THE VAGUE AND CONTRADICTORY FORMULA OF ‘DEMOCRATIC centralism’ has never been understood as a static device independent of historical circumstances. Though it has been dogmatized, despite the opposition of other non-revisionist tendencies in the international labour movement such as Rosa Luxemburg and the Worker's Opposition in Russia during the 9th Party Congress in 1920, the formula always had to be reinterpreted according to the needs of different phases of class struggle. In every phase of development, the relation between the components ‘democracy‘ and ‘centralism‘ has been defined in a different way.3 Since the 3rd Party Congress centralism was considered to be the basic organizational principle of the party, whereas democracy had to be adapted to the changing circumstances and to the political conditions of different countries. Certainly Lenin was right in arguing in his pamphlet Chto delat (1902) that, under the circumstances of tsarist autocratic rule, ‘democratism’ within the party would have been ‘an empty and dangerous game’. Also the Menshevik leaders - in spite of their controversies with Lenin - still admitted at that time that a centralized and disciplined party organization was of the highest importance. Thus Schapiro is probably right when he sees little difference between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks on the question of democratic centralism at the time of the conflict in Iskra.

IN SPITE OF ALL THAT HAS HAPPENED, WITHIN BRITAIN AND WITHOUT, since Bagehot's death in 1877, the British political world still speaks, writes and teaches in Bagehot's terms, Some reassessments of his ideas did of course take place, the most searching of which probably arose as a result of the advent of socialism. Its impact on the politics of Britain, and of the world, needed to be considered. Nevertheless, though we might have grasped what changes had taken place, and though we might have seen how Bagehot's vision needed to be adjurtedg to these new realities, yet, on the whole it seemed that these changes did not affect the essential aspects of that vision. We were still bounded by the classic British parliamentary system for which Bagehot is the best interpreter.

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?

INDIVIDUAL DECISIONS ARE TAKEN BY EACH INDIVIDUAL FOR HIMSELF (regardless of whether he is inner- or other-directed). Group decisions imply that decisions are taken by a ‘concrete’ group, i.e. a face-to-face interacting number of individuals which may thus be said to share (partake) such decisions. Collective decisions are hardly amenable to a precise definition; but they are generally understood to mean decisions taken by the ‘many’. We then have collectivized decisions. Collective and collectivized decisions may be said to share the property of not being, in any meaningful sense, individual decisions. Even so, collectivized decisions are very different from all the others. Individual, group, and collective decisions all make reference to an actor, to who makes the decision. Collectivized decisions are, instead, decisions that apply to, and are enforced upon, a collectivity regardless of whether they are taken by the one, the few, or the many. The defining criterion no longer is who makes the decision, but its scope: whoever does the deciding decides or all.

EXTERNAL POLICY HAS HAD QUITE A LOT TO DO WITH THE establishment of the Communities. The cold war was in fill1 swing when the first of them, the European Coal and Steel Community, came into operation in 1952. The projected European Defence Community was an attempt to find a European response to the Soviet military threat which was the obsession of the early 1950s. A few years later, the trouble in which the European countries found themselves - over oil afier the Suez crisis, at the end of 1956, undoubtedly served to speed up the negotiation and conclusion of the Treaties of Rome. However, this political background did not affect the actual content of the Common Market Treaty, which as regards external relations is quite on traditional lines. It keeps the assertion of the Community's external identity and responsibilities very definitely subordinated to its internal development, that is, to the achievement of economic integration.

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.

AT THE TIME OF WRITING (APRIL I975), THE REFERENDUM ON WHETHER or not Britain should stay in the European Communities is imminent. Originally is seemed as if the Referendum was going to be mainly about whether the terms of membership, renegotiated by the British government in fulfilment of its election pledge, were acceptable or not. However, more and more the actual terms, agreed after prolonged discussions and considerable heart-searching on all sides, seem to be fadin into the background and the central issue is revolving around the question of sovereignty and whether or not British membership of the Communities involves Britain in an unacceptable loss of it.

