In Volume 1 Part 4, the figures on page 474 have been incorrectly printed. This leaf is offered as a replacement.

In 1953 the King of the Baganda entered into a political confrontation with the British Governor of Uganda, Sir Andrew Cohen. The issues at stake ranged from whether Uganda should be forcibly tied to Kenya and Tanganyika to form an East African federation dominated by white settlers to the more immediate issue concerning the limits of the Governor's authority over the King of the Baganda. The British finally decided to send the Kabaka away into exile in England. There thus started one of the most fascinating wrangles between an African tribal community and the Colonial Office in London. The Kabaka's people were plunged into grief, but not into a spirit of resignation. Debates, petitions, and demonstrations in favour of the Kabaka's return became part of the strategy of his people to get him back to his throne.

Anxiety about the conditions that promote stable, democratic political relations in the developing countries has been a major preoccupation of both politicians and academics for over a generation now. One manifestation of this concern is the emergence of a new field of inquiry — the study of development — in the social sciences. The conditions most often put forward for political democracy fall into two general and by no means unrelated categories — cultural institutions, or values, and economic development. Political sociologists generally focus on one category or the other. Some, like Harry Eckstein and S. M. Lipset, concentrate mainly on cultural variables, the ‘patterns of integration’ supposedly conducive to the development and maintenance of democratic or authoritarian polities. Those who focus upon economic growth seem to fall into two groups. One school of thought, well represented by Daniel Lerner, emphasizes that democracy, as we understand it, is the end product of the modernization process; and the implicit assumption is that it is the inevitable end product of this process. The other trend in modernization thought, represented most notably by Professor Barrington Moore, argues that political democracy is the result of only a certain type of modernization — namely, the Anglo-American bourgeois variety.

This article examines the results of the USSR Supreme Soviet elections held in June 1970, and presents an analysis of the patterns of drop-out and re-election among deputies to the previous Supreme Soviet, elected in June 1966.

This paper presents a theory of the competition of forces and the resolution of conflict over what system of government a country is to adopt. In scope it extends from the prospect of a novel system within a single state to the distribution of this system among all states; in method it considers political events as elements in a single continuous process, the culmination of which provides the resolution of the conflict. The process described in the paper — the sweep of a revolutionary ideology through resisting countries — is the analogue of the epidemic spread of a disease among a human population, a model which has been thoroughly studied.

I want to clarify the scientific status of contemporary political science. To do this, it is necessary to go into the question of what science means. I take it for granted that the samiliar charcterization of science as explanation is cssentially correct. But what does explanation mean?

In recent years a considerable amount of work has been done on spatial models of party competition.1 The usual approach has been to represent the position of a voter on a given issue or issues as a point in a space of one or more dimensions, the position of a party or candidate similarly, and then to try to build models based on the distribution of voter positions and the relative positions of voters and candidates, using various criteria for party goals and strategy – e.g. maximizing votes, or maximizing plurality.

'Party identification’ has been variously described: as an anchor; as constituting ‘psychological membership’ of, or ‘psychological identification’ with the party; and so on. The compilers of a recent collection of political attitude measures, published under the auspices of the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center (where most of the election analyses since 1952 have pivoted about the concept), even describe party identification as ‘probably the most important attitude variable in the field of political behavior’.² But the term itself and its connotations are misleading. Even where they do not suggest a borrowing from the technical vocabulary of psychoanalysisγ they tend to define away a set of questions that need to be answered: a preference for one party compared to what?; an intense preference, in what sense and compared to whom?4

In 1955 Professor H. L. A. Hart put forward the claim that ‘if there are any moral rights at all, it follows that there is at least one natural right, the equal right of all men to be free’, and this thesis and the arguments he adduces in its support have been thought sufficiently important for the article to be reprinted in a recent book of readings on political philosophy for students and general readers. The truth of Hart's thesis as stated is clearly meant to be independent of the moral stance of the asserter. Yet to my mind it is untenable as it stands, and could be modified only at the expense of taking up a particular moral position.

In 1955 Professor H. L. A. Hart put forward the claim that ‘if there are any moral rights at all, it follows that there is at least one natural right, the equal right of all men to be free’, and this thesis and the arguments he adduces in its support have been thought sufficiently important for the article to be reprinted in a recent book of readings on political philosophy for students and general readers. The truth of Hart's thesis as stated is clearly meant to be independent of the moral stance of the asserter. Yet to my mind it is untenable as it stands, and could be modified only at the expense of taking up a particular moral position.

England has long been fertile ground for scholars (usually American) concerned to locate the antecedents of stable and democratic government. More often than not they have stressed a particular configuration of attitudes as a basic support for such government. Evaluation of the consequences for the political system of these attitudes has frequently proceeded along very inferential and impressionistic lines, and has resulted in a benign view of the British political system.

England has long been fertile ground for scholars (usually American) concerned to locate the antecedents of stable and democratic government. More often than not they have stressed a particular configuration of attitudes as a basic support for such government. Evaluation of the consequences for the political system of these attitudes has frequently proceeded along very inferential and impressionistic lines, and has resulted in a benign view of the British political system.

James E. Alt ('Some Social and Political Correlates of County Borough Expenditures’ in British Journal of Political Science No. I, pp. 49–62) gives as his reasons for choosing to study county boroughs, ‘not only because of the fact that they are urban centres, the uniformity of their electoral procedure, the high level of competition (on terms of contested seats), their financial independence from other local authorities, and their service omnicompetence’. This is a standard explanation for the predominance in research on local government of the county borough to the neglect of other authorities. One positive gain of re-organization may be that future research will give a more rounded picture of local government performance and practice.

James E. Alt ('Some Social and Political Correlates of County Borough Expenditures’ in British Journal of Political Science No. I, pp. 49–62) gives as his reasons for choosing to study county boroughs, ‘not only because of the fact that they are urban centres, the uniformity of their electoral procedure, the high level of competition (on terms of contested seats), their financial independence from other local authorities, and their service omnicompetence’. This is a standard explanation for the predominance in research on local government of the county borough to the neglect of other authorities. One positive gain of re-organization may be that future research will give a more rounded picture of local government performance and practice.

I am grateful to Mr. Brown for quoting enough of my correspondence to necessitate my writing rather little at this point. A great deal of research done on the American states suggests that such variables as party control of legislatures do not explain variations in spending very well. In Britain the assumption is frequently made that each local authority has so many unique features that to attempt to make broad-scale comparisons is either useless or impossible. My article was written to suggest that neither of these notions should be applied uncritically, at least to some services provided by English and Welsh county boroughs.

I am grateful to Mr. Brown for quoting enough of my correspondence to necessitate my writing rather little at this point. A great deal of research done on the American states suggests that such variables as party control of legislatures do not explain variations in spending very well. In Britain the assumption is frequently made that each local authority has so many unique features that to attempt to make broad-scale comparisons is either useless or impossible. My article was written to suggest that neither of these notions should be applied uncritically, at least to some services provided by English and Welsh county boroughs.