February 13th, 1692, is still remembered in the Western Highlands of Scotland. At 5 a.m. a blizzard was raging down the valley of Glencoe but there were soldiers about. They were two companies of the Argylls under Captain Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, peaceably billetted on the MacDonalds of Glencoe for the past two weeks. The MacDonalds, who had newly sworn allegiance to King William of Orange, had treated them well. Sacred bonds of hospitality had been forged – a reassuring sign that enmities were fading between MacDonalds and Campbells and between Highland supporters of the Stuarts and the new Edinburgh government of 1688. But that was illusion. Captain Campbell had received secret instructions the previous day. ‘Sir, You are hereby ordered to fall upon the rebels, the MacDonalds of Glencoe, and to put all to the sword under seventy… This you are to put in execution at five of the clock precisely… This is by the King's special command, for the good and safety of the country, that these miscreants be cut off root and branch…’ At five of the clock precisely the Argylls turned on their hosts. Almost forty MacDonalds were killed on the spot and many more, who scrambled away up the bleak walls of the glen, died of exposure in the blizzard. Crofts were burnt, cattle and goods carried off. That was the infamous Massacre of Glencoe. I shall start from here and gradually follow the moral questions which arise into the arena of politics at large.

Liberals have regularly associated tradition with constraint. They have spoken of the ‘force’ of tradition or of the ‘despotism’ of custom. Locke drew a contrast between those who let themselves be guided by ‘traditional customs and the fashion of the country’ and those who use their liberty to think for themselves. For John Stuart Mill ‘the love of liberty’ was antagonistic to ‘the sway of Custom’. Tradition and custom are represented by liberals in much the way Machiavelli represented fortuna, as forces which, unless repulsed by independent, free-thinking persons, would inevitably dominate whole societies and epochs. Mill held up China as the warning example. Custom had there become the court of ultimate appeal, the standard of justice, the argument which none could contemplate resisting. Custom had annihilated individuality and with it liberty, along with genuine history. The consequence was ‘stationariness’. Unless the modern pressure of opinion was resisted Europe would become another China. The chief interest of the history of mankind, Mill declared, was the contest between custom and the progressive principle. A free society is in liberal terms an open society.

With some notable exceptions, comparative research on the welfare state falls generally into one of two categories: qualitative and generally descriptive case studies and large-scale quantitative efforts at explanation. Case studies have progressed past the point of being essentially journalistic descriptions of the peculiarities of the policy development process or the policies of a particular society. It is nevertheless true that there has been little progress in moving beyond the case study approach towards building a theory about how and why societies make particular decisions about the priorities and organization of their social welfare efforts. On the other hand, while large-scale aggregate analysis yields theoretical statements about the character of ‘the welfare state’, those conclusions are often so general as to be ‘difficult to relate to… how particular substantive problems have been [and might be] handled.’

For at least fifteen years, Britain's industrial problems have been close to the centre of the political stage. A serious and debilitating illness first became chronic and is now, in the eyes of some observers, terminal. The symptoms of the most prominent patients, such as British Leyland, Rolls-Royce and British Steel, are matters of widespread public diagnosis and prescription. Opinions vary widely as to the role of government both in contributing to industrial decline and in promoting industrial recovery but few would deny that dealing with the problems of industry is a task of the highest priority. Nor is it surprising that successive governments have paid a great deal of attention to this task given the role of industry in the British economy and the importance of economic success politically.

The 1980 American national elections produced two highly salient and widely-discussed departures from past tradition. For the first time in forty-eight years, a previously elected incumbent president seeking re-election was defeated. At the same time the Republicans, the traditional minority party, seized control of the upper house. Both events figured heavily in discussions of the American electorate's supposed turn to the right. Much of this emphasis on ideological change may be misplaced. A third, although much less noted, departure from tradition also occurred in 1980: for the first time since 1932, real disposable per capita income declined in the year preceding a presidential election. The importance of such a decline for the electoral fate of an incumbent president has been well documented. Numerous previous studies have indicated a powerful and consistent impact of changes in economic conditions on voting behaviour in presidential elections. The influence of economic conditions on the fate of the president's party in House elections is also well-documented. In the case of Senate elections, however, the literature is curiously silent.

The United Kingdom's economy is relatively highly concentrated and the importance of decisions taken by very large firms for the economy as a whole encourages direct contacts between government and such firms. The scale and importance of such direct contacts has created a need within very large firms for a specialized capability to interpret the external political environment, and to relate that appreciation to the development of the firm's corporate strategy. A number of large firms in the United Kingdom have developed specialized government relations divisions in the last ten years. The titles of such divisions vary, but their most important function is the strategic co-ordination of the firm's relationships with government and other political actors.