Having, like most citizens of the developed society read, heardand seen as much as I could of the stirring events unfolding in the Eurasian empire, I cannot, even now (8 September 1991) saymore than what I have thought since the crisis began. This is that,on the one hand, the collapse of Marxism-Leninism and of its political emobodiments had, if I may make a pun, and moreoverin French, been déjà prévu. Marxism-Leninism is dead and buriedeverywhere (with such eccentric exceptions as China and Cuba. But, as in the old song, one can well ask ‘where have all the Marxists gone?’ and ‘When will they ever learn, when will theyever learn?’).

THROUGHOUT THE TWENTIETH CENTURY THE HOUSE OF Lords has been looking for a role. It lost its original power base with the decline in influence of the landed aristocracy and the growth of the party system. At the same time the composition of the House became increasingly difficult to justify; membership based on the accidents of birth no longer seemed an adequate justification for the right to legislate or to overrule the people's elected representatives.

The Parliament Act 1911, which took away the Lords' absolute right to veto legislation, promised reform. But nothing happened. In 1968 the Labour government introduced a reform bill. It failed, the victim of assaults from Left and Right in the House of Commons.

SINCE MONTESQUIEU, WRITERS ON POLITICS HAVE BEEN aware that there might be an association of particular moral qualities and beliefs with particular political regimes. The association between virtue and republican governments, although duly recorded by students of Montesquieu's thought, has however been passed over. The disposition to participate in politics, the sense of political potency or impotence, certain traits of personality such as could be summarized in the term ‘authoritarian personality’, etc., have all been studied by theorists of democracy. Virtue, or public spirit or civility, has been neglected.

I would like to take up Montesquieu's theme once more. I wish to enquire into the place of virtue or what I call civility in the liberal democratic order, which Montesquieu referred to as the republican type of government. Latterly the term ‘civil society’ has come to be used very loosely as equivalent to ‘liberal democratic society’. They are not entirely the same and the difference between them is significant. In civility lies the difference between a well-ordered and a disordered liberal democracy.

AS RECENT EXPERIENCE IN THE GULF WAR HAS AGAIN confirmed, dependence on foreign supply of military equipment and munitions can lead to an alarming vulnerability. At risk are the national armed forces and their effective prosecution of combat, and since in any military engagement, the place, dimensions, duration, and intensity of battle are not necessarily of their choosing, a second level of salience is added to this risk. A key lesson of the Falklands and Gulf wars, arguably the two most technologically intensive wars to date, is that modern weapons depend crucially on a comprehensive array of logistic support and its timely delivery and reliability.

THE POLITICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL MAP OF EUROPE CHANGED dramatically during 1989 and 1990. Recent developments have totally demolished the old rules and beliefs that have guided relations between nations. Although some scholars have even argued about the final victory of liberalism, contemporary international relations are nevertheless far from unproblematic. The internal development of former European socialist societies is not yet complete and the North-South conflict seems to be intensifying. Relations between small and big nations still often threaten stability in the contemporary world.

BOTH GERMAN STATES HAVE IN THE PAST BEEN ECONOMIC systems in search of political legitimation. The legitimation of the West German state was gradually established by the acceptance of democratic principles by the huge majority of the population and by a welfare system which was deliberately devised to protect it against contamination from the socialist camp. East Germany lost its legitimation at the moment when it abandoned its economic system. Consequently the battle-cry turned from ‘we are the people’ to ‘we are one people’.

A favourite American cliché insists that everybody and everything has a price. For the purposes of this letter, that turns out to be rather too true. During the summer and into the autumn of 1990, the United States was consumed with three kinds of prices: the price of art, the Pryce of art and the price of oil which may also be the price of war.

JAPAN'S INCREASING AFFLUENCE AND ITS INFLUENCE IN world affairs have led many to inquire about the functioning of Japanese politics and how one should deal with the Japanese in government or business negotiations. With the steady rise of such interest in Japan, the study of Japanese politics has started to flourish at home and abroad. It was impossible to predict one or two decades ago that one would find so many students, many of whom have a good command of the Japanese language, enrolled in a graduate course on Japanese politics in major US universities. Writings on Japanese politics have started to attract many more general readers, not just a small group of specialists in Japanese politics whose number would not reach, by any method of calculation, one thousand in the whole world. In this article I shall summarize and discuss some major debates on the nature and functioning of Japanese politics with some recent illustrations. The following three subjects have been chosen: decision-making and policy implementation, power structure and the nature of democracy.

WRITING A LETTER FROM IRELAND TOUCHES ON CERTAIN sensitivities because Ireland is a geographic unit in search of political expression. There has always been some doubt about political ownership. Between 1800 and 1921 it was, of course, part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Let us say for the present that Ireland now belongs to that small group of political entities - like Korea and Cyprus - which ‘enjoys’ the condition of partition. And that part of Ireland whence this letter is written, Northern Ireland, has been placed in some sort of historical context by a former leader of the Nationalist Party, Eddie McAteer, when he said of it: ‘and now we are sadly the last imperial aspidistra in the British window.’

The removal of barriers to international trade has been a powerful stimulus to economic growth in the post-war period. World trade has grown on average 2 per cent faster than GNP throughout this period. Countries which deliberately sought to make themselves competitive externally have grown much faster than countries which relied on their domestic market. By contrast, communist countries, where the system discouraged external trade, have fallen steadily behind. The consequence for most countries has been a steadily growing share of their economy which is exposed to international competition.

THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL CONFERENCES ON ECONOMIC and monetary union and on political union will have consequences for economic efficiency and for political power within the European Community. Both will be important for the future of Europe. But the focus of this article is somewhat different: the implications for the rule of law and representative government. Only somewhat different, because the rule of law and representative government provide the most secure framework for economic efficiency and political power. But more significant, because they not only provide that framework but also embody fundamental political values.

Over a quarter of a century ago i was privileged to receive an invitation to contribute an article on South African politics to the first number of this journal. I recall dismissing the thesis that ‘economic forces, together with the emergence of an African middle class, will provide a long term solution to the country's problems…’ I argued that

THERE ARE SOME DATES AND EVENTS WHICH REMAIN engraved in the collective memory of a people. In Algeria these are: 1 November 1954, which sparked the eight-year long War of Liberation; 5 July 1962, which witnessed the end of French rule over the country after 130 years of colonial settlement; and 12 June 1990, which signalled the withering away of the monopoly of power exercised by the ruling party - the National Liberation Front (FLN) - following the holding of the first ever free and competitive local elections in the history of independent Algeria. No doubt, on 12 June 1990 the Constitution of 23 February 1989, which fundamentally transformed the political and social system of Algeria, achieved its most spectacular application. These elections aimed at the renewal of seats in the Councils of both APC: Assemblées Populaires Communales (constituencies), and APW: Assemblées Populaires de Wilayat (provinces). For the first time, Algerians were offered the freedom to choose their representatives from among lists of candidates sponsored by several newly-legalized parties alongside the FLN, and for the first time, the FLN tasted defeat.

OF ALL THE REMAINING COMMUNIST PARTY STATES THE Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) would appear to have the most to fear from the 1989 democratic revolutions that swept Eastern Europe. The regime of Kim I1 Sung remains unmoved and unreformed, but is certainly not unconcerned about the events that have taken place among its former socialist bloc allies. To an outside observer the Pyongyang regime gives the impression of being almost frozen in time, with no real progress having taken place in either the economic or political spheres over the last twenty years. When the Ceauaescu regime in Romania crumbled amid bloodshed in the closing days of the 1980s, many analysts’ attention turned in great expectation to the autocratic regime of the world's longest-serving political leader. The epitaph of the Kim regime was being prepared in earnest. Although the last twelve months have hardly been reassuring for the Kim Regime, communist party rule has been maintained and Kim's personal standing inside North Korea remains intact.

The shadow of islamic fundamentalism hovers over all of North Africa, notwithstanding the profound differences between the historic fates of the various Maghrebin countries.

Algeria suffered by far the longest and most disruptive colonial period, In fact, Algeria had been colonized by the Ottoman empire before it had begun its French colonial period in 1830. A prolonged and brutal war of conquest was eventually followed by the establishment of a large European population, which acquired effective local political control under the Third Republic. Result: pre-colonial social institutions were largely destroyed, and Algerian society consisted mainly of a pulverized and oppressed rural proletariat. There were exceptions: a Muslim bourgeoisie survived in some centres such as Tlemsen, Constantine and even Algiers itself vigorous local institutions survived in the Berber hills and a few other places. But all in all, one could say that there were neither traditional institutions nor any Algerian nation.

IN RECENT YEARS QUESTIONS ABOUT THE EXTENT AND nature of gender differences in political participation have proved controversial. Within the literature we can identify three main perspectives. The traditional view, common in the 1950s and 1960s, was that women tended to be less involved and interested in most conventional forms of political life, whether in terms of elected office, party membership, interest group activity, or campaign work, and, to a lesser extent, in voting. The paucity of women in parliamentary elites therefore seemed consistent with their general lack of interest in political life. Debates about the causes of the participation gap tended to revolve around the relative importance of gender differences in structural life-styles (domestic constraints, socio-economic resources, and organizational affiliations) and/or political attitudes (sex role socialization, political efficacy and confidence). The traditional perspective may have become less popular but it continues to receive support from some recent studies.

WE STARTED WRITING THIS LETTER ON 22 DECEMBER 1990, the day that Lech Walesa was sworn in before the Polish Sejm as the first President of Poland ever elected in national elections. Even during this memorable ceremony, some MPs could not hide their deep dissatisfaction. They shared with a large portion of intellectuals of the world the conviction that Mazowiecki, a journalist, would be a far better president for Poland than Walesa the shipyard - worker.

Having followed with some curiosity the Western coverage of the Polish elections, and of the political struggles that preceded it, we have the impression that the coverage was biased, and often misleading. Commentators repeated misleading stereotypes, identifying themselves with one side in the political conflict in Poland. They presented a black-and-white picture of the conflict. Tadeusz Mazoweicki symbolized stability, democracy, tolerance, open-mindedness, ‘true’ pluralism, etc.; while the ‘terrible Lech Walesa’ represented dictatorship, obscurantism, anti-Semitism, populism, and chaos. Subtle references were made to Walesa's working-class background, to his lack of poise and education. We find such journalistic bad manners outrageous.

REGIONALISM AS A THEORY EVADES CONSISTENT assessment. Attempts to build a grand theory, such as those undertaken by Ernst Haas and Philippe Schmitter, or more recently in more parsimonious style as in consocational elites analysis or the international regimes theory, have not fully succeeded. One can even speak of a neglect of regionalism as a subject of academic study. Yet, on the other hand, a new wave regionalization is apparent in the real world, and despite decades of abandonment of integration projects, an interest in regionalism is growing.