Since the separate independence of Senegal in June 1960, after the breakup of the Mali Federation, organized political opposition in Senegal has not been able to maintain the position which it enjoyed before independence. The failure of the opposition can be explained only in part by reference to the repressive measures adopted by the government over this period; it should also be seen as a result of the internal weaknesses of the opposition itself. The purpose of this article is to outline the various conditions which have enabled the governing party, the Union Progressiste Sénégalaise (UPS) of M. Leopold Sédar Senghor, to remain in power until the present time, despite its own lack of strict internal discipline or general sense of purpose.

We may assume that the present institutional system of the European Communities is only one stage in the long and arduous development of a European constitution. Looked at half a century hence, the trials and errors of the Coal and Steel Community; the abortive projects for a defence community and a political community; the successes and limitations of EEC and Euratom; and the vain search of the six pioneer countries for a formula for political union will appear as the first hesitant but sigruficant steps towards a complete federal system. Limited though the existing Communities are to economic and social affairs, they have now passed a point where their economies are inextricably linked, and where, although progress to more complete political unity is not automatic it is, in the long run, inevitable.

There is a standing temptation, at least in Britain and the United States, to equate ‘opposition’ with ‘alternative government’. Politics is seen as something like cricket, one team batting, another fielding. When the last batsman is out, the other side is ready immediately to take its place. This preoccupation tends to prevent English students of politics from recognizing the many forms that opposition may take in countries where the game of politics is played according to different rules. Consequently, they often fail to understand other political systems. One such system exists no farther away than the other side of the English Channel. Only fitfully and intermittently has France ever possessed an alternative government, ready to take over smoothly from the one in power. Changes of government have usually been either reshuffles within coalitions—plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose—or complete changes of regime. When the regimes become more authoritarian opposition manifests itself in other ways. This article seeks to show that in the first seven years of the Fifth Republic the Conseil d’État has played an opposition role. Such a possibility becomes more credible against the background of history.

When Castro addressed a mass rally in Havana on the thirteenth anniversary of his unsuccessful attempt to storm the Moncada barracks, he referred with some feeling to what he called the ‘traditional communist parties’ of Latin America, attacking them for opposing his strategy of armed struggle which he claimed was the only correct way to seize power. In doing this Castro underlined the uniqueness of the Cuban situation in Latin America, and the difkulties attendant upon any attempt at classifying the Cuban revolution within the customary framework of communism in that continent.

Latin American communist movements have a poor record as insurrectionary forces. Inview of the fierce suppression of communism by governments seeking an easy target at home, and approbation in Washington, it is perhaps not surprising that the 1935 uprising in Brazil stands almost alone in the history of communist attempts at seizing power by revolution in Latin America. But the communists add themselves to the weakness of their position. Their record of dealings with dictators, including of course Batista in Cuba, however theoretically justified in the long run, discredits them in the eyes of the powerful, and growing, radical, nationalist movements.

Societies are generally neither monolithic nor homogeneous; every political system must deal with the problem of pluralism in some way. But political systems tend to be organized hierarchically, with power and authority concentrated at the top. The confrontation of social pluralism and political concentration can well give rise to tensions, since centralized political structures deal with diversified social interests. Tensions are also likely to grow out of pluralism within the political structure itself, as factions form on the bases of personalities, programmes and interests. Factions can exist within a single organizational or institutional framework, or they can be reflected in competing parties, checking and balancing institutions, and separated powers. The single-party regime has often become a familiar way of containing these tensions and factions in developing countries, particularly in Africa, and the existence of many African single-party regimes has led to efforts to discover the common elements behind the common phenomenon. The purpose of this study is not to challenge these explanations, but to look more broadly into the nature of interests, factions and power in developing polities, suggesting a model of political development that puts both unipartism and political pluralism in their places.

From 1920 to 1939, under the Third Republic, and again from 1943 to 1947, under the Fourth, the French communists were able to present themselves as the harbingers of the future society. But this did not prevent them from improvising, according to circumstances and to the response they received, bold variations on the theme of their relations with the established power and society. The question which so many people are now asking: ‘Have the communists really changed ?’ can be reduced to asking whether, in the fifties although possibly in a confused way, it was not their doctrinal basis which changed; and therefore whether, after a long and victorious battle and with the revolution definitely a thing of the past, we cannot now speak of communist integration, Just as it took sixty years for the modern form of Catholicism to triumph, so perhaps a certain kind of socialist revisionism could now also triumph in similar conditions. To discover whether this is so is the object of the present enquiry.

The development of the power of the European Economic Community has given rise to a reaction from those interests which are most directly affected. In order to make sure both that they are informed and that their interests are represented and defended, the various groups concerned have been led to create for themselves new structures at the level of EEC. A parallel relation has thus emerged between the official powers of EEC and the private powers affected by it. These groups, formed on the European level, naturally have neither the solidity nor the effectiveness of professional representation on the national level. Moreover, since such groups are themselves a part of the process of evolution of the political structure, they adapt themselves readily to new political circumstances. But if these European professional organs are not comparable to the national groupings, they cannot be seen as similar to the international associations. They are more numerous – three hundred and fifty to four hundred gravitate towards the European Community. Their action is both more intense and more concrete than that of the international associations, and corresponds to questions with which the community is concerned.

Latin America is a continent of underdeveloped countries, by any criteria. A terminological discussion as to whether they are underdeveloped or developing would be quite irrelevant. The fact is that Latin America has an explosive population expansion, a low educational level, low health standards, a low life expectancy, poor work conditions, a small middle class, problems of national integration, a low level of industrialization, low per capita income and GNP, low development of agricultural and fishing resources, low consumption of mechanical and industrial energy and excessive expansion of the commercial sector, not to mention the character of the political situation and its consequences. In these countries the majority of the people live in very poor conditions, under a traditional social structure of a few ‘haves’ and a large number of ‘have-nots’.

