THERE ARE 518 MEMBERS OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT(MEPs). Each of the twelve member states of the EuropeanCommunity (EC) has a specific number of MEPs, based onpopulation. As one of the larger member states, the UnitedKingdom, along with France, Germany, and Italy, has 81repre sent at ives.

European Parliament (EP) elections are held every five yearsfor a fixed term. The Parliament is organized into blocs ofrepresentatives, which, in the traditional manner of multi-partyparliaments, span the ideological spectrum from left to right.There are continual adjustments in these coalitions, but generallythe 5 18 MEPs are divided into approximately ten groupings. The EP holds its plenary sessions in Strasbourg, and itsSecretariat is in Luxembourg. However, most of its substantivedeliberations are done by committees, which hold their sessions inBrussels. This, together with the ease of commuting andinherently greater appeal of Brussels, has made the Belgiancapital the usual reference point for the European Parliament,although the EP continues to have something akin to ageographical split personality.

Michael Oakeshott was one of this country's and one of this century's leading writers on politics, contributing both a series of incisive commentaries and a number of profoundly original essays to our understanding. Chiefly through his writings on Hobbes — many of which were collected in Hobbes on Civil Association (1975) — and through his two major sets of essays on original themes — published as Rationalism in Politics (1962) and On Human Conduc (1975) — Oakeshott secure1 established himself in the pantheon of great political theorists.2

WHEN ITS ARTICLES OF AGREEMENT WERE DRAWN UP IN 1944, the International Monetary Fund was seen as having two main functions: to oversee the operation of a system of fixed, but adjustable, exchange rates; and to promote the removal of payments restrictions on international trade. Over the years since then, despite the demise of the fixed exchange rate system and a steady decline in payments restrictions, the scope of the Fund's influence has grown. Why should this be?

In broad terms, the answer is to be found in the increasing integration of the world economy. As trade and investment flows have grown, so too have the concerns of the international community for good economic management in individual national economies. ‘Spill-over’ effects have grown in size and importance, and with them the need for a framework to regulate their consequences.

SINCE 1952, THAT IS SINCE THE SETTING UP OF THE FIRST European Community for Coal and Steel, there have been two views of European integration: the first regards and continues to regard European integration as the removal of state powers from the national administrations in specific sectors. This deliberately restrictive approach, with its overriding concern for efficiency, considers it is enough to limit the activities of national bureaucracies at European level. The view is that to a large extent one can do without the control and safeguard mechanisms which are usually built into the exercise of state power in all our member states. One eminent proponent of this view, Professor Ispen, an expert on German cotstitutional and European law, has described this form of integration, and the European Community it has produced, as an ad hoc association.

The second view is also based on removing the exercise of state power from the national administrations in certain restricted areas. However it is not satisfied with a technocratic and bureaucratic approach but is concerned to preserve hard-won rights in the area of the control and exercise of sovereignty. I am of course thinking here first of all of the democratic element. Those who belong to this school of thought can cite the text of the Treaties establishing the European Communities in support of their view: the Preamble to the ECSC Treaty refers to ’… the basis for a broader and deeper Community among peoples …’. The Preamble to the EEC Treaty speaks of laying ‘the foundations for an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe’.

THE BRITISH GENERAL ELECTION, HELD ON 9 APRIL 1992, resulted in a victory for the Conservatives, their fourth successive victory. This was the first occasion in Britain on which a single party had won four successive general elections since the Napoleonic era. At first sight, admittedly, this victory may not seem particularly striking. The Conservatives gained an overall majority of only 21 seats, the lowest Conservative overall majority this century, except for 1951, and the Conservative share of the vote in the United Kingdom — 41.9 per cent — is the lowest gained by any Conservative government this century, with the exception of 1922.

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’.

The Conclusions Reached at the meeting of the European Council in Maastricht, on 9 — 10 December 1991, on economic and monetary union and also on political union, form an impressive and complex whole, in which undertakings of major importance coexist with other more timid ones. A detailed analysis would overstep the limits of an article. Moreover, there are still some problems to be cleared up before the final drafts are agreed, even if the principal political decisions have already been taken. The remarks which I would like to submit here will therefore deal more with general questions, and I will limit myself to the more significant provisions of the Maastricht agreements.

A Great Deal of Macro-Sociological theory in Germany since Max Weber has been devoted to the inquiry into the 'special German road to development' and to the incompatability of developments in the economic and political sectors. Germany, after its first unification in 1871, developed quickly into an important economic power. In the late-nineteenth century Germany overtook Britain in economic strength and seemed to be second only to the United States. Britain, however, remained the unmatched model of development: it was, together with the United States, the only country which synchronized effectively the development towards democracy and towards modern capitalism. Even France — the second successful model in Europe — went through various breakdowns of its political development in 1830, 1848, 1870–71. Even later, threats of a breakdown of the constitutional parliamentary systems were latent.

THE PUBLIC REACTION OF WESTERN GOVERNMENTS AND commentators to the suspension of the electoral process in Algeria following President Chadli's resignation on 11 January was profoundly mixed. Relief at the fact that Algeria was not about to become ‘a second Iran’ very quickly gave way to disapproval of the manner in which this prospect had been conjured away at the last moment, as numerous leader writers in London and Paris and no doubt elsewhere indulged themselves in vigorous criticism of what they had not hesitated to call a ‘military coup’.

