In August 1989 a Declaration of War On The State by Colombian drug traffickers and the attendant murder of a leading presidential candidate, Liberal Luis Carlos Galgn, seemed to threaten the foundations of democracy itself. Yet as the campaign leading up to the 1990 elections went forward under conditions of extraordinarily tight security, it also appeared that Colombia's two traditional parties would enter the next decade paradoxically still secure in the virtually monopolistic position within the domain of electoral politics that they had held for more than a century.

DURING ONE OF MY RECENT TALKS ABOUT THE MAIN problems in Hungary to foreign businessmen in the autumn of 1991, I was asked by a Japanese banker to enumerate the five most important issues that unite and divide Hungarians. It sounded like a simple assignment, and yet when I started to answer I came to realize that it was, in fact, a very difficult one. This was not because I was unable to list even ten issues; indeed, my problem was of a different sort. It was easy to talk about issues that were dividing the population, like Hungary's policies with respect to the market system, to privatization, to compensation for former property owners, and so forth. On the other hand, however, those issues which ostensibly unite the great majority of Hungarians — like democratization, freedom, national integrity, and human rights — are not necessarily understood by all to mean the same thing. There are stark differences of opinion on these issues; however, I added that this seemed quite normal and that it has not resulted in any sharp or violent confrontation.

‘EXTERNAL SOVEREIGNTY’ IS THE CONCERN OF THIS PAPER, AND THE extent to which it has been eroded, in substance if not in form, by the pressures of the modern world. The formal distinction between external sovereignty and internal sovereignty needs to be emphasized at the outset. Externally, sovereignty connotes equality of status between the states – the distinct and separate entities – which make up our international society. Internally, it connotes the exercise of supreme authority by those states within their individual territorial boundaries. From Bodin who, in De La République (1577), saw souveraineté as the exclusive right ‘to give lawes unto all and everie one of its . . . subjects and to receive none from them’ to the Permanent Court of International Justice which, in the Wimbledon Case (1922), held that the sovereign state ‘is subject to no other state and has full and exclusive powers within its jurisdiction without prejudice to the limits set by applicable law’, the concept of the sovereign state has implied both supremacy within and equality of status without.

When Castro addressed a mass rally in Havana on the thirteenth anniversary of his unsuccessful attempt to storm the Moncada barracks, he referred with some feeling to what he called the ‘traditional communist parties’ of Latin America, attacking them for opposing his strategy of armed struggle which he claimed was the only correct way to seize power. In doing this Castro underlined the uniqueness of the Cuban situation in Latin America, and the difkulties attendant upon any attempt at classifying the Cuban revolution within the customary framework of communism in that continent.

Latin American communist movements have a poor record as insurrectionary forces. Inview of the fierce suppression of communism by governments seeking an easy target at home, and approbation in Washington, it is perhaps not surprising that the 1935 uprising in Brazil stands almost alone in the history of communist attempts at seizing power by revolution in Latin America. But the communists add themselves to the weakness of their position. Their record of dealings with dictators, including of course Batista in Cuba, however theoretically justified in the long run, discredits them in the eyes of the powerful, and growing, radical, nationalist movements.

WE STARTED WRITING THIS LETTER ON 22 DECEMBER 1990, the day that Lech Walesa was sworn in before the Polish Sejm as the first President of Poland ever elected in national elections. Even during this memorable ceremony, some MPs could not hide their deep dissatisfaction. They shared with a large portion of intellectuals of the world the conviction that Mazowiecki, a journalist, would be a far better president for Poland than Walesa the shipyard - worker.

Having followed with some curiosity the Western coverage of the Polish elections, and of the political struggles that preceded it, we have the impression that the coverage was biased, and often misleading. Commentators repeated misleading stereotypes, identifying themselves with one side in the political conflict in Poland. They presented a black-and-white picture of the conflict. Tadeusz Mazoweicki symbolized stability, democracy, tolerance, open-mindedness, ‘true’ pluralism, etc.; while the ‘terrible Lech Walesa’ represented dictatorship, obscurantism, anti-Semitism, populism, and chaos. Subtle references were made to Walesa's working-class background, to his lack of poise and education. We find such journalistic bad manners outrageous.

