THE RECENT VICTORY OF RAUL ALFONSÍN AND THE RADICAL Party in Argentina marks the end of forty years during which the Peronists were, overtly or covertly, the major factor in Argentine politics. It also sounds the death-knell of attempts to find a trans-class solution to the problem of political legitimacy in Argentina. It may not be inappropriate, then, to look back on the most sustained attempt to establish this legitimacy via an ideology of class collaboration: the ideology of Peronism.

IN 1964 THE BRAZILIAN POLITICAL SYSTEM UNDERWENT A basic change. The populist republic (1946–64), which had paved the way for both a formal and an informal extension of political and economic franchises, after the success of Kubitschek's administration (1956–61) and Quadros's resignation (1961), collapsed as a result of decisional paralysis. The economic challen e of accumulation and the political challenge of social justice led, in the early 1960s during the Goulart administration, both to a fragmentation of power and to radicalization. The more demands multiplied, the more the government hesitated, feeding the anxiety of different political grou s in society. The result was a growing distrust of the politicafsystem. Distrust in turn not only prevented a coalition in support of a consistent governmental programme but also brought about an intensification of conflictual demands. This self-sustaining mechanism of decisional paralysis was interrupted by the emergence of what has been called by Juan Linz and Guuermo O'Donnell ‘a bureaucratic-authoritarian regime’.

THE QUESTION OF WHETHER MORAL VALUES CAN OR SHOULD BE taught has caused controversy and divided opinion almost since the beginning of time, and certainly since the very earliest days of philosophy. As is well-known, Socrates was condemned to death on charges of impiety and of corrupting the minds of the Athenian youth. Although the latter accusation was never fully spelled out, it was certainly connected with the perceived moral subversiveness of his philosophy and, in particular, with his denial that those who purported to teach moral values were qualified to do any such thing. This denial was construed by many as dangerous and as an attack on the moral foundations of Athenian society for which, famously, Socrates paid a high price.

PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATWE DEMOCRACY IS ABOUT THE relationship of individuals to the state. It commonly invokes mechanistic metaphors about the relationship between these individuals and their governments. Corporatism is about the relationship of certain, apparently relationship indispensable, functional groups to each other in the society which, collectively , they comprise. It is commonly referred to in organic metaphors, specifically it holds that each function is organically related to each other function and that each is irreplaceable. None can be dispensed with and each can do its appointed task provided all others do theirs.

SOCIO-POLITICAL ANALYSIS – SIT VENIA VERBO! – HAS TO DO with our experience of political development and its social foundations. Needless to say, our experience influences the way in which we see such development. It is not arrogant to add that this was never more true than in the changing circumstances of Europe in the last half-century.

A personal note may be regarded as generational, social, national as well. Before my eighteenth birthday I experienced both 20 July 1944 and the forced merger of Social Democrats and Communists in East Germany in the spring of 1946. In both cases, my father was in opposition, though in very different kinds of opposition. In the first instance, opposition from outside; being an insider, a member of the Reichstag, was a distant memory, though one to be revived at any moment, if the coup d'état succeeded. In the second instance, opposition from inside; a clear sense, as Deputy Chairman of the East German Social Democrats, that a new totalitarianism was just around the corner, after the brief euphoria of 1945. In both cases, moral victory and practical defeat, prison, exile. Such experiences need no interpretation.

Just as the revolution of 1848 was preceded by a ‘campaign of banquets’, so, a hundred years later, the European revolution was announced by a ‘campaign of congresses’ spread over the years 1947–1949. These congresses expressed the state of mind, and stimulated the major trends, of a heterogenous and many-sided movement – a movement curiously inefficient in its tactics, and direct in its strategy, but to which the Council of Europe owes its existence, and because of which the Community of the Six has been able to take shape and to win the acceptance of public opinion, and hence of the parliaments and governments responsible to public opinion in those days.

AFTER MORE THAN A DECADE IN WHICH DOMESTIC POLICY PROVIDED the major issues for party debate in West Germany, the determination of the Brandt government on taking office to engage itself in activities designed to ‘normalize’ relations with the Eastern Bloc has had notable effects on the West German parties. The political climate has altered; partisanship has been intensified; the Basic Law has been tested in novel circumstances; and the governing coalition and the apprentice opposition have both faced trials and tensions in terms of their party base.

The new Ostpolitik has had its effects on the political climate in terms of the first use of the constructive vote of no confidence, the erosion of the coalition majority, the pressures for a premature general election; but the short-term and longer-term effects on the West German parties are likely to be of greater significance. This article seeks to assess the significance of the Ostpolitik for the government and opposition parties. For, whatever the benefits or disadvantages which the Ostpolitik may bring to the Federal Republic in intrinsic terms, it is already clear that it has modified considerably the pre-1969 pattern of party politics.

SINCE GORBACHEV'S COMING TO POWER THE RELATIONSHIP between economics and politics in the Soviet Union has been changing rapidly. But even from the outset one could see that there would be limits to change. The primacy of politics which characterizes the relationship between economics and politics under the conditions of socialism in power will be fully maintained in the future, too. All proposals for more decentralization meet with obstacles when they seem to call into question the leading role of the party. The party is only advised to observe a kind of ‘economic restraint’: it should stop mingling every aspect of public administration with the economy. The idea is to free the party from its responsibility for detail in order to allow it to concentrate more on its central political tasks. In this respect socialism has problems similar to those which Western governments face in the welfare state. After the end of the hegemony of social democracy it is, above all, the conservative parties in Western Europe who are ready to reduce the responsibility of the governments of the day for many economic and social tasks: this is why we find deregulation efforts, privatization of public enterprises and the transfer of political functions to non-state social organizations everywhere.

