My purpose here is only to put forward a number of tentative suggestions in order to provide some common basis and a starting ground for discussion. We are called on to examine the principle and the working of political opposition as one of the specific means of control. That is to say that in our context the notion of opposition is specific, the notion of control general. Accordingly, the issue may be formulated as follows: in the light of the problem of controlling government, that is, of checking absolute power, to what extent and in what ways is the existence of an opposition vital, useful or possible in both ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries ?

Obviously, if one deals with developing countries the very idea of ‘developing’ needs to be dissected. Some countries are purely and simply under-developed; other countries find themselves at different stages of development.

Power is potentiality: for those subjected to it, it offers the potential for good and for ill and therefore each and everyone is directly concerned with the way in which power is used. On this account we give the subject the name of citizen; for to do so implies a right to influence the use of power, which is his at least theoretically. But it is a hollow right, without substance, if he cannot use it. It is a hollow right if its only manifestation is that the citizen from time to time be invited to vote for the person or persons who will then wield absolute power. In such cases, the choice of the citizen is limited and furthermore he who before his accession may seem most desirable may after it reveal himself to be very bad: one has only to remember that no emperor was more fervently greeted than Caligula.

The new states of Asia and Africa present a variegated picture with respect to the status and mode of action of their opposition parties. In only about a third of the new states are opposition parties regarded as constitutionally legitimate. Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, India, Ceylon, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Nigeria, Malaysia, Philippines, Sudan, and a few others allow opposition to exist in a public and institutional form.

By definition, political opposition by mass parties calling freely for votes against an established government, in parliaments and in regular, open elections, is a comparatively recent phenomenon. It could originate only when governments became effectively accountable to an ever-expanding electorate and is therefore intimately tied to the complex processes of democratization, which even in the more established Western democracies are barely a century old.

On the eve of independence, practically all the new states were committed to full democratic politics, for which careful constitutional arrangements were thought to offer definite guarantees. Yet in most of them competitive politics have not lasted long and have given way to autocratic government in one form or another.

The historical development of western civilization has produced several patterns of political opposition deeply rooted and relatively well established in the political systems. This opposition is usually identified with the control of the governed over the government : it is maintained that opposition is at the same time a sufficient and a necessary condition for the existence of such control. Opposition, as the term is commonly used, has the following characteristics : (a) it is political; (b) it is institutionalized in the form of a party or parties; and (c) it is often said that it is also ‘responsible’, i.e., it does not extend to obstruction of the government's actions. In order to define more precisely the relationship between opposition and control, we must ask two questions of a more specific nature: (i) is opposition a sufficient condition for effective control? And (ii) is it a condition sine qua non for any kind of political control? In spite of some ideological assertions, it seems clear that the answers to both questions are negative. Since the problem of opposition in the two- and multiparty systems is discussed elsewhere, we shall focus here on those mechanisms of control which present an alternative to opposition as institutionalized in the party system.

The object of these notes is to assess how relevant are the main terms of reference of the discussion outlined in Professor Sartori's introductory paper to the group of one-party states known as People's Democracies or Socialist Republics, and in particular to Yugoslavia, Poland, Rumania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and to a lesser degree, Albania. But many of the findings on these states, and I would say those most worthy of our attention, in order to be valid at all, must be valid for all one-party states. Valid for all one-party states is for instance the conclusion that the non-institutional and non-constitutional opposition which is being carried on naturally, inevitably and incessantly against any government in any polity, and by any sui generis means, should be described by other names. I believe that the terms control and contestation can be particularly useful to describe the political process of the People's Democracies, and can be equally applicable to the entire category of one-party states if they are understood in accordance with the definitions I suggest below.