nations and many national governments, many more better quality statistical data have now become available. Secondly, because of the techniques of sampling and of interviewing, we now can have survey data from very many countries and groups of people. These survey data cover many different aspects of people's views and attitudes, or of their experiences, or of their reports of what they thought they did. We can then compare the number of people who say they have written a letter with the number of letters the post office says they sent or got; thus we can, as it were, cross-examine the statistical data critically. Thirdly, we now have large computers which can store, recall, tabulate and analyze large amounts of data, if somebody works out a suitable programme for them. The computers can then tirelessly and patiently do work in minutes which individuals could not have achieved in a lifetime. Thanks to these advances in the last twenty or thirty years–the greater availability of statistics, survey and sampling techniques, and computers–we now have world models.

ALTHOUGH THE SYNCHRONIZATION OF ECONOMIC FLUCTUations with the electoral cycle often preoccupies political leaders, the real force of political influence on macroeconomic performance comes in the determination of economic priorities. Here the ideology and platform of the political party in power dominate. Just as the electoral calendar helps set the timing of policy, so the ideology of political leaders shapes the substance of economic policy.

MUCH OF THE DEBATE ON THE FUTURE OF THE EUROPEAN Parliament has focused on two questions: how far it will or can develop along the lines familiar from national parliamentary experience; and whether it will be able to insert itself effectively into the decision-making processes of the European Communities (EC). The evolution of the Parliament is well summarized in the paper by Hans Nord and John Taylor, as are the constitutional powers and political levereage the might contribute to an enhanced role in the future. A wealth of other studies recently published further amplify the constraints on the Parliament and the opportunities available to it for the gradual extension of its functions. Their conclusions range from the view that Parliament is so heavily circumscribed as to have little scope for effectiveness to the belief that Parliament will gradually enlarge its area of influence, until in practice it has gained a significant political role. Some commentators regard constitutional change, with a formal extension of parliamentary powers, as a necessary condition of an enhanced role, while others anticipate that constitutional change is more likely to take place only to recognise de iure an actual increase in the political authority of the Parliament.

THE TRANSITION FROM DICTATORSHIP TO DEMOCRACY IN Spain has been a fascinating experience ever since the Autumn of 1976, when the Ley de Reforma Politica (Law on Political Reform) was passed through the Francoist Cortes and later through a national Referendum. Setting aside the political virtuosity of the different players involved in this dramatic experiment, three aspects of the transition have been particularly important from the point of view of a sociological analysis of Spanish politics: first of all, the ideological moderation of the electorate, which would fulfil an essential prerequisite of democratic stability; secondly, the continuities with past political cleavages between Left and Right, in spite of a parenthesis of four decades of dictatorship; finally, the threat to the new democracy coming from the political violence of Basque separatists and from the activities of Francoist groups which are also active within the army. These three dimensions can be re-examined in the light of the results of the General Election of 1 March 1979, the first constitutional general election in Spain since 1936 and the second election since the death of Franco.

‘THE CLAIM WHICH IS BEING MADE IS THAT THE LIBERALIZATION is now becoming a generic and indeed a crucial phenomenon, as the Revolution had been; that, for good and in the main obvious reasons, it is replacing the earlier myth as a central political preoccupation or category; and that its basic assumptions are not merely more pertinent to our time, but probably also rather sounder by any criterion and at all times’. So wrote Ernest Gelher in a recent article destined in my view to initiate a vast debate.

THE MEDIA ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING - THAT IS FOR certain - but of what? They appear at frrst to be nothing in themselves, merely a facility of communication. They facilitate communication among a people, especially among a large people, and thus make that people more of a people, a whole that is conscious of itself and that, being so, can move together. We call a people of this sort a democratic people, or simply a democracy, implying that the communication among a people which makes possible a whole people is, or substitutes for, a form of government. As the media facilitate communication especially among a large people, they especially facilitate modern democracy, which, as opposed to ancient democracy, is the democracy of a large people.

THE JUNE 1979 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS MARK A VERY IMPORTant date, not only for the members of the European Community, but also for all the European countries, since for the first time, almost simultaneously, the representatives to the parliamentary Assembly of the Community were chosen democratically in the nine countries.

CENTRAL TO THE STUDY OF DEMOCRATIC POLITICS IS THE IDEA of popular control over the activities of elites. More specifically, how can the preferences of citizens be aggregated into a political choice for a government policy or government personnel? Popular control, the effects of citizen participation in political life, is the basis of a major value orientation in the discipline: the notion of participant democracy. The degree of citizen participation becomes the key to the nature of democracry in a society : the more participation, the more democratic the political life of a country becomes. Political participation may take a variety of forms, e.g., running for office, holding office,voting, soliciting votes, and campaigning for, or contributing funds to, I the party of one's choice. However, voting is the most emphasized aspect of citizen participation, since it is the only form of active participation many engage in. The limitations placed on voting as a mechanism for popular control over political choices are well documented. Voters do not choose when to vote, nor the agenda. They have minimal input into the selection of candidates and the choice of issues which divide the parties at elections. Public participation in the selection and resolution of important policy issues between elections is severely restricted.

