The contribution made by the efforts of local party organizations to the results of elections is much disputed. Butler and Rose, writing on the 1959 General Election, whilst conceding that ‘In seats with a majority of a few hundreds it would be absurd to deny that local organizations can make all the difference to the result’, nevertheless conclude that‘… if all constituency electioneering were abandoned, the national outcome would probably be little altered.’ Similarly, J. W. Grove in his editor's preface to Constituency Electioneering in Britain by D. A. Kavanagh, says, ‘It is clear that although many candidates and party workers derive considerable personal psychic satisfaction from the campaign, their efforts have little if any effect on the outcome.’ On the other hand, however, the authors of a recent study of party organization in a London constituency during the election of 1964, though they confess that ‘… it is impossible for us to say to what degree Labour's victory was tied to the more effective and more efficient campaign organization which the party was able to put into the field’, state in conclusion, ‘… but our research strongly suggests that organization was an important influence in the 1964 election in Baron's Court’.

Discontent with the functioning of representative bodies is hardly new. Most of them were born and developed in the face of opposition denying their legitimacy and their feasibility. Most have lived amid persistent unfriendly attitudes, ranging from the total hostility of anti-democrats to the pessimistic assessments of such diverse commentators as Lord Bryce, Walter Lippmann, and Charles de Gaulle. Of particular interest today is the discontent with representative bodies expressed by the friends of democracy, the supporters of representative government, many of whom see in recent history a secular ‘decline of parliament’ and in prospect the imminent demise of representative bodies.

In The Civic Culture, perhaps the best known study of political culture, Almond and Verba say that ‘the relationship between political culture and political structure [is] one of the most significant researchable aspects of the problem of political stability and change’. I want to look at the way this relationship has been treated in one particular area, an area very relevant to questions of political stability and change in our own society; that is, in studies of political participation and apathy, especially research into the sense of political efficacy or competence. This is the area with which The Civic Culture itself is largely concerned, and it is now well established that individuals low in a sense of political efficacy tend to be apathetic about politics; indeed, Almond and Verba consider the sense of efficacy or competence to be a ‘key political attitude’.

The central question which this article attempts to raise is how we should understand the social structure that is emerging from the neo-colonial pattern of change in Africa, and what implications it has for politics. In its simplest form, the question is how far a stratification system is developing which is likely to make for class formation, class consciousness, and a politics of class struggle; or how far stratification can be contained within a predominantly peasant society, expressed politically in patron-client relationships.

This paper attempts to survey the present state of what I have called ‘mathematical political theory’. In a strict sense of theory’, this happens to be roughly coextensive with ‘political theory’, but the addition of the word ‘mathematical’ seems necessary (for the time being) to avoid confusion with the other usages of ‘political theory’: the exegesis of the outstanding political philosophers of the past is certainly not political theory; nor is most of what is now called ‘empirical political theory’. However, the scope of the survey is widened in a few places to include some related studies which, although they are not mathematical, are nevertheless ‘analytical’.

Masterson criticizes my argument concerning the incoherence of the principle of equality of opportunity on three grounds: (a) that I assume that ‘if a principle cannot be effected absolutely it must be discarded as a principle’ (p. 2), whereas he claims that so long as one can move in the direction of realizing the principle, then it can be a tenable working principle; (b) that I seem to believe that if a principle can be overruled by another principle in particular cases, it ceases to be a valid principle (p. 3); and (c) that I assume that a principle must apply to all cases, whereas he claims that a principle could be formulated so as not to apply to all cases (p. 5).

On one point my careless phrasing has led Charvet, and perhaps others, to misunderstand me. I want to remedy that and to comment on ‘state of nature’ theorizing and on formulating principles.

In ‘Support for Nation and Government among English Children’ (this Journal, Volume 1, pp. 25–48) Dennis, Lindberg and McCrone present extensive new evidence on British political socialization, which they associate with a general decline in support for the British system. So powerful is their interpretation of the evidence in relation to British stability, that there is a temptation to take it as the only logical consequence of the data reviewed. This Comment is intended to suggest that another interpretation is possible, that Britain may remain stable in spite of somewhat more critical attitudes among the young and indeed that such critical attitudes may contribute positively to stability.