THE ARGUMENT WE ARE ABOUT TO PRESENT UNDER THIS perhaps surprising title is based on a syllogism whose two premises are now visible to all in their sad reality.

The first premise is that because of their political organization in small and medium-sized sovereign states, the countries of Western Europe are losing the chance of adapting themselves independently to the requirements of the third industrial revolution. In this they are falling far behind the United States of America, a welfare state like them and belonging to their political culture – and Japan, whose different political culture makes the comparison less appropriate. Technological dependence brings with it lack of independence in all directions – and especially in military capacity which is now dominated by the two nuclear superpowers. The belated individual efforts of some of the European states to modernize their industries with their own means and with different socio-economic ideologies – conservative monetarism in Britain, socialist Keynesianism in France – have aggravated unemployment in the one and inflation in the other, and provoked much popular dissent against the central governments. The centralized nationalistic system became increasingly inadequate: for the problems are common ones that require common solutions; and as the problems are functional, they abhor ideological approaches.

FREQUENTLY IT HAPPENS IN HISTORY THAT REVOLUTION is followed by restoration or sometimes by reaction. The events that have convulsed Italy for the past two years can be described as a legal revolution. The Italian elections of 27 and 28 March can be seen as forms of restoration, or reaction, or continuation of revolution by other means. From 1992, the enthusiastic popular acclaim which accompanied the thundering clang of prison doors and the scandalous tumble of famous heads resulted in an unexpected final conclusion: the victory of an assorted coalition of rightist and moderate forces, the Freedom Alliance, led by the media magnate Silvio Berlusconi, which gained an absolute majority in the Chamber of Deputies and a qualified majority in the Senate. It was the most important Italian election since 1948, when, after the abolition of the monarchy, Stalinists attempted to seize power democratically.

When The Berlin Wall Came Down, on 10 November 1989, and communist regimes crumbled first in Central Europe, then in the Balkans, finally in the Soviet Union, we all hoped that a new era of peace and prosperity would begin. We knew it would be hard and painful for working democracies and effective market economies to be established in the former Warsaw Pact countries. But we believed that this could be achieved: and that we in the West could provide not only material help, but also the valuable example of the successful economic system practised by the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This system had finally triumphed over the rival, centrally-planned approach. Moreover, it was not just in Central and Eastern Europe that the open market economic system was prevailing, but all over the world. China was transforming its economy, with conspicuous success. The little dragons of East Asia were reaching economic standards close to those of OECD and their neighbours in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) were following in their wake. In Latin America new, open economic and trade policies were being brought in, notably in Mexico. The world-wide prospects had never looked better.

THE 1986 ELECTION WAS THE BEGINNING OF ‘COHABITATION’ and 1988 was the end of it — at least of the Fifth Republic's first experience of it. Cohabitation between the President and a Prime Minister who was his chief political adversary was to be the last great test of the stability and adaptability of the Fifth Republic's political institutions. It had been the dominant theme in 1986 just as the fearsome prospect of cohabitation between left-wing parliamentary majorities and previous presidents had been to the forefront in the parliamentary elections of 1978 and even 1973. It was as the President of cohabitation that FranGois Mitterrand won his extraordinary 1988 victory. The survival of presidential legitimacy against the onslaught of prime ministerial power is what the 1988 presidential election will be remembered for. This is the principal theme of this article.

RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY IS STILL IN A STATE OF FLUX. LIKE the other former republics of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation seeks to come to terms with being an independent state needing to define its national interests and foreign and security policy objectives.

