IN TRYING TO ACHIEVE THE SIMPLICITY OF, IN SOME SENSE, scientific statements one must either, in the counsels of the wise, be very laboured or very brief. I want to be very brief and to use an essay as an essay, an attempt to try something out or on before a learned audience, or a timely speculation (that is, in time to be stopped) about whether a possible future voyage is worth undertaking, not an account of actual discovery.

IT WILL BE NO NEWS THAT THE ACADEMY IS IN FLUX – THAT there is once again a ‘crisis in the university’. It is easy to exaggerate this crisis – but today, in countries like the US A and Britain, it has special ‘linked’ features. In this article I explore some of these links, especially their ‘political’ dimension. Politics affect the universities (and other centres of higher education) in countless ways – through budgetary controls, through definition of ‘national needs’, and in some countries, though political control over appointments. The students, transient and often bewildered travellers through the university system, can be the harbingers, and sometimes the agents, of political change. The universities, again, are bound to reflect or resist old social values – and to create new ones. There are new problems for university ‘governments’. They are all pressed to revise their rules of discipline – and some are faced with an internal ‘anti-intellectual’ opposition. The torments at Berkeley, the dismissal of Clerk Kerr in the aftermath of Governor Reagan's victory in California, the disclosures of the links between American student bodies and the CIA, the protests of British Vice-Chancellors over ‘public accountability’, the ‘sit-in’ in the LSE, the slogans of ‘student power’ – these are largely, and in some cases, wholly, political landmarks of the university crisis.

THE OUTSIDE OBSERVER OF THE WEST GERMAN SCENE, JUDGING from casual newspaper reports, might be inclined to consider student opposition as a permanent feature of German political life. In fact, student protests and student demonstrations, though a recurring phenomenon in the Federal Republic, have been until recently rather rare and it is difficult to assess their influence on, or real importance for, political life. As a rule student politics whether they take the form of ‘opposition’ or not, are normally an inner-university affair and, at least in relatively stable democracies, come to the attention of public opinion only when they develop into political activity giving emphasis to outstanding critical issues in general politics.

POLITICAL OPPOSITION IN ITALIAN CITY STATES WAS NOT FOR MEN who valued themselves more than they valued politics. The stakes were too high. Exile or loss of life and property were too often the penalties. The difficult legal circumstances which attended organized political opposition went back to the early commune, to the fervour of the civil struggles that began late in the 12th century. These were to affect the character of the opposition down to the 16th century. If the contenders in political strife sometimes expressed a readiness to compromise, they revealed, just as often, an inability to do so. And in critical times the desire for the physical elimination of political opponents easily emerged.

Major rivalries of the 11th and 12th centuries inadvertently favoured the rise of local government. The communes – rendered bolder in many cases by their quickening economies – profited from the conflicts between papacy and empire, between the emperor and the German princes, and between the episcopal and comital powers in Italy. As imperial authority waned, local groups all over north and central Italy pressed forward to take over the administration of their own affairs.

HISTORIANS OF I8TH-CENTURY ENGLAND ARE COMING TO RECOGnize that the Rockingham Whigs played a significant role in the establishment of ‘party’ and ‘opposition’ as political instruments in the life of the nation but they remain divided over the precise contribution which the Rockinghams made to the evolution of the party system. On dose analysis the party appears to be profoundly divided over some of the most fundamental political issues of the time. Its attitude towards the American colonies was at best ambiguous and unsatisfactorily thought out. It was deeply divided on reform. All too frequently its parliamentary performance was inept, its members absent and its public credit low. In office, the Rockinghams were unable to effect lasting political changes and were never able to survive for more than a few months. Because most historians have concentrated their studies on these aspects of Rockinghamite history they have tended to neglect, indeed almost to dismiss, the party ideology which emerged during the 1770s and have remained indifferent to the institutional changes which occurred a little later. Only when the theoretical and institutional developments have been analysed and their significance assessed can a balanced view of the Rockinghams emerge – and thus a more valid picture of party development in the later I8th century.