PRESIDENT REAGAN'S STRATEGIC DEFENCE INITIATIVE (usually abbreviated to SDI and more popularly known as ‘star wars’) is generally agreed to have one great merit, whatever its many drawbacks. Concern over the long-term implications of this initiative is said to have convinced the Soviet Union that it should return to the arms control negotiating table that it left so abruptly at the end of 1983.

The difficulty with viewing SDI as a ‘bargaining chip’ is that the President has not shown himself inclined to use it for bargaining purposes. For those who believe that this is all that the SDI is really good for, given the doubts over whether it will ever really lead to a workable defensive system, the risk is that instead of cashing it in for substantial Soviet concessions on offensive arms, President Reagan, by persisting with SDI, will provoke countermeasures of both the defensive and offensive variety by the Soviet Union, and so lead to the ruin rather than the revitalization of the whole arms control process.

THE EXPERIENCE OF ‘COHABITATION’ BETWEEN MITTERRAND and Chirac - an enforced coalition between the effective heads of yesterday's government and yesterday's opposition - is a fascinating case-study in constitutional politics. How on earth will the constitution of 1958, which functioned in a reasonably consistent way from 1958 (or at least from 1962) to 1986, perform in the unprecendented situation created by the parliamentary victory of the Right?

As with all case-studies, there are some features specific to the situation. For instance, despite the general consensus that the prime ministership carries greater power, and that M. Chirac's newly-elected government is entitled to carry out its programme (‘the government governs, the president presides’, etc.), it is clear to everyone that the decisive contest for power will be the presidential election of 1988. The 1986 parliamentary election was in a sense a first ballot, or a primary, for the presidential stakes, and all of those principally concerned - Chirac, Barre, Giscard, Mitterrand and Rocard - have for some time calculated their actions in relation to the rendezvous of 1988.

IN HIS PROFOUND ANALYSIS OF THE MICROCOSMOGRAPHIA Acadernica of his time, F.M. Cornford identified among the parties the Adullamites, who ‘are dangerous, because they know what they want; and that is, all the money there is going’. He goes on to say that they ‘are not refined, like classical men. That is why they succeed in getting all the money there is going’.

Of Cambridge scientists in the 1920s, the era of sealing wax and string, this was an unduly harsh judgment, but it may be thought prophetic of today's academic world, in which scientists spend millions of pounds on research projects whose only apparent justification is peer judgment; this research is worth support because other scientists in the same field say it is.

TRADE QUARRELS BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND EUROPE have featured as a daily item in newspapers for some time, often even on the front page. Thus the New York Times in June 1986 carried a headline: ‘Reagan's tougher trade stand – policy shift angers Allies’. At the same time, the EC Council of ministers meeting in Luxembourg rejected American criticism of EC trade practices; in particular, the ministers underlined that EC support for exports of agricultural products could only be discussed in the framework of GATT, and only if other direct and indirect support schemes were also submitted to that forum. That same day, the Uruguayan leader Mr Sanguinetti complained bitterly that he did not manage to sell meat on his traditional markets, as the Americans and the Europeans undercut prices by more than 50 per cent. . . One could go on and on like this.

‘EUROPE BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND THE SOVIET UNION’. This subject could have been formulated in different terms, such as: ‘Europe between East and West’ or: ‘The European states between the two empires’ or: ‘The two Europes and the two superpowers’. Europe is at the same time one geographically and culturally, divided into nations, and split into two camps. The United States and the Soviet Union are both two global and two European powers, two ordinary states and the leaders of two alliances, the standard bearers of two ideologies. If one were discussing Korea instead of Europe, one would hesitate between calling our study ‘Korea between East and West’ and ‘Korea between North and South’. Europe is that continent where political divisions seem cast in the stone of history and geography, where the opposition between East and West seems to have at the same time a geopolitical meaning (that of maritime versus continental coalition), an ideological one (liberal democracy or capitalism versus communism) and a cultural one (the Western Church versus the Eastern one, Rome versus Byzantium).

BRITISH POLITICAL SCIENTISTS HAVE RECENTLY AWAKENED from their pragmatic slumbers to discover a dragon loose among them: the dragon of evaluation. The University Grants Committee has just been grading the quality of research in university departments, and some have been found ‘below average’. (To be merely ‘average’ hardly seems much better.) How were these gradings arrived at? We do not know, but we do know that among the documents available to the committee was a paper by Ivor Crewe analysing the publications record of all British departments of politics over a six-year period from January 1978. (It will be published in Political Studies next year.) Professor Crewe's paper reveals, to no one's surprise, that there are immense differences in publication rate both between individuals and between different departments; his revelation will not enhance his popularity. But it is clear that these events are just the beginning. The dragon of evaluation is on the loose and there's no St George in sight.