THE ISSUES OF DEFENCE AND EUROPE DID NOT PLAY A prominent part in the UK general election campaign of March-April 1992. One of the reasons was that public opinion polls throughout the campaign indicated consistently that domestic issues came first with the electorate. Secondly, with the disappearance of the Soviet threat and the restoration of consensus between the parties on nuclear weapons, defence was not a sufficiently contentious subject for it to be a central topic in the campaign. It was no surprise, however, that the Conservative Manifesto claimed that defence would not be safe in the hands of the opposition parties and that their policies would result in huge job losses in the defence sector.

THE ABORTIVE COUP IN VENEZUELA, ON 4 FEBRUARY 1992, came at first sight in a very surprising place and at a very surprising time. Venezuela has enjoyed uninterrupted democratic rule since 1958; the last serious attempted coup was as long ago as 1962. Moreover, many Latin American countries whose experience of military rule was much more recent, have moved in the direction of democracy during the last few years. Textbooks which discussed and sought to explain Latin America's recent move toward democracy have only recently been published. Do Latin Americanists now need to start rehearsing their after-the-fact explanations for a new series of democratic breakdowns? The decision by President Fujimori in Peru to close his national Congress in April 1992 might suggest that the Venezuelan case is by no means isolated.

If There is any teaching of MARX from which the leadership of Vietnam might bitterly demur, it would be his claim that society raises only such problems as it is ready to solve. Although this magisterial myth provided solace to generations of revolutionaries (who could conclude from it, 'We are, therefore we will prevail'), the Communist Party of Vietnam has been buffeted since its victorious national reunification of 1975 – 76 by challenges from within and without for which it was not prepared. As a result, the politics of Vietnam for the past fifteen years has been more a response to crisis rather than the execution of a political vision. Reform and international openness have become essential parts of these efforts at coping with crisis, but they have been strongly tethered to the need to preserve order and to prevent larger crises.

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.

THESE NOTES TRY TO ASSESS THE DEEPER CAUSES OF Mr Major's electoral victory in the light of the Silent Revolution which is rapidly changing statecraft now all over the world. It is a lucky coincidence that the coming to power of Mr Major's own government takes place at the same time as the beginning of a new era in the organization of human affairs — the ‘no-more-world-wars’ era and its pragmatic spirit. Thus the readjustments and the innovations which the new British government may set in motion for the recovery of Britain will fit into the global changes already taking place. This, of course, assuming that the world policy-makers take up and strengthen the positive tendencies open now to the world, and the British policy-makers actively coordinate their national efforts with the overall transnational transformation in course, and indeed synchronically make Britain's impact on them. For every little bell tolls now for the world's thee, and the British bell sounds loudly enough.

ECONOMIC HISTORY IS FAR REMOVED FROM PRECISE SCIENCE and cannot offer an unambiguous explanation of the initiation, pace and causes of rapid industrial growth. Nevertheless, few economic historians would disagree that the pattern of growth is not random; and that in evaluating it, technological innovation must be a central element.

The landmarks of industrial development are conventionally thought of in terms of science and technology. From the adoption of the stirrup and the plough, which heralded the feudal age in Europe; to the spread of the silicon chip and the microprocessor, which lie at the core of the emergent IT economy, the development of society can be charted in terms of technological change. And just as the analysis of technological change has become one of the dominant tools of the economic historian, so ‘futurology’ is centred around trajectories of innovation. Over the next century changes are projected which are just as profound as those experienced since 1890. The world of 2090 will be different, and while the fundamental political differences may be unpredictable, there is a presumption that it will be technologically very different from the present. It is appropriate that popular speculation about future society is termed not ‘future fiction’ but ‘science fiction’.

WELFARE STATES ARE NATIONAL STATES, AND IN EVERY country welfare is a national concern, circumscribed by the nation's borders and reserved for its residents alone. In the course of centuries, these states have emerged from and against one another, in mutual competition, and in the past century this process of state formation in the West went in tandem with the collectivization of care. The welfare state is the national state in its latest phase. It may be succeeded by another stage which we may eventually see.

THIS ARTICLE ADDRESSES THE PROBLEM OF NORWEGIAN membership in the EC. Why is it so difficult for Norway to follow in the tracks of Sweden and Finland, and for that matter the rest of Western Europe?

The changes on the European continent since the collapse of the East-West divide have also altered the political agenda in the Scandinavian countries. The ambitions of the EC-internal market as well as the Single European Act speeded up a discussion of how Finland, Norway and Sweden should position themselves in order not to lose out economically and become marginalized politically. In Norway, the traumatic EC debate in 1972 had split the country, and the parties, into two camps, resulting in the rejection of EC membership by 53 per cent of the electorate. Since then, the issue has been absent from political debate. In Finland and Sweden the official rationale for not discussing the issue disappeared simultaneously with the regimes in Eastern Europe, suddenly pushing the topic onto the political agenda, causing an abrupt change in Swedish EC policy.

THE MOST SURPRISING BENEFICIARY OF A SERIES OF upsets in European elections which have shaken established political forces is probably the Lega Nord (Northern League) which wants to make the north of Italy effectively self-governing within a radically decentralized Italian state. In the Italian general election of 5 – 6 April 1992, its national vote rose from 0.5 to 8.7 per cent making it Italy's fourth largest party, while in the north it lies second behind the ruling Christian Democrats. The 3,394,917 votes which it has amassed represents a serious challenge to over a century of centralized rule in which before, during, and after the fascist period, consistent efforts were made to create a single nation, with uniform traditions and laws, out of diverse regions of the Italian peninsula. The League message is one which appeals to a range of social groups who feel that their interests are no longer served by a blocked political system unable to correct serious abuses in Italian public life. Despite warnings of chaos and instability if the Christian Dcmocrats and smaller governing parties were not given enough seats to form a new coalition, exasperated voters were prepared to reject existing arrangements.