WHATH AS HAPPENED TO THE FRENCH SOCIALIST PARTY? ONCE ONE of the largest and most influential political parties in France, heir to a tradition dating back to the French Revolution, a party with deep roots in local and national politics, the SFIO decided to dissolve itselfin 1969 and to reconstitute a new socialist party. This new party is to be built on the foundations of the old SFIO in co-operation with a number of clubs, most notably the Convention des Institutions Républicaines (CIR), a federation of clubs recently emerged from the now defunct Federation of the Left (Fédération de la gaucbe démocrate et socialiste, FGDS).

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.

CAN PARLIAMENTARY INSTITUTIONS THRIVE IN COUNTRIES WITH little or no tradition in the habits of self-government? Is multiparty competition viable in states where compromise is not accepted as a political virtue? The questions are familiar and are asked whenever the advisability of exporting the Westminster model (or the Capitol Hill or Palais Bourbon model) is raised.

The proposition to be examined is that a parliamentary and party system was transplanted into an initially unfavourable environment and eventually acclimatized itself. The ecological difficulties are familiar; indeed, they form the substance of the debate about the export of systems. In the Third World, at the point of decolonization it involves the former colonial power bequeathing liberal-democratic institutions as a device for legitimizing the new native regime.

THAT POLITICAL PARTIES DID NOT HOLD A RESPECTABLE PLACE IN 18th-century American political theory was a reflection of the low place they were believed to hold in practice. Wherever the Americans looked, whether to the politics of Georgian England, their own provincial capitals or the republics of the historical past, they thought they saw in parties only a distracting and divisive force representing the claims of unbridled, seKsh, special interests. I do not intend here to try to penetrate the thickets of 18th-century politics either in England or in the American provinces. We long ago learned not to identify the Whigs and Tories of the 18th century with the highly developed British political parties of modern times, and not to imagine that England had a well-developed two-party system at the close of the 18th century or even during the first two decades of the 19th. Modern parties have grown up in response to (and in turn have helped to stimulate) the development of large electorates, and their institutional structures are in good measure an outgrowth of the efforts necessary to connect the parliamentary party and the mass party. The modern party is, in this respect, the disciplined product of regular party competition in the forum of public opinion. It also deals with legislative issues, over which the established parties differ.

1968 will remain in political history a memorable year, for at least two reasons. The first is of particular relevance to this chronicle of Government and Opposition. Not only was 1968 what could be called a highly politicized year, in the sense that the number and the pace of political events in most countries and continents were above average. But domestic political problems came to the fore (the French crisis, May 1968-April 1969, the crushing of the Czechoslovak revolution by the Soviet intervention) or ran parallel to some permanent international crisis (the possible impact on the Vietnam war of the change of American president, the transformation of the conflict between the Chinese and Soviet Communist Parties into an outright conflict between the two states). Moreover all these domestic political events had everywhere a common cause. They derived everywhere from the need for political modernization, with the special accent on participation, which has eluded both pluralistic-constitutional and communist states. The modern industrial or even post-industria1 society, seeking to adapt its politics to the rapid technological, economic and social changes, is in labour everywhere.