The majority of studies of local government in England have tended to be either detailed summaries of the statutes that have shaped the structures and functions of local authorities, or else they have been essays upon debatable problems of local government. The heavy stress placed upon the importance of law, and upon the extent of central control, has meant that there have not been systematic attempts to look at local authorities as policy-making bodies in their own right. Instead it has been argued that local authorities act as ‘agents’ administering and executing policies the broad lines of which have been worked out by the Central Government.

Roberto Michels’ book Political Parties has come to be regarded as one of the classics of political sociology. Most recent studies of the internal government of parties, trade unions and pressure groups take it as their starting point: it influences the kind of questions that are asked and the concepts that are employed.

The ‘average’ obkom first secretary is likely to be Russian or Ukrainian by nationality and will certainly have a higher education, with a reasonable chance that this has been acquired through, or supplemented by, the Party's own educational system. He34 will be (1966) about fifty years old, having joined the Party around the age of twenty-five in the period 1939 to 1945. First secretary status is likely to have come to him in 1961 or since 1963 and there is a 6:4 chance that he is a full or candidate member of the Central Committee (with the likelihood greatly enhanced if he is first secretary of a Russian obkom in the RSFSR).

This paper is a preliminary exploration of a comparatively under-developed area of international relations. An inventory will be sketched which, it is suggested, includes beliefs about the modern Chinese political system that have been held in Britain in recent years. It is hoped that the provisional findings may help to inform future research strategies into perception and foreign policy.

John Charvet, in a recent article, charges various ‘attempts to make of equality a substantive principle of society’ with being ‘incoherent and self contradictory’ (p. 13). The unifying theme of Charvet's article is that certain contenders for equality do so in a manner that logically presupposes the assuming away of those elements of social life which entitle us to talk about individuals as ‘human beings at all, i.e. as beings possessing the attributes of humanity’ (p. 2). I wish to show how little justified these charges are.

Once upon a time, during the early 1960s, all undergraduate International Relations courses in the United Kingdom were deemed incomplete if they did not contain a number of lectures on the question of the relationship between a country's foreign policy and the shape, size and other attributes of its national political community. The lectures often evolved into a discussion of the relative advantages of possessing a large population, and whether or not this was an element in a state's power (as in the case of the Soviet Union) or of a state's weakness, and hence of its inherent inability to attain a wider range of desirable foreign policy goals (as in the case of India). The debate was usually fairly inconclusive.

The concept of ‘rules of the game’ which regulate behaviour in a variety of political situations is one which has only been fully elaborated in recent years. As yet, ‘there has been little research systematically investigating the character and consequences of rules of the game’, particularly in relation to the operation of local political systems.

At the time of going to press (November 1970) the Journal has proved successful in attracting articles but much less so in getting notes. I am sorry about this because one of the most important functions which we hoped the Journal would serve was that of improving communications within the discipline, especially in Britain. It is for that reason that we should like to give a generous amount of space for notes. But unless an editor is gifted with ESP he can hardly know that someone has had an idea or hit upon some new information suitable for publication in a note.