In general discussions about opposition in democratic political systems, such as the thoughtful reflections of Robert A. Dahl, the role which federalism may play in providing an opposition with opportunities to oppose is often forgotten. This is curious, but perhaps in part at least the result of the fact that the institutionalization of opposition has gone farthest in Great Britain – a non-federal state. Yet in a sense to be further developed below, federalism may be looked upon as an alternative method for institutionalizing opposition – alternative that is to the British parliamentary system.

The four elections analysed in this article all took place in the autumn of 1965. In formal terms, there is an important distinction between the election of legislatures (or at most of parliamentary governments) in Norway, Turkey and West Germany and that of a President in France; in terms of results, between the replacement of the Labour government in Norway by a four-party coalition and of the four party coalition government in Turkey by the Justice Party and the confirmation in office of the CDU-FDP coalition and of General de Gaulle.

The emergence of a student opposition movement in the United States in the past few years has received world-wide attention. During the last year, American students have made headlines for their organized opposition to the Vietnam war, and for the now celebrated Berkeley Student Revolt. For perhaps the fist time in American history, the politics of university students has become a major topic of national political discussion. Many articles have been written in newspapers and magazines discussing the nature and sigmlicance of this movement.

Any analysis of the American student movement must attempt to answer the question why student politics in the mid-1960s should be so much more noteworthy than any preceding set of such activities. Before turning to a discussion of this issue, I would like to summarize briefly some of the earlier radical activities of American university students.

Turkey is not in the usual sense a developing country. It is a state, the fabric of which has endured for a number of centuries. Consequently, its political culture embodies elements which go far back into history. It has both an ethos and eidos of service to the state and a bureaucratic apparatus which for centuries has been entrusted with the application of the values embodied in its political culture. The structure of the state has been somewhat looser in Iran, but there too, the situation is appreciably different from what it is in the Arab states or Pakistan where the structure of the state is recent, its mark on the ethos of the people slight and its political traditions embryonic. In the case of Turkey and to a less extent in Iran, some of the crucial problems of developing nations – problems which are acute in many Arab states – such as those of building up an identity as a nation, overcoming particularistic allegiances, launching oneself into the take-off stages of industrialization are well on the way to solution. We are faced then, under the rubric of ‘Middle East’ with a number of countries which are at different stages on the scale of modernization. By itself, this would suffice to make the subsuming of all Middle Eastern countries under a single heading extremely unwise.

The problems of opposition and control in Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria have lately attracted a good deal of attention. Recent developments have shown either that even an embryonic opposition within the regime can lead to the overthrow of a strong, but isolated leader (Boumedienne's coup d’état against Ben Bella), or that the stubborn refusal of a constitutional opposition to accept repeated offers of national unity can force a ruler to take exceptional measures (the case of King Hassan II who made use of the extraordinary powers of article 35 of the Moroccan constitution). It would seem that Tunisia alone has for some years now enjoyed relative stability, but it must be noted that this is maintained only by means of a constantly re-asserted hold upon the national institutions.