IT IS A GREAT HONOUR TO PROVOKE NOT ONE BUT TWO sustained reactions from Raymond Aron, and I can only hope that his prediction of the initiation of a vaste débat concerning this issue will indeed be fulfilled. For my own part, I have few if any serious disagreements with what he says in his article, notwithstanding the fact that it has the form of a critical examination of my own position. The differences are matters of stress, interpretation and perhaps temperament, rather than genuine disagreements of fact or argument.

IN THIS AND SUBSEQUENT ISSUES IT IS PROPOSED TO PURSUE A common theme under a general title: Dependent Africa?. The question mark is needed to qualify the assumption. The assumption is based on a loose array of arguments which are often rehearsed and which run, very roughly, as follows.

No sooner, it seems, has an end to colonialism been proclaimed than it appears in other forms. Imperium expellas furca tamen usque recurret? So many now argue in relation particularly to Africa, the most colonial of continents. The ghosts of the Berlin Conference, it is said, must surely be returning to watch the re-enactment of their play. Is Africa not being repartitioned - parcelled out once again by forces external to the continent? Even the old colonial dominance once exercised by European powers now looks as if it has been given a new framework, in a post-independence setting, through treaty arrangements.

TWO QUESTIONS ARISE WHEN CONSIDERING THE CHANGES that might be brought about by direct elections and by developments in the new European Parliament. One concerns institutionalized cooperation between political parties. To what extent can the three existing European party federations – Socialist, Christian Democrat, Liberal – be considered as a step towards the formation of genuine European political parties? Are they anything more than alignments of traditional parties coordinating their action at European level? The other question is related to parties or groups which have not until now created close-knit ad hoc structures. A special case is that of the Communist parties, which have not organized specific links at Communit level. Another problem is raised by non-traditional parties and groups that have in most cases little or no parlia mentary representation at either national or European level. Will some of them take advantage of the European sphere of action to make more impression than they have been able to do at domestic level, in cooperation with similarly oriented partners in other member countries?

THIS ESSAY CONSISTS OF A COLLECTION OF ARGUMENTS WHICH have been more fully developed elsewhere but are presented here in rather summary form in order to point towards a fundamental problem concerning the present status of political theory in the discipline of political science. This problem is not easily defined; but the difficulty recalls Alfred Cobban's complaint twenty-five years ago that political theory had become disen aged Lom ‘political facts’ and ‘political practice’ and transformed into an ‘academic discipline’. My concern is with the ‘philosophization’ of political theory. By this I do not mean simply that political theory is not relevant to politics or has become detached from actual political issues – although this is probably quite true – but that it has tended to become a residue of arguments in academic philosophy. The bios theoretikos and the bios philosophikos have become indistinguishable.

IT IS NOW COMMON (AND QUITE CORRECT) TO PRAISE ANTONIO Gramsci as the first Marxist theorist to understand that the revolution in Western Europe must deviate sharply from the strategic path taken by the Bolsheviks in Russia. With characteristic disdain for old and rigid formulae, he pointed to the crucial differences between advanced capitalist countries and the Russian Empire of 1917, and he attempted in his prison notebooks (Quaderni) to develop criteria of orientation and action appropriate to modern circumstances. What he offered was a new What is to be done? for the developed West, a fundamental reassessment and revision of the accepted Marxist approach to revolution. The nature of this enterprise has prompted many – critics and admirers alike – to lay emphasis on the tie between Gramsci and Togliatti-ism. Gramsci put forward ideas, it is claimed, whose logic is manifest in the ‘Italian (read “constitutional”, “parliamentary”, “democratic”, “pacific”) road to socialism’. It is now casually assumed in many circles that he was the ideological progenitor of what has come to be known as Eurocommunism, the increasingly influential body of doctrines that purports to marry liberalism and Marxism. In the following pages, this assumption, and other related ones, will be closely examined and evaluated.

EVENTS CONSTANTLY DRAW ATTENTION TO APPARENT IDEOlogical differences among the African states. Yet the precise nature of these differences is not always easy to discern, and still less obvious is the degree to which particular policies, internal or external, are grounded in some underlying articles of political faith. There are, however, occasions when the connexion is explicitly made, notably when there is a change of regime or a constitutional consolidation. A number of African countries have recently provided themselves with new constitutions. Unless one takes the view that this is pure ‘window-dressing’, the activity merits the attention not merely of the constitutional lawyer for whom constitutions are his daily bread but also of the political scientist who has other fish to fry. I propose therefore to look at four of the African countries: Madagascar and Algeria, where new constitutions have been in operation from 1976, and Nigeria and Ghana, where new constitutions are due to come into force in the second half of 1979. In the case of Ghana, I shall be referring to a draft still under consideration but also to an earlier Constitution, that of 1969. Although it was abrogated in 1972, when the military reintervened, many of its provisions and its underlying philosophy are being reasserted in the 1979 draft. My comments are concentrated on three matters: i) the basic character of the constitution; ii) the provisions relating to parties; iii) control over those in authority.

In June 1979, 110,968,000 citizens of the nine European Community countries voted to select representatives to the European Parliament - the fvst directlyelected supranational parliament in history.

Representatives from nine nations sit together as members of transnational party federations that have, in varying degrees, worked out joint political programmes. As a democratically elected body, the new European Parliament possesses a political legitimacy that the former, appointed, Parliament never had. By itself, this does not automatically give it a more influential role in decision-making at the European level, but it certainly strengthens the Parliament's potential to do so.