The principal element in the new frame of reference for Moscow is the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union itself. For forty years, most of the territories controlled by Moscow were adjacent to territories protected by the United States, or else to China. The Russian Federation is now virtually surrounded by former Soviet republics, all with deep political, social and economic problems, and some of which are highly unstable and subject to violent civil conflicts. The territory of the Russian Federation itself, about 75 per cent of the territory of the former USSR with about 60 per cent of its population, is still not properly defined, given that significant sections of the borders are purely notional, and the degree of control that Moscow can exercise over the entire Federation is uncertain.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WIDENING AND DEEPENING HAS been a recurrent theme since the foundation of the Community, when Britain refused to join in taking what the Schuman declaration, which launched the European Coal and Steel Community in May 1950, called ‘a first step in the federation of Europe’. When Britain sought membership in 1961, Jean Monnet, who had drafted the Schuman declaration, got his Action Committee for the United States of Europe to affirm that the British would be joining, not just the Community as it then stood, but ‘the economic and political union which is in the process of formation’; and the Committee called -for the establishment of a European Reserve Union as ‘the first step’ towards the goal of a European currency. Both the widening to include Britain and the deepening in the direction of a union were vetoed by President de Gaulle. But both projects outlasted him; and, when British membership was once again considered after his departure in 1969, the French government devised the formulation that widening must be accompanied by ‘completion’ and ‘deepening’.

STRANGE AS IT MAY SEEM, ARGENTINIANS ARE SLOWLY getting accustomed to stability, both economic and political, and to a guarded optimism about their future. Not that optimism is difficult to come by in these shores. On the contrary, despite melancholy tango lyrics, national spirits are quite ready to rocket to the skies, only to fall with greater momentum from those heights at the next difficulty. What is new is not optimism, but its guarded, and I would say for once justified nature.

GEORGES SOREL FORMS AN APPROPRIATE SUBJECT FOR THIS JOURNAL, in that his writing can be seen as providing a justification for permanent opposition to the work of government. His name has been associated with the recent revival of anarcho-syndicalism, and at first sight he has much in common with the contemporary Left. Sorel was an outspoken critic of consensus politics, in which socialist leaders appeared to betray their principles and adjust themselves comfortably to the existing order. He believed real opposition could only find expression outside the political system, untainted by its shabby compromises. He was an opponent of ‘bourgeois culture’, and regarded it as his main achievement to have exposed its superficiality, particularly the utilitarian social science taught in the universities. He attacked materialist values, and looked for a revival of idealism and integrity in public life. He regarded proletarian violence as morally superior to the force which the democratic state attempted to conceal by fraud. Finally, he disliked bureaucracy, and hoped to see a society of producers’ workshops under the workers’ control.

IT IS A TRUISM TO STATE THAT ALL AGES ARE AGES OF TRANsition, and that the clash of tradition and experiment never ceases. Nevertheless, there are periods when history seems to collapse in on itself, and the time-span of change so contracts that revolution, not only political, becomes almost a norm. Since the Industrial Revolution many writers have dealt with the ideological reaction to the predicaments of rapid social change. J. S. Mill described the English public of his day as caught between two warring camps of the ‘Men of the Past’ and the ‘Men of the Present’, those who wish to return to the certainties of an earlier age, and those who wish to hasten change in the hope of a better future. Such a division is clearly simplistic, but it expresses the sense of bifurcation in society. ‘Past’ and ‘Present’ serve in this context as omnibus terms for multi-dimensional complexities which allow ample scope for individual selection, organization and evaluation.

TODAY, GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS OFTEN SEEM TO BE IN THE position of the legendary caliph Harun al Raschid, who went about in disguise among his people in order to find out what they really thought, since he could not trust his servants to tell him the truth. This story puts in a nutshell some systematic questions:

What kind of political information is circulating in society?

What are the information ‘needs’ of government and how can they be satisified?

How is information transformed or shaped in the political process, in society, in parliament, in government?

To what degree is political information dependant on the respective structure and distribution of legitimate power Herrschuftsorganisation?

What informal and organizational networks exist?

What is the impact of the mass media? How far, if at all, do our present theories on information processes explain reality?

How far is political information dependent on individual perception?

What processes of feedback exist and what influence do these feedback processes exercise on the content of information and decision-making?