ELECTIONS HAVE ALWAYS CONSTITUTED A PARTICULARLY sharp rupture to the general character of the West German political process, which depends heavily on accommodation by elite negotiation. In the arenas of parliamentary and executive politics a pervasive style of amicable agreement exists at elite levels, and the political value of Sachlichkeit (objectivity) remains important. Hence, in the legislative period 1976–80 over 90 per cent of legislation passed the Bundestag unanimously. An inquisitorial, as opposed to adversary, style of politics plays an important role in the work of the powerful committees of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat, the two legislative chambers in Bonn. Accordingly, and by contrast, elections tend to take on a remarkably dramatic character, even if, as in 1980, there appears to be little polarization of opinion about concrete issues of policy. British politics is, of course, characterized by the influence of the arena of electoral politics, of the ‘cut-and-thrust’ of competitive adversary politics, on other arenas of politics.

HAS ORGANIZED COMMUNISM GONE SOUR IN THE GERMAN Democratic Republic? Various signs suggest that it indeed has. Since late 1975, the regime of Erich Honecker has employed increasingly severe measures to combat internal dissent; and these measures have also been directed against West German media representatives, no less. On the economic front, estimates of national growth for 1979 vary rather widely — from 3 to 5.6 per cent. Yet no matter which figure is accepted, it is increasingly evident that growing international indebtedness to Western financial institutions (calculated to be between $5–6 billion), plus chronic energy shortages and recent agricultural failures have made East Germany's economic prospects gloomier than they have been since the late 1960s. The wave of emigration requests which eeted East Germany's signature of the Helsinki Agreement or1975 at least suggests that average citizens will take action on their own when the occasion allows them to do so. Added to the above consideration, of course, is the 'trade in humans' (Menschenhandel) which has resulted in the 'sale' of approximately 11,000 individuals from East Germany to West Germany between 1964 and 1975, according to one informed Western writer.

AS IS WELL-KNOWN, THE YEARS FOLLOWING THE SOVIET INcursion of 1968 saw drastic purges in Czechoslovakia. The number of those expelled from the Party was put by Vasil Bilak, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, at 461,751; a high proportion of these lost their jobs as well. (Bilak in fact claimed that only 30 per cent of those expelled — about 150,000 — had lost their jobs; but as Zdenek Mlynif and Karel Kaplan were quick to point out, Bilak's statistics took no account of those who were still employed but with lower status: medical consultants demoted to hospital porters, bank managers as office cleaners — in general, professionals redeployed in unskilled labour.) Those expelled suffered in other respects as well; in particular, their children tended to be denied higher or secondary education.

FOR MANY YEARS PUBLIC OPINION SURVEYS HAVE INDICATED that the peoples of the European Community nations support the principle that various functions now handled at the national level should be handled by European Community institutions. Opponents of supranational political integration have pointed out quite correctly that representative democracy is not based on public opinion polls and that the democratically elected representatives of the people can and should decide such questions.

In June 1979 a European Parliament was elected by the direct vote of the citizens of the nine member–countries of the European Community. For the first time in history, a body exists that was democratically elected by the people of the European Community nations rather than simply being appointed by the respective national parliaments. Though direct election of the European Parliament does not automatically bring increased powers to that institution, it clearly has enhanced the legitimacy of its claim to represent the people of the European Community. The candidates for the Euro ean Parliament represented all significant political parties an1 all shades of political opinion, ranging from the most convinced partisans of supranational political integration to the most ardent defenders of national sovereignty. The voters have chosen among them: what is the result?

I SHOULD LIKE TO START WITH AN EXTREMELY SIMPLE STATEment about the French Revolution. This is that there are many historical arguments among historians on many subjects, but that none of these arguments is so intense and so heated as the one which takes place in every generation about the French Revolution. It is as though the historical interpretation of this particular subject and the arguments of specialists directly reflect the political struggles and the gamble for power. It is true that we are all aware today that there are no unbiased historical interpretations: the selection of facts which provide the raw material for the historian's work is already the result of a choice, even although that choice is not an explicit one. To some extent, history is always the result of a relationship between the present and the past and more specifically between the characteristics of an individual and the vast realm of his possible roots in the past. But, nevertheless, even within this relative framework, not all the themes of history are equally relevant to the present interests of the historian and to the passions of his public. The subject of Clovis, for example, and of the Frankish invasions was of burning interest in the eighteenth century, because historians of that era thought that the Frankish invasions were the source of the division between the nobility and the common people: the conquerors having evolved into the nobility and the conquered having become the commoners. Today, the Germanic invasions are no longer considered to contain or reveal any secret about French society: they have become once again a subject for historiography, left to scholars and to the arguments of specialists.