This article is intended to shed more light on the processes and mechanisms by which the senior civil servants exercise influence and enjoy power. It appears that simultaneously these processes and mechanisms restrain the senior civil servants and therefore limit their range of action and influence. This exchange of resources and constraints results from a complex process of communication between the issuer and the recipient of that influence; the number and diversity of the ways of relaying this communication create the conditions for communication and power strategies. The senior civil servants become and remain as powerful as they are constrained.

This article is devoted to a study of business interest associations in Canada in the light of the basic question: Why do they exist? The purpose is to demonstrate that business interest associations might be profitably considered distinct from other types of pressure groups. When their organization and activities are considered at length, it also becomes clear that these groups have an importance for their members that is not often perceived. These arguments are developed by drawing upon a case study of business associations representing selected sectors of the Canadian food processing industry.

The Canada-United States Automotive Products Trade Agreement of 1965 has been a source of controversy between these two countries, yet has also shown considerable resistance to change. An adequate political understanding of the creation, content and history of the Pact requires an examination of the complexes of issues and goals within which the Canadian and American governments approached its negotiation. These influenced not only what issues were dealt with in the APTA but also how and how successfully. Canada was initially favoured, as is demonstrated by the outcome of the talks. However, the Pact postponed, rather than resolved, the differences between the two governments; subsequent controversies between them over the Pact stem in large part from these unresolved differences.

Major energy policy decisions are usually based in part upon forecasts of energy supply and demand. However an examination of the Canadian National Energy Board's forecasts of natural gas supply and demand over the last decade indicates that these forecasts were not a reliable basis for policy decisions. An analysis of the policy context underlying those forecasts reveals that they were not neutral “best guess” estimates of future supply and demand, but instead closely reflected the policy context and major project proposals of the time. The reasons for this are rooted in the nature of forecasting techniques and the way that they are used by decision-makers. This, it is argued, has important implications for the use of energy forecasting in policy planning.

This note reviews several recent developments in the Marxist “theory of the state” controversies with the hope of clarifying what those theories have to say about the international behaviour of core nations. It returns to the Kautsky-Lenin Debate over Ultra-imperialism and attempts to show its relevance to the recent Wallerstein “World Systems Debate.” The theoretical difference between Kautsky and “neo-Kautskyite” writers is demonstrated by introducing a two dimensional analytic construct of relations among core states. The discussion of “relative autonomy” points out a major ambiguity which now exists in the “instrumentalist-structuralist” controversy. The note should be useful to Marxist researchers on the theory of the state, comparativists interested in the autonomy of the modern state, and international relations scholars interested in the World Systems debate.

This note reports the results of an attempt to detect a systematic pattern in the development of terrorist activity of the Palestine Liberation Organization during the period 1967-1978. Since its establishment in 1964 the PLO has seen the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as insoluble by political, as distinct from, military means. A quantitative analysis of Palestinian military activities explores a downward trend in the annual frequency of activity in the administered territories and an upward trend in the annual frequency of activity within the pre-1967 lines. Israeli punishment did not work as a deterrent but remained an essentially retaliatory activity despite the apparent intentions of its authors. The changes in the military activity of the PLO were systematic rather than coincidental. The main cause of significant long-term increases in the activity of the Palestinian organizations was the impetus provided by political events for the recovery of operative bases of action and motivation for guerrilla activity. Reinforcement of both organizational and motivational militancy followed the perception by the Palestinian organizations that political victories could not be gained without terrorist activity.