In the summer of 1917, while under the protective wing of Finnish socialists, including Kustaa Rovio – chief of the Helsinki police force and later first secretary of the Communist Party apparatus in the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic – Lenin completed his treatise State and Revolution, rejecting with vehemence the notion that a capitalist nation could be transformed without violence into a higher form of society. The one possible exception was a small country sharing a common frontier with a large country which had already successfully undergone the transition.

Imperial Germany had a monopolistic elite which managed to establish and uphold, with the assistance of an authoritarian welfare state, the apparent paradox of an industrial feudal society. Members of this elite held many of the leading positions in German society themselves, but others they passed into strange, if safely controlled hands. The monopoly broke along with the political system of Imperial Germany. But the memory of—and at times nostalgia for— the masters of the monopoly, whose passing turned out to be a long process, followed their surviving servants throughout the Weimar Republic. In any case, no distinct new political class emerged before that created by the National Socialist leadership clique and this was, once again, if in a more precarious version, monopolistic. East German society has followed in this tradition in its own, apparently similar, although substantively peculiar, manner. Moreover, there can be no doubt that these traditions reverberate in West German society as well; not even total defeat produces a social tabula rasa. But two features characteristic of traditional German elites are now absent: first, the monopoly of one elite, or indeed the claim to it; and secondly, the nostalgic memory which the leadership groups of the Weimar Republic had of such a monopoly.

From the country's independence until May 1966 two factors profoundly affected the nature of politics in Uganda. These were, first, a latent violence between groups and, secondly, a vigorous constitutionalism as a style of political contest. Both factors were, inevitably, connected with events and tendencies which went back to well before independence.

The possibility of political violence in the country was linked to a few key issues. These included, first, the degree of autonomy to be enjoyed by Buganda as the largest and most developed region in the country; secondly, the unresolved problem of the Lost Counties of Bunyoro; thirdly, relations between the Baganda and other tribes, an issue which later culminated into an alleged Bantu/Nilotic cleavage; and fourthly, the tensions of party allegiances within the parliamentary system. We shall discuss these issues more fully later in this analysis.

The experience of the European Communities confirms not only that, as the late Otto Kirchheimer put it, ‘opposition is to be found under one form or another in every political community’; but also that a political community is to be found wherever opposition exists in one form or another. The purpose of this study is to investigate the manner in which opposition forces develop in the European Communities to block or to enhance integration.

In Tanzania, as in other legally established one-party states, it is not appropriate to think in conventional terms of a government and an opposition. For while such states allow free discussion, perhaps within fairly broad limits, they proscribe free association outside the single party system. Those who disagree fundamentally with the ruling party are not free to form a rival political association in order to promote their own views. They must either keep quiet and conform, or seek to advance their cause by resorting to unconstitutional action.

It follows therefore that in order to test the ‘democracy’ of a oneparty state, different questions have to be asked than in the case of a country where two or more parties are allowed to operate. Taking political competition as a central issue in any one party system, the questions are: how much political competition is judged legitimate ? Where, and within what limits, is competition encouraged ? How far is it real or nominal ? It is also relevant to ask whether interest groups can find satisfaction within the single-party structure and how stable is the system as a whole.

The setting up of communities, acting through their own powers and with competences of which the national governments have divested themselves by treaty, clearly needs an appropriate institutional framework. The development of the European Communities, their day-today existence raise problems in human relations which are particularly complex and delicate because of the fact that the actual means of coercion: army, police, fiscal and customs authorities, remain in the hands of the national states, accustomed, through centuries of tradition, to enjoy absolute and unrestricted sovereignty.

These difficulties are increased by the addition of novelty : the impossibility of referring to precedent or to well-established practices, as national administrations or traditional diplomacy can do. Thus a new style of relations has had to be invented and applied, which would both help to foster the dialogue indispensable for the mutual understanding of the needs and legitimate aspirations of each of the national partners, and assist in bringing about solutions of common interest and in accordance with the letter and the spirit of the treaty.

The complex and frustrating problems which any Indian government must face makes the existence of a strong opposition almost inevitable. The fact that the Congress Party has been able to maintain such a strong position is as much due to the divisions and weakness of the opposition as to its own skill. The success of the Congress has been due in a large degree to its ability to take advantage of the caste and linguistic groups which play a key role in Indian politics.

Similarly, the communists have been effective only when they have recognized these non-ideological factors in the Indian political equation and have used caste or regional loyalties to their advantage. In Kerala, where the communists were able to form a government, the party's strength rests mainly on the support of two influential castes, the Nayars and the Ezhavas. Similarly, communist strength in Andhra is based on the support of the Kamma caste, which is one of the two main political forces in the state. Where the CPI has been unable to gain the support of a major caste or linguistic group, it does not constitute a major political force. In Maharashtra, for example, much of the communist leadership is Brahmin, and since there is a strong anti-Brahmin feeling in the state, CPI strength has been limited.

Parallel with the efforts which have been made during the last fifteen or twenty years to build, in Churchill's words (1946) ‘a kind of United States of Europe’, much research has been undertaken to try to find out whether public opinion had followed the movement, or perhaps even anticipated it.

I do not intend to recapitulate here in detail all these works, but merely to underline some of the problems which they raise, for the researchers as well as for the men of action and above all for those who, perhaps over-ambitiously, try to reconcile the concerns of the former with those of the latter.