The relative importance that political parties attach to the socio-economic and religious issue dimensions can be determined by the kinds of partners they seek in order to form government coalitions. When political parties can be classified as secular left, secular right, and religious centre parties, centre-left and centre-right coalitions show that the socio-economic dimension is the dominant one, and left-right coalitions indicate that the religious dimension predominates. Out of a total of 190 years of government coalitions that can be analysed in this way in ten countries from 1919 to 1979, the socio-economic dimension predominated eight times as frequently as the religious dimension. The much greater salience of the socio-economic dimension is found in all ten countries without striking variations during the entire period.

Since the beginning of the 1970s many scholars have predicted that the Italy of ‘centrifugal democracy’ would in the course of a few years become a ‘consociational democracy’. The return of the PCI to opposition in early 1979 and the ‘political turning’ decided by the party leadership in 1980 have disproved this prediction. This article maintains that a most important source of error in this prediction is to be found in the simplistic schema advanced to analyse the behaviour of the PCI. On the basis of data drawn from three surveys, the article examines the relations between members, militants, and leaders of the PCI from 1977 to the end of 1980.

Empirically estimated politico-economic models which study the interdependence between the economy and the polity are confronted with competing models using the hard test of ex ante forecasts. The politico-economic models in which the government is taken to act in a political framework (it wants to be reelected and to put its ideology into action) yield superior forecasts compared to the models in which a ‘benevolent dictator’ government directly reacts to macroeconomic conditions. These results suggest that political influences are indeed important and can be adequately analysed in the framework of politico-economic models.

This contribution is concerned with examining the appropriate methods for measuring corporatism in actual research designs. After a review of the main theoretical approaches to this question. a series of measures are derived from the paradigm of Winkler (1977) encompassing unity. order, nationalism and success and, more specifically the operating principles of co-operation. discipline. collectivity and mobilization. Research data from a study of managers in the United Kingdom are then presented and, on the basis of factor analysis, the original categories are reformulated in terms of control over markets. labour. international economic relationships and capital. and the operating principles of prices and incomes control. discipline, neo-mercantilism and control of investment strategy and economic resource location. More generally, too, in this area of study. a very close relationship between theoretical perspective and the selection of particular research methods is identified.

The Swedish-speaking minority in Finland has its origin in population movements from Sweden to Finland during the Middle Ages. The members of this minority do not identify themselves with Sweden; they define themselves as Swedish Finns. Before the general European national awakening the Swedish Finns were united neither in action nor in selfconsciousness. Today they possess a sense of unity and a shared minority identity despite the fact that there is great variation as regards their social position and geographic location.

Analysis of the spatial pattern of voting at elections, of the changing pattern between two elections, and of the correlates of these patterns (usually involving ecological assumptions) has traditionally involved using a percentaged statistic as the dependent variable. Thus, for example, attempts to account for the distribution of the Labour vote in Great Britain may use the percentage of 1) the electorate, 2) those who voted, or 3) those who voted for the two (Conservative and Labour) parties as the dependent variable in a series of ecological regressions (as in Miller, 1977). In countries such as Great Britain and the United States the dominance of two parties has meant that such analyses are relatively comprehensive. An analysis of the ecological correlates of percentage voting Democrat in the United States, for example, has as its complement an implicit analysis of the percentage voting Republican. Such inductions, however, are not readily made in multi-party situations.

Studies of attitudes towards the European Economic Community (EEC), among which the work of Wober (1981) is one of the most thorough recent examples, have concerned themselves mainly with adults. It is now almost a quarter of a century since the Treaty of Rome, and a new generation has grown up within that political context. The EEC Commission has for some two decades sent materials to schools in the various member countries in an effort ‘to keep Community citizens informed’ (EEC, 1977, 12). Since then (EEC, 1978), recommendations have beenmade for the more systematic study of the Community in schools by all pupils up to the age of 18. Yet no research appears to have been done to find out the impact, if any, of the ‘European idea’ among the young.

In his book Coalitions Theories and Cabinet Formation (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1973) De Swaan presents a new theory of coalition formation which is then tested against historical data. An important feature of De Swaan’s model is that the expected policy positions of all possible coalitions can be defined on a left-right policy scale. This note is intended to demonstrate that the theoretical assumptions of the model are in contradiction with some simple, real-world, non-pathological cases; such situations were nevertheless used by De Swaan to test his model. The reader who is not familiar with policy distance theory will find an extensive discussion and explanation in De Swaan’s book. To facilitate his task we used De Swaan’s notation.

In September 1981 Norway’s Social Democratic Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, was swept out of office by a resounding Conservative victory. Sweden, with an election less than a year away, has been lacking in executive continuity and stability ever since the bourgeois parties gained a parliamentary majority in 1976. It is somewhat of a paradox, then, that Denmark and Finland, previously so plagued by cabinet crises, now seem to portray the traditional picture of stable and dependable Scandinavian politics.