Queen Elizabeth II Has Now Entered The Forty-First year of her reign. This is an exceptional achievement in a historical period marked by speed and turbulence. Indeed, in the exercise she has also become the personality with the longest record of continuity of service and experience in high politics, not only in this country but in the whole world. This is an obvious advantage for the new generation of British political leaders who will seek her counsel.

From 1920 to 1939, under the Third Republic, and again from 1943 to 1947, under the Fourth, the French communists were able to present themselves as the harbingers of the future society. But this did not prevent them from improvising, according to circumstances and to the response they received, bold variations on the theme of their relations with the established power and society. The question which so many people are now asking: ‘Have the communists really changed ?’ can be reduced to asking whether, in the fifties although possibly in a confused way, it was not their doctrinal basis which changed; and therefore whether, after a long and victorious battle and with the revolution definitely a thing of the past, we cannot now speak of communist integration, Just as it took sixty years for the modern form of Catholicism to triumph, so perhaps a certain kind of socialist revisionism could now also triumph in similar conditions. To discover whether this is so is the object of the present enquiry.

What do modern election campaigns look like? According to the most recent accounts, they are data-driven operations in which extensive data are collected and targeted messages are deployed in efforts to maximize support. Whilst highlighting important new developments, in this article we argue that a focus on novel practices offers a distorted picture of modern campaigns. Presenting a unique analysis of over 22,720 separate items of expenditure made by political parties at the 2019 UK general election, we demonstrate that whilst there is some evidence of a ‘fourth’ era of campaigning, these novel practices do not define campaigns. Taking a more holistic approach that examines how campaign activities are blended and entwined, we offer unprecedented insight into the nature of modern campaigns, revealing variation in parties' campaign strategies. We also introduce a new dataset for those interested in party campaigns and call for others to pursue a more holistic analysis.

It can be challenging for a democratic government to effectively make policies that address crucial national problems. While a bulk of literature reports that many democracies have overcome this challenge through centralization of legislative organization, few studies have explained why legislative decentralization that allegedly impairs policymaking performance would take place. Drawing on Taiwan's experience and over 13,000 legislative bills proposed in Taiwan's parliament between 1993 and 2012, this article demonstrates that the legislative decentralization during the onset of Taiwan's democratization slightly revived the policymaking performance of a near-paralysed parliament. Like drinking poison to quench the thirst, myopic politicians may opt for legislative decentralization as an instant remedy to ease severe legislative obstruction, despite the unfavourable consequences that the resulting decentralized legislative organization may eventually bring about. These findings shed new light on the evolution of legislative organization and account for the difficulties in policymaking facing developing democracies.

Mainstream parties have taken increasingly restrictive immigration policy positions across Western Europe. Yet the political consequences of this behaviour for citizens' democratic norms and practices are still not well understood. This article focuses on public political trust. Bridging the literatures on immigration-related trust and spatial theory, the spotlight is put on the consequences of mainstream party position-taking on immigration for the interconnectedness of citizens' immigration policy preferences, political distrust and far-right voting. An analysis of data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey and European Social Survey across 14 Western European democracies (2006–2018) suggests that tougher immigration positions of centre-right parties in government weaken the link between immigration scepticism and political distrust and, in turn, the relevance of political distrust as a precursor of far-right voting. This has important implications for our understanding of immigration politics and advances the existing literatures on party competition, political trust and far-right voting in several ways.

As scholars explore opportunities for democratic renewal, the potential of ballot structures to improve the quality of representation has been largely neglected. We argue that expressive ballots can improve the congruence of political preferences between voters and their vote choice and, subsequently, decrease parliamentary polarization. Recognizing that voters’ political preferences are more complex than a dichotomous party-vote allows, we propose the ‘assembly ballot’, which allows voters to choose their ‘ideal parliament’ by distributing 150 parliamentary seats across all participating parties. To assess the consequences of the assembly ballot for ideological congruence and parliamentary composition, we conducted a survey experiment with over 16,000 respondents around the 2017 Dutch parliamentary elections in which respondents cast a vote in a mock-election using the assembly ballot or a closed-list PR ballot. Results show that ideological congruence is, on average, significantly higher for voters voting with the assembly ballot for both the left–right dimension and the cultural dimension, while also producing a more centripetal, less polarized parliament.

EVENTS CONSTANTLY DRAW ATTENTION TO APPARENT IDEOlogical differences among the African states. Yet the precise nature of these differences is not always easy to discern, and still less obvious is the degree to which particular policies, internal or external, are grounded in some underlying articles of political faith. There are, however, occasions when the connexion is explicitly made, notably when there is a change of regime or a constitutional consolidation. A number of African countries have recently provided themselves with new constitutions. Unless one takes the view that this is pure ‘window-dressing’, the activity merits the attention not merely of the constitutional lawyer for whom constitutions are his daily bread but also of the political scientist who has other fish to fry. I propose therefore to look at four of the African countries: Madagascar and Algeria, where new constitutions have been in operation from 1976, and Nigeria and Ghana, where new constitutions are due to come into force in the second half of 1979. In the case of Ghana, I shall be referring to a draft still under consideration but also to an earlier Constitution, that of 1969. Although it was abrogated in 1972, when the military reintervened, many of its provisions and its underlying philosophy are being reasserted in the 1979 draft. My comments are concentrated on three matters: i) the basic character of the constitution; ii) the provisions relating to parties; iii) control over those in authority.