The overall conclusion to be drawn from the discussion contained in Part I of this article is that, even in respect of what are usually regarded in the literature as being some of its more distinctively democratic characteristics, the American system of urban government is lacking. It may even be in these respects less democratic than the British. Whether it is agreed that the attributes discussed in Part I are those of a democracy or not, by its own lights American city government is deficient.

Systems theorists introduced the concept of ‘support’ to permit explanations of political stability and instability. Yet most attempts to verify the existence of a relationship between support and stability empirically have dealt with wellestablished political systems, and have relied on data collected at one point in time. This paper reports an initial effort to examine the growth of support for a new political regime using a series of sample surveys providing data on changes in the level of support over time.

All the theories of coalition formation known to us incorporate an assumption (or a set of assumptions which imply) that coalitions which are formed must at least be ‘winning’. 1 In the present context, a coalition is said to be winning if the sum of the seats held by its members is at least a simple majority of all the seats in the parliament. Most of these theories were intended to apply to government coalitions: indeed, several of them were specifically designed for this situation. Yet out of the total of 207 governments which have formed in twelve western democracies since the war, 2 seventy-four of them have not been winning.

In 1919, three years after the Easter Rising in Dublin, a revolutionary government was established in Ireland. This government, the Dail Eireann, was the forerunner of the Irish Free State that ultimately resulted from the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922. Slightly more than fifty years have elapsed since the union of Ireland and Great Britain was formally dissolved and, in that period of time, many changes have occurred in both the social and political systems of Ireland. Not the least of these changes has been the passing of one elite generation from the political scene and the emergence of another.

I wish to consider what kind of force attaches to the fact that a certain policy or course of action is in the public interest. How, for example, does it compare with the consideration that a policy is in the interests of a majority, or the consideration that a policy is a fair one? Such questions about the weight to be attached to the fact that a policy or course of action is in the public interest arise naturally if we accept the view, put forward by Barry, that just as to say that a policy is in the interests of farmers, for example, is to say that it is in the interest of each farmer as a farmer or qua farmer, so to say that a policy is in the public interest is to say that it is in the interest of each member of the public as a member of the public or qua member of the public.1

‘The decline of the Liberal Party was not due to the inescapable logic of history, or to theinapplicability of Liberal remedies to the issues of the day, but to avoidable mistakesmade by Liberals themselves.’1 This is the essence of a recent reinterpretation of the fallof the Liberal Party. The mistakes consisted chiefly of the 1906 Liberal—Labour electoralpact, which gave Labour significant parliamentary representation but was of little benefit to the Liberals: the split in the Liberal Party dating from Asquith's resignation in 1916 and the resulting electoral pact between the Lloyd George Liberals and the Conservatives: the failure of the Liberals to form a government in 1923: and the despair of the Liberal leaders after the 1929 election and their resulting failure to act as an independent party.

The ability of humans to alter their behaviour in reaction to predictions made about it is listed but not discussed by Ake (in a recent issue of this Journal) as an objection to the possibility of producing testable general laws in political science [Claude Ake, The Scientific Status of Political Science’, n (1972), 109–15, p. 112]. McLean makes this ability the nub of his argument against the possibility of a comprehensive theory of politics and in favour of partial theories [Iain McLean, ‘Comment on “The Scientific Status of Political Science"’, II (1972), 383–4]. Unless the possibility of checking limited generalizations against subsequent behaviour is completely abandoned, however, behavioural reactions of the type cited by McLean seem likely to occur in response to limited as well as to general predictions and thus to constitute as much of an objection to partial theories as to a comprehensive general theory. Philosophically human free will is often cited as an insuperable obstacle to the development of a causal and statistical social science,1 so the question is central to any general discussion of the scientific status of political analysis. Since political scientists happily make limited generalizations, e.g. about voting and coalition behaviour, and at least loosely check them against subsequent behaviour without suffering apparent difficulties, the practical effects of these philosophic objections seem limited. In order to understand why, discussion must descend from the abstract level of free-will versus determinism to some of the conditions which limit behavioural reactions to previously formulated generalizations and predictions:

There is a continuing concern about whether politics can be made a science, revived in this Journal by Ake [Claude Ake, ‘The Scientific Status of Political Science’, II (1972), 109–15], McLean and Postbrief [‘“The Scientific Status of Political Science” – Two Comments’, II (1972), by Iain McLean, 383–4, and Samuel Postbrief, 385–8]. The word in other languages does not appear to elicit the same arguments: in French, for example, the expression ‘science politique’ is far less problematical because the word ‘science’ lacks both the theoretical and emotive implications which belong to the English word ‘science’.

In a recent Note in this Journal (‘Does Local Party Organization Matter?’, III (1972), 381–3) I reported evidence which suggested that in local elections party organization could have a major impact.1 This conclusion was reached by comparing voting movements in a marginal Newcastle ward, Walkergate, where Labour organization was very weak in 1970 but strong in 1971, with changes in Newcastle as a whole. In this Note a similar comparison is made, with evidence drawn from a Conservative ward, Heaton, in 1972, which shows even more striking evidence of organizational impact. Recent discussion in this and other journals about ward marginality and turnout2 is considered in the light of this evidence.