EDITING A NEWSPAPER IS AS HARD AS EVER IT WAS, IT STILL CALLS FOR total dedication. Indeed the responsibilities grow, and as they grow they change, and have to be exercised in a society which is itself changing with disconcerting rapidity. It is, for instance, only in recent years that the dedicated life has ceased to be admirable and heroic and has come to be regarded as a neurotic distortion. Those in all trades and professions whose jobs compel them to work long and unsocial hours expect a high financial bonus.

PARTY POLITICS UNDER THE FIFZH REPUBLIC HAVE BEEN COMPLEX AND confused. New parties such as the Independent Republicans and the Centre Démocrate have appeared, and old ones such as the MRP and the CNIP-two of the great pivotal parties of the Fourth Republic - have disappeared as national forces. The Gaullists have grown, the communists have stagnated, the radicals have declined, and the socialists have experienced dramatically changing fortunes. The observer will be bewildered by the appearance and disappearance of party coalitions, by the political dissensions within the parties, by the bitter squabbles between parties which are in nominal alliance, and by the Quixotic waverings of certain party leaders - veritable weathercocks susceptible to the slightest political draught.

THE RESULT OF THE FEDERAL ELECTION OF NOVEMBER I972 APPEARED to many as a turning point in the post-war history of the German Social Democratic Party. For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic, the SPD. was the largest party winning 45.9 per cent of the list votes (230 seats in the Bundestag) to the CDU/CSU's 44.8 per cent (225 seats). In 1957 the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union had enjoyed a lead of 18.4 per cent over the SPD. This lead was steadily whittled away after the party adopted the moderate Bad Godesberg Programme in 1959. The SPD gained 4.4 per cent in 1961,3. 1 per cent in 1965, 3.4 per cent in 1969 and 3.2 per cent in 1972

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.

AS A WAY OF REACHING IMPORTANT POLITICAL DECISIONS, THE referendum is usually regarded as a clumsy and unsatisfactory instrument and quite unimportant as a contribution to political democracy. Yet widespread demands for more participation ‘by the people’ have brought the referendum into new-found favour. Interest has been rekindled too by its application to the issue of membership of the European Community, with the clear possibility of directly comparing the referenda in the four countries involved. This new interest in the referendum comes at a time when many party systems, the traditional supports of a purely parliamentary democracy, appear to be in disarray, and there are signs of increasing volatility within electorates which can foreshadow basic realignments in party systems. Questions now are naturally being raised about the future ordering of democratic politics, and for this reason it seems justifiable to focus an examination of the referendum especially on the problem of political change.

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.

‘INFLATION IS ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE A MONETARY PHENOMENON resulting from and accompanied by a rise in the quantity of money relative to output.’ ‘We face a new inflationary problem. Its origins are social and political, not economic or monetary.’ These two quotations summarize briefly, but well, the two most widely held yet sharply conflicting views on the causes of inflation. Which view is correct? Is it possible, perhaps, that.in a paradoxical sense both are? These are the central questions which are addressed in this paper. First an analytical framework is presented within which it is possible to pose the major relevant questions about the causes of inflation, concentrating articularly on the possible interactions between political, soci af and economic factors. That fiamework is then used to present the two most commonly advanced and yet sharply distinct views about the causes of inflation and, by implication, what would have to be done to stop it. These two views are then evaluated on the basis of the empirical evidence. This evaluation is more impressionistic and historical than econometric and technical though the two approaches do in fact tell the same story. Finally, the policy implications which follow from the analysis are examined. This policy evaluation is conducted in broad political, rather than narrowly technical, economic terms.

