Ghiţa Ionescu's Formal Academic Career Began When He reached the London School of Economics in 1963, at the age of fifty. Within three years he had published three books and become the founder-editor of Government and Opposition. He went on to edit the journal for the next thirty-one years and to bring the total number of his books to fourteen, five of them comprising a brilliant series on the East European communist states and the rest mainly on the challenges, both internal and external, facing the liberal democracies in advanced industrial society. He became Professor of Government at the University of Manchester and chairman, for over two decades, of the Research Committee on European Unification of the International Political Science Association. He inspired and energized countless students and colleagues. The main purpose of this article is to explore the significance of these achievements. But first, a word about the motive forces behind them.

The Story is Told That Following The 1916 Rising a journalist contacted a nationalist politician for some background information. He was told that hostilities had begun when Cromwell invaded Ireland. When would it end?: ‘When hell freezes over.’ No doubt it is apocryphal but it conveys the sense of fatalism and of time-scales necessary to understand the present tense of the peace process. As a result of the IRA bombing of Canary Wharf on 9 February 1996 sobriety and long memories have replaced the euphoria of mid-1994. No one had pretended that it was going to be easy; indeed some of the major actors had been thinking in generational terms. The SDLP leader, John Hume, spoke of ‘the real healing process [which] will take place and in a generation or two a new Ireland will evolve’ (italics added) at his party's annual conference in November 1995. Even the influential Sinn Fein insider, Jim Gibney, inserted a note of realism as early as June 1992 when he said that a British ‘departure must be preceded by asustuined period of peace and will arise out of negotiation’ (emphasis added).

The Nolan Committee Has Put Parliament on Trial. Many believe that standards of public life have fallen into disrepute in recent years. The press has seized upon a series of sleaze issues: cash for parliamentary questions, the Scott inquiry into government contracts, undisclosed gifts from lobbyists, the hidden patronage of quango appointments, and the revolving door between public office and newly privatized company boards. Most believe this succession of stories has eroded public trust and confidence. Ivor Crewe's submission to the committee pointed out that agreement with the statement ‘Most MPs make a lot of money by using public office improperly’ has risen from 46 to 64 per cent in the last nine years. Lord Nolan, reflecting on evidence before his committee, noted: ‘One of the things we have been struck by is the depth of public cynicism about standards of conduct in public life, coupled with damaging cynicism about the motives of those who go into it.’ Some of the disquiet is produced by the succession of sexual imbroglios causing a series of ministerial resignations. Yet this has been of lesser concern to the Nolan Committee than standards of financial propriety at Westminster. The recommendations which emerged so far have focused on the need to avoid potential conflicts of interest, and the need for the transparent disclosure of financial dealings.

The Israeli General Election of 1996 Has Been Described as a ‘referendum’ on the Middle East peace process, the central issue in the campaign. However, important as it was, the outcome of the election was determined not so much by the issue of peace, as by a change in the electoral law providing for the direct election of the prime minister. On 29 May, for the first time, Israelis went to the polls to elect a prime minister as well as a new Knesset and the result was yet another upheaval in Israeli political life.

Where it is Practised, Democracy is a) Not The Only principle practised, and b) practised differently from the way it is practised in other places. If democracy has a clear meaning and clear requirements – I shall argue that it does – then we should be able to map out the bases on which degrees of democracy are traded off in the name of other values, and with what justification. In attempting to make some inroads into the serious conceptual and empirical problems this topic presents, my point of reference will be the modern nationstate, though the use of the phrase ‘political units’ throughout signals the fact that the argument largely holds for other geographically-defined entities as well.