THE CONFLICT IN NORTHERN IRELAND HAS LASTED FOR OVER sixteen years, defying all attempts by British and Irish governments to reach a solution. On 15 November 1985 the leaders of both governments, Mrs Margaret Thatcher and Dr Garret FitzGerald, signed, at Hillsborough in Northern Ireland, an Anglo-Irish Agreement which they hoped would establish machinery leading to an eventual diminution of political violence and to an accommodation between the two communities. This Agreement is the result of several years of negotiations between the two governments in the Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Council and is perhaps the most radical attempt at solving the Northern Irish problem since 1921–22. The purposes of this article are to explore what is significantly new in the Agreement as compared with previous attempts at solutions, to examine briefly the different influences which worked to bring it about and, finally, to assess the chances of a successful implementation of the Agreement.

THE 1986 ELECTIONS PRODUCED ONE OF THE MOST DRAMATIC results in recent French history, after one of the most unexciting campaigns. It is clear that the marked a break with the previous experience of the Fifth Repu Is lic.

What was the nature of this break? First, the campaign began in a context where defeat seemed inevitable for the President's majority in parliament. Secondly, there was a new electoral system which affected the campaign, the competition and the results. Thirdly, the results showed considerable changes in French voting behaviour. Fourthly, there were some important changes in the influence and nature of the parties themselves. Fifthly, and perhaps most importantly, despite the collapse of the two-block part system, a majority hostile to the President was elected to par l 'ament. The President responded by staying in office, and appointing the leader of the largest party in the new majority as prime minister. The other original feature of these elections was that they were held less than two years before a presidential election. Much of the changed behaviour of voters, parties and leaders reflected not only the circumstances of the elections of 1986 but also those foreseen in 1988.

THE CONFERENCE OF THE EUROPEAN COUNCIL AT LUXEMBOURG in December 1985 was a considerable disappointment to advocates of European Union. Instead, as was once hoped, of proposing wide-ranging amendments to the Treaty of Rome, the Council contented itself with a rag-bag of minor changes. For the time being, therefore, the prospect of any fundamental reform in the working of the European Community should probably be ruled out.

Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the pressure for reform – fuelled as it is by a directly elected Parliament which feels itself excluded from the decision-making process in the Community – will disappear. The reformers will, no doubt, pause to regroup their forces so as to apply pressure more effectively when the issue returns once more to the agenda of European politics.

THE TERM CORPORATE GOVERNANCE HAS COME INTO USE TO describe both the purposes and the methods which determine the structure and the control of companies. A wide range of legal, regulatory and less formalized arrangements is thus embraced. In the UK in recent years discussion has related to a number of interrelated issues: the structure and functioning of boards of directors, reporting to shareholders and the ways in which shareholders use their power. These issues have a bearing upon business performance, though the debate about ways to improve the quality of management embraces also the cultural factors, the educational system and training arrangements; and performance depends too upon factors wholly or largely beyond the influence of managers, such as the tensions from class-division, over-powerful unions and the uncertainties which flow from discontinuities in public policy which are especially evident in the British political system. But in the general debate the corporate governance issues have perhaps had less attention than they deserve; the discussion has been confined to a limited circle. It is proposed here to concentrate on non-executive directors.

IN THE PAST TWO CENTURIES WESTERN STATES HAVE ACQUIRED many functions that before were carried out by small social entities, such as families, neighbourhoods, parishes, guilds or local communes. As these activities became the business of state agencies, they changed beyond recognition. Apprenticeship and tutoring made way for formal education in a universal and compulsory school system. Charity and mutual aid wellnigh disappeared as social security and public welfare emerged. Folk medicine, magic and home healing waned, while treatment of the sick became the monopoly of the medical profession, protected, regulated and, for the greater part, paid by public agencies.

IN 1986, THE FRENCH PRESIDENT FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND reminded us that neutralism in Germany was not just a simple reaction to political facts but a very complex constant in recent German history. Is the idea of a neutral Germany or of two neutral German states of any political importance today? Are there still supporters for neutrality in Central Europe? Would it not be normal for some people to think in those terms?

In today's relatively tension-free period of East-West relations, the fact may be overlooked that the German situation remains exceptional and that the Germans have a burden to carry which other nations do not have. The Federal Republic of Germany does not have full freedom of choice like for instance, Norway, which is a member of NATO without being a member of the EC, or Ireland which is an EC-member without belonging to NATO. What is considered as a normal option for any other nation might not be permitted for the Germans. Thus the frontline state at the frontier of the two world ideologies cannot claim normal freedom of action.