ONE CONTINUING CHARACTERISTIC OF GERMAN POLITICAL STYLE IS A ‘politics of fear’ which is propagated by both Left and Right. The Extra Parliamentary Opposition's anxieties about the neo-fascist potential in the political system are complemented by the campaign of the Springer press against totalitarian extremists of the Left. Fear is of course not necessarily unfounded in a regime which at its foundation was regarded as only ‘provisional’ and which has had every reason to fear its enemies after its experience of reactionary conservatism and Nazism and now of developments in the German Democratic Republic. The Federal Republic has been under considerable pressure since its inception to protect itself more successfully than its Weimar predecessor against its enemies. Unfortunately a ‘militant democracy’ can easily become an illiberal democracy, more concerned with its own stability than with political development.

MEMBERSHIP OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY INVOLVES A TRANSFER OF some powers of law-making, on a range of economic and social matters, from national authorities to the Council of Ministers and the Commission. In constitutional terms this implies a limitation of sovereignty on the part of the individual member states; but to what extent does it represent a loss of political sovereignty?

There are several considerations, starting with the abstractness and relativity of the concept of sovereignty itself in relation to the interdependence of groups of states in the post-war world. Membership of any international organization implies some degree of formal constraint which is accepted as a means of achieving a desired goal. Admittedly the European Community has established a unique juridical plane, but governments of the member states assess membership as a means of enhancing their national economic and political capabilities.

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.

AN ANONYMOUS COMMENTATOR ON THE GREEK POLITICAL SCENE predicted in 1970 that it was unlikely that the Greeks, even if resentful of the Colonels' 'unta, would ‘respond widely to their presently exiled (self- or otherwise) erstwhile political leaders’ and concluded that 'the self-exiled Karamanlis, with his protracted silences, had lost much of his credit with his followers’. He was by no means alone in writing off the old politicians in general, and Constantine Karamanlis in particular, as a serious factor in the Greek political equation. But when the Greek military regime collapsed in July 1974 in the wake of President Makarios's overthrow in Cyprus and the subsequent Turkish invasion, President Phaidon Gizikis had no other choice than to summon the 67-year-old Constantine Karamanlis to clear up the mess created by seven years of military government. Karamanlis, far from being a spent force, returned to a welcome verging on delirium and looks set fair for another long term as Prime Minister and most likely, once the new constitution has been enacted, as President of Greece.

IBN KHALDUN, LIKE EMILE DURKHEIM, IS PRIMARILY A THEORIST OF social cohesion. His central problem is - what is it that keeps men together in society? What is it that leads them to idendy with a sacid group, to accept and observe its norms, to subordinate their own individual interests to it, in some measure to accept the authority of its leaders, to think its thoughts and to internalize its aims? This is a question which sociologists, moralists and political osophers share. One of the interesting traits of Ibn Khaldun owever is the extent to which he is a sociologist rather than a moralist: modern sociologists may preach Wertfreiheit, he ractised it. Even when, as a kind of Maghrebin Machiavelli, he offers advice to princes, it is basically technical advice on points of detail, or on the wisdom of knowing things for what they are: but when it comes to the basic features of the social system, he indulges in no preaching. No advice is offered to the social cosmos as to how it should comport itself. Things are as they are. The thinker's job is to understand them, not to change them. Marx's contrary opinion would have astonished Ibn Khaldun. In this sense, Ibn Khaldun is more positivistic than Durkheim, whose thought is far more often at the service of values and of the concern with social renovation.

ON 11 MAY 1974 FATHER MUGICA, A LEADING SPOKESMAN OF THE Movement of Priests for the Third World (MPTW) and a pro- Peronist, was machine-gunned to death as he left his church in a working-class neighbourhood after celebrating mass. Once again the Catholic Church in Argentina called for peace and understanding as the proper path for Argentines, and the MPTW issued a long statement condemning the use of violence. Nevertheless, the common pleas by the two factions of the Church in Argentina have had little visible effect in stopping the violence through which Argentina is now suffering. In order to understand how the political and doctrinal differences from within the Church in Argentina have influenced in the past and will continue to influence the political developments in Argentina it is first necessary to look at the background of the problem.