For South Africa 1994 was an Annus Mirabilis. Despite pre-election predictions of violent disruption, the country's first democratic general election took place in an atmosphere of reconciliation and hope for a future in which past injustice would be rectified and the ‘new South Africa’ welcomed back into the international community. For a brief moment — and, of course, it might not last as the inevitable constraints imposed by scarce resources, rising expectations and external pressures complicate decision making — South Africa appeared to have taken a major step towards Nelson Mandela's goal of a ‘nation united in diversity’. Certainly, one striking feature of the four-year transition was the willingness of the elites engaged in the negotiating process to accommodate each other as they sought to reach agreement on a new constitution in a spirit of ‘consensus and compromise’. And the same spirit is meant to inspire the day-to-day working of the Government of National Unity and Reconstruction (GNU) which, in effect, is a grand coalition of all the major talents.

The Unification of Germany — not as a Confederation as most DDR intellectuals and many West German leftists and Greenish citizens had hoped for but by means of the Anschluss of the GDR — was a daring venture: would the East Germans accept the new national state? The Anschluss by the ‘unconditional surrender’ of the East Germans entailed enormous costs. Destabilization of West German democracy and non-acceptance of democracy by the East Germans was always a latent danger.

During the Early 1990s the Term Social Market economy has been used rather loosely; this is not surprising since the theory is derived from a specifically German tradition of political economy with little or no resonance outside the Germanspeaking area. The leading thinkers in the genre are hardly known in English-speaking circles and most of their works remain untranslated.

The fundamental purpose of this article is to present this rich and diverse strand of thought to a non-German audience barely aware of its existence, to point out possibilities for developing the international aspects of such a theory, and to highlight policy issues concerning the post-cold war European and international orders which can be addressed from social market perspectives.

This Article is Addressed to the Qufstion Which Has recently caught the attention of scholars of the role of elites in promoting, or conversely impairing, democracy. It is based on the thesis that when elites are separate and relatively autonomous from the political elite which is in government, this promotes democracy. Conversely, when elites are closely connected, this impairs proper democratidelectoral procedures. The paper marshals illustrative-empirical support for this thesis from the relations between two elites in one Westem-style democracy: the religious elite and the political elite of government parties in Israel. It traces the intricate connections between religious leaders and the leaders of the government. It shows that these damage the freedom of elections, and enfeeble Israeli democracy.

Between The European Elections of June 1989 and those of June 1994, the voters had to digest an extraordinary diet of change. The cold war ended, leading to the unification of Germany and replacing one monolithic security problem by a diversity of problems, including, most agonizingly, Bosnia. The Soviet Union disintegrated. Recession brought unemployment above 10 per cent for the European Union as a whole. Many were bemused by the complexity of the Maastricht Treaty and the political conflicts engendered by some of its major elements. Foremost among these was the project for the single currency, promoted by France in order to anchor Germany yet more firmly in the Union. The idea of a ‘common defence’ as a backbone for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) also had this motivation.

Social Democratic Parties Across Europe Face adjustment problems. Given the electoral decline of almost every social democratic party, it is tempting for social scientists to pronounce such political parties as either in decay or even a thing of the past. There is little doubt that social democratic parties are searching for new concepts, ideas and policies. At the heart of the attempt to regain the political initiative is the debate over how to react not only to the challenges from the new social movements but also to the re-invigorated attack by liberals and conservatives on central social democratic policies: the welfare state and socioeconomicequality.