The paper delineates the role of reporters in the coverage of governmental activities. The sources of news and their evaluation are emphasized. The paper investigates the mutual dependence of government officials and correspondents, the channels of information preferred by the latter, the manner in which they seek news, and their evaluation of the collaboration of government officials.

After interviewing most of the reporters of the Quebec government “galerie de la presse” during 1968–9, the author indicates that the correspondents prefer informal ways of uncovering news and do not think highly of information officers. In general, they look for partisan information rather than a formal presentation of administrative activities, and controversial subjects particularly are considered to be of special interest. In all, the role of the reporters may be more passive than active, but “their presence serves as a constant guarantee of responsible public information.”

Mr Andrew has chosen an important topic for discussion, one which embraces some of the most significant theoretical and practical issues in contemporary society (both capitalist and socialist). His article is concerned with the concept of technological rationality, considered in the light of the attitudes of Marx and Marcuse towards the nature of work. He lists a series of points on which their attitudes differ and claims that “These differences may be seen to derive from a single source, namely, that Marx was not an adherent of technological rationality and Marcuse is.” In what follows I would like to comment briefly on his argument and to indicate the results of some other recent contributions to this discussion.

Mr Leiss has taken exception to my contention that Marcuse espouses the doctrine of technological rationality whereas Marx does not. He asserts that a re-examination of the original sources will not support such a classification. Since Mr Leiss does not. provide any sources or reasons to indicate why he disagrees with my assertion that Marx was not an adherent of technological rationality, I shall briefly recapitulate the reasons for my assertion and then pass on to his primary concern, namely, that I failed to support my view that Marcuse believes technological progress towards automation is the embodiment of reason in history.

In The End of Liberalism, T. Lowi argues that interest-group liberalism, the public philosophy of the United States since the New Deal, is the result of the pluralist theory of political science. Lowi is against the new liberalism, which, according to him, is a system of “legalized privilege,” “shuts out the public,” and “impairs legitimacy.” In his efforts to eliminate this “neo-liberalism,” he has severely attacked the theory itself with a view to discredit it. But this article points out that some ideology which (a) glorifies organized groups while ignoring the unorganized ones, (b) believes in a natural harmony of their claims, and (c) invokes the public interest, has very little in common with the group theory of politics.

Lowi's anathema also ignores the fact that the New Deal, in “parceling out” political power to minorities, has just followed an old pattern of American politics. Coming from a liberal, his suggestions of restoring the sovereignty of the majority, a moralistic rule of law, and the abstractions of citizenship are politically naïve today.

I read with considerable interest Naomi Rosenbaum's article on the British in Cyprus in the December 1970 issue of this Journal. In her first footnote she refers to several publications including my own Cyprus: Conflict and Conciliation, 1954–58. She notes that I use Greek sources extensively and in the process cast a good deal of light on both Greek and Greek Cypriot perceptions and actions. This is so. As I made clear in my preface, the story is told as seen mainly through the eyes of the Greek “external decision-maker.” “Mainly,” however, is not synonymous with “exclusively.” The book also sheds light on the perceptions and actions of other parties to the Cyprus conflict.

A persistent peculiarity of Canadian politics is the variation in patterns of party support between federal and provincial elections. This variation is manifest in both numbers of seats won and lost and proportions of the popular vote. Its effect is best illustrated by the first indicator. In the eight federal elections between 1949 and 1968 there were always at least five provinces in which the party that won the largest number of seats did not hold the largest number of seats in the provincial legislature.

The impact of the local candidate in Canadian federal elections has received scant theoretical or empirical attention. Voting in Canada is usually accounted for in terms of party identification, party leader attraction, ethnicity, and religious affiliation. Possible local candidate influence on electoral outcomes is rarely considered systematically. An observer of British elections placed the average influence of the local candidate at about 10 per cent of the total vote. Morris Davis, in a study of a Halifax two-member constituency, states that the local candidate is responsible for at least 6 per cent of the vote

Readers of Thomas H. Greene's article, “Values and the Methodology of Political Science,” may have detected a theme of importance to political philosophy, a theme which, however, the author did not explicitly identify. Greene divided his essay into five parts: the first, third, and fifth parts contain what I believe to be an argument in favour of the reconciliation of social science and political philosophy; the second and fourth parts are devoted, in some measure, to a criticism of two contemporary political philosophers, Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss. Greene argues, in effect, that the reconciliation of political philosophy with social science will have taken place when political philosophy is understood within the categories of social science, specifically within “Robert Merton's categories of theoretical range” (p. 274). The truth of Greene's argument depends, in part at least, upon the correctness of his understanding of Voegelin and Strauss. Correlatively, his argument is vitiated to the extent that he has not understood what Voegelin and Strauss have written about politics and theory and why, on the basis of such writings, they object to social science. What the author does not consider, but which ought to be considered, is the possibility that if social scientists and political philosophers have little of creative import to say to each other, it may be for sound reasons.