FOUR YEARS AGO THIS JOURNAL INITIATED AN OCCASIONAL series on the development of political science in different countries. To date four articles have appeared covering West Germany, Japan, France and the United States of America. Reading them together one is struck as much by the similarities as by the differences between the four countries. The main distinction of a comparative kind to be made, of course, is the fact of the sheer size and corresponding influence of American political science in relation to that of any other country or indeed all other countries taken together. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that commentaries on the contemporary character of American political science are almost exclusively concerned with its own methodological and professional considerations, while analogous exercises on the recent development of the discipline in other countries invariably dwell at length on how each has responded to the paradigmatic changes that have been pioneered from time to time in the USA; and as often as not they will admit of a hint of apology either for not embracing the new American modes fully enough, or, if positively disinclined so to do, for not developing a sufficiently considered critique of their shortcomings, or, again, for not themselves innovating alternative approaches and techniques of similar import and magnitude.

GREEK AND ROMAN ANTIQUITY IS SO EVIDENTLY PRESENT IN French revolutionary and imperial imagery that we are inclined to assign to it the role of a conscious model for a great number of ideas and even of institutions. The Frenchmen of the Republic and of the ‘Grande Nation’ would be, in short, resurrected Greeks and Romans, who would awaken the ‘dead world’ as Saint-Just called Rome. Indeed this received view is not wholly false or arbitrary. Perusal of the political literature – speeches, pamphlets, theoretical works – reveals that the allusions or references to Antiquity were something more than a fashion: from the ideological or cultural point of view, whether it is to identify with or get away from it, we think insistently and continuously of Sparta, Athens and Rome.

THE POSITIONS OF THE TWO MAIN SPANISH POLITICAL PARTIES vis-8-vis the NATO referendum held on 12 March 1986 have caused commentators to recall that Spain, although much less so of late, always was ‘different’ and ‘dramatic’; Lord Carrington, on a boost-the-Atlantic-Alliance visit to Madrid, was reported to have gone one better and said that a country in which those in favour appeared not to be going to vote at all, while those who had been totally against were now set to vote in favour, was nothing short of ‘surrealistic’, while the French magazine L'Express described the referendum itself with the colourful word ‘loufoque’. Miguel de Unamuno, that master of contradiction, and Ramón María del Valle-Inclán, the man who saw Spain as an esperpento or grotesque distortion of what a European country should be, would have smiled. And, indeed, although there are hoardings in the Peninsula proclaiming the message ‘Spain is not different - your credit-card is valid here, too’, the fact remains that it is the only country to restore monarchy in the late twentieth century and to hold a NATO referendum.

‘GOVERNMENTAL INSTABILITY: ITS CAUSES AND CURE’ HAS stimulated a growth industry in political science. Conferences, projects and published and unpublished works attest to its attraction as a research topic as well as its centrality for the democratic process. The volatility of electorates ranks high among the presumed causes of instability. The inability of cabinets to maintain legislative majorities, often attributed to the fickle nature of mass publics, is said to lead to ineffective government. Lack of effectiveness, in turn, results in voter disaffection, loss of legitimacy and increased volatility.

POLITICIANS LIKE TO BE REGARDED AS EFFECTIVE IN THE WORK THEY do. They insist that the promises they make and the programmes they decide on are more than mere declarations of goodwill. To practise what they preach is of special importance to governments which stress that their policies are substantially different from the policies of their predecessors. Thus, a departure from conventional politics on the model of the social-democratic consensus was asserted by the previously more pragmatic, now more ideologically minded, Conservative governments in Britain (1979), the United States (1980) and to some degree also by the electoral successes of Conservative parties in West Germany (1983) and France (1986). The conservative ground-swell in current government policies in Western democracies is, however, not restricted to the countries mentioned here, although Britain and the United States have played a special role as pathfinders for the political reorientation process.

The conflict between Mohammed and Marx has received a fair amount of scholarly attention; so have the occasional attempts at syncretism, fusing the two visions. The confrontation of Buddha and Marx is just as interesting, and has been explored rather less. There are certain parallels between Buddhism and Islam. Both contain a High Tradition of great, scholarly sophistication which lends itself to purification, and can constitute the banner of political and spiritual ‘Reform’ and revival. This has in fact happened within both Islam and Buddhism. But within the two most thoroughly Buddhism‐dominated societies, Mongolia and Tibet, the process was not allowed to run its course. Each of these countries has a small population, and in each case what might have been the natural internal development was distorted by the overwhelming might of a great communist power. In neither case, however, has the victory of Marx over Buddha been complete or uncontested. The crucial events did not happen simultaneously in the two countries, but happened about three decades later in Tibet than they had in Mongolia. The present article contains insights into and information about the last years of the ancien régime in Tibet, based on unique understanding and research opportunities.

IN THE MID 1960S, HANS DAALDER CONTRIBUTED A CLASSIC survey of the dynamics of the Dutch party system to Dahl's major anthology on opposition. His study was entitled ‘Opposition in a Segmented Society’. The focus upon opposition however was dictated less by the nature of Dutch politics than by the requirements of a comparative study. Thus the emphasis of the account was upon the essentially non-oppositional character of organized national politics in the Netherlands, for reasons which he showed to be both historical and practical.