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.

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 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.

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.

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.

What is politics the outcome of? The common answers to this question would invoke such ideas as power and interests. I want to argue that political events, particularly in the modern world, are the outcome of nothing else but politics itself. They emerge rhetorically, from public talk, and nothing more fundamental can be found. A society which can be validly characterized in this way may suitably be called ‘loquocentric’, or talk-centred. The odd thing is that much of the most acute exploration of this idea has taken place in a distorted form - in a camera obscuru, as it were - in ideological writing, which is dedicated to such fundamental determinants of the course of events as race, nation, gender and class. The work of Jurgen Habermas is particularly striking. Before I consider it, however, let me sketch out the thesis that modern politics is essentially loquocentric.