Cybernetic analysis is part of the systems approach and has been used by several authors to study governmental policies or public decisions. Nevertheless, the way in which it is used in this article is different from preceding attempts. Regulation by feedback is considered as being complex rather than simple; positive feedback seems neither exceptional nor pathological, and great emphasis is placed on power relations in the phenomena of regulation by feedback through which government policies are formed.

The presentation of different sub-systems of the cybernetic model and of different types of regulation by feedback are illustrated by examples touching on the adjustment of electoral boundaries. In the last part of the article, the first results of research bearing on the sector of social affairs and on that of energy serve to underline three characteristics of the cybernetic analysis of government policies as proposed in this article: the key role that it gives regulation by feedback, its particular attention to the unexpected consequences of action, and its insistence on the phenomena of communication as essential to action.

What might be expected of the Canadian press, and of comment about the Canadian press, in a referendum on Quebec independence? This article does not seek directly to confront that question: it is exclusively about the contribution of the British press to Britain's referendum in June 1975 on her membership in the European Economic Community. Obviously the circumstances of that referendum were quite different from one about Quebec: unlike Premier Lévesque's proposal, for example, it was held across the whole nation, and opinions differed as widely within the parties and their leaderships as between them. But the article's contention—that referenda tend to put in doubt the legitimacy of the press at the same time as giving them an even more central role than in election campaigns—seems applicable to the Canadian situation and perhaps to referenda in general. To draw out the comparison fully, however, would require a familiarity with Quebec politics (and with the precedent of the 1942 conscription plebiscite) that is far beyond this author's competence. This note attempts simply to argue the case by illustration from the isolated British example.

In the past decade, patterns of variance in Canadian political culture have been documented in several studies of the attitudes and beliefs of the Canadian mass public. To date, however, the nature and significance of variations in political culture in Canada at the elite level remain largely unexplored. Given the importance generally attributed to elites in descriptions of the functioning of the Canadian political system, examination of the belief systems of Canadian political elites is a salient research priority. As a contribution to this field of inquiry the present research note presents the results of an investigation of the ideological self-perceptions of provincial legislators in all ten provinces.

Professor Seaman contends that I am mistaken in asserting a logical connection between equality of right and unlimited acquisition. I argued that equality of right as employed by Locke in the Second Treatise logically entails the right of unlimited acquisition, and a consequent danger of environmental destruction, resulting from the necessary commitment of political structures to unlimited acquisition.