DISSATISFACTION WITH ESTABLISHED MODES OF SCHOLARSHIP IS A contemporary manifestation common to all the social sciences in varying degrees. In the terminology of Thomas Kuhn, which in its widespread adoption seems in no small measure to have contribted to the new waves of methodological consciousness, the prevailing ‘paradigms’, which were largely consolidated in the 1950s, are being explicitly and often vehemently challenged. A burgeoning critical literature is readily apparent throughout the social sciences and, for that matter, beyond.

GENERAL ELECTIONS WERE HELD IN FRANCE ON 4 AND 11 MARCH 1973 for the renewal of the National Assembly which had been elected in June 1968. The interesting fact about them was that the public opinion polls had forecast some weeks before the date set for the elections that there was a very real possibility of a victory for the alliance concluded between the united socialists and communists, and some left-wing radicals, on a common platform of reforms and of government. This socialist-communist coalition did not, in fact, win, but the majority party's share fell from 372 to 275 seats, out of 487, while the total number of votes cast for it was less than that cast for the left.

WE LIVE IN A TERRORISTIC AGE. FEW, EVEN AMONG THE MOST favoured and secure, can fail to be haunted by the ugly sights and ghastly dreams of terroristic murder, massacre, and torture and the suffering of the innocents. Numerous international organizations and the mass media at least agree in characterizing our era as one ‘full of dismal terror’. There have been repeated calls for serious scientific study of the nature and causes of terrorism culminating in the recent decision of the UN General Assembly to establish a special committee for this purpose. Many students of politics will suspect that the creation of ‘study committees’ by such organizations as the UN and the Socialist International will simply serve to reflect the self-interest of the national participants, or that they will simply turn into propaganda exercises.

RECENT YEARS HAVE SEEN THE RECRUDESCENCE OF AN HISTORICAL dimension in comparative political studies, which is almost certainly a reflection of the increased interest in problems of political development that began to be seriously displayed from the early 1960s onwards. Among the more interesting contributions in this respect have been Lipset's, and, in particular, Rokkan's, working-out of a diachronic analysis of patterns of political cleavage and resulting party systems, the increasing focus on crises and sequences in political development, and, of course, Barrington Moore's historical analysis of the Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. All these approaches have in common an attempt to infuse the generalizing and typological approach so typical of the modern social sciences with a deeper historical appreciation of the particular contexts within which political change occurs.

THE DIVERSIFICATION IN THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION AND the growth of the political system have increased the number of instances of decision-making and intensified the relations between social and political forces. Parties and pressure groups are not enough in themselves to channel the interests, ideologies, and stresses, originating in the social system, into the political system. Nevertheless, during the last forty years, other, less familiar channels have broadened considerably and of these it is what we call the consultative councils which have made the greatest impact. So much has their importance grown in recent years that they must be considered as a mechanism of systemic interaction, comparable in weight to those of the pressure groups or parties. The consultative councils have, in fact, become a major cog in the political system and any attempt to exclude them is doomed to failure.