“It appears that aggregation may be pushed much further in inventory analysis than has heretofore been generally felt justified.” Originating with P. G. Darling and confirmed by M. C. Lovell, this oft-quoted assertion has in large measure been responsible for what might be termed a “consensus” (albeit implicit) on the usefulness of aggregation in empirical inventory studies. Professors Eisner and Strotz carry this interpretation to its extreme by declaring that they “prefer, at the theoretical level, to disaggregate by motive rather than stage [of fabrication].”

The purpose of this study is to take a closer look at the role of the inventory components (i.e., finished goods, goods in process, and raw materials) in aggregate inventory behaviour. Paramount among the issues addressed is the Eisner-Strotz assertion: is it meaningful to speak (on a theoretical or empirical level) of motives for holding inventories without reference to the stages of fabrication?

Leadership succession in the Soviet Union has always had some impact on the composition of the ruling Communist party, which is otherwise determined normally by the force of social status. As the CPSU constitutes the pool from which the Soviet political elite is drawn, changes in that pool brought about by the succession of Gorbachev are bound to have implications for the future. Apparently unable at the beginning of his term to stem the intake of new members, Gorbachev has made dramatic use of expulsions to regulate the composition of the party. In their overall effect, his policies have shown a remarkable continuity with the Brezhnev period. This includes the enhancement of workers’ and peasants’ chances of being drawn into full-time political roles at the expense of white-collar persons. The net effect is likely to be a widening of the gap between the party and the intelligentsia, who are effectively excluded from membership in the political elite.

I wish to consider how industries exploiting natural resources may be expected to develop. It is not my purpose to consider their entire relation with the economy of which they form a part. Rather, I wish to examine the logic of their own changes in technology and technique in response to stimuli from the rest of the economy. In tracing this development, I shall stress the changing technology itself; the adjustment of property and tenure concepts; some aspects of location and transportation; and the impact of all these changes on industrial and market organization.

As an analytical technique for tracing these changes, I shall make use of a “stages of development” approach. It will be shown that most industries working natural resources may be said to be in one of three, roughly consecutive stages. The precise dating of the transitions between the stages is highly arbitrary, but this defect is unimportant since the chief function of the stages approach in its present context is to bring out the successive impacts on resource exploitation of two outside forces. The first of these is a mechanical, capital-using technology. The second is the application of science to “control” the resource, biological or mineral, in the same sense that agricultural and manufacturing industries have control over their processes.

In the model, stress is laid on the industries that today are still extracting raw materials from nature: fishing, hunting, logging, oil and gas, metals, and water. Agricultural activity also properly belongs with these industries. However, since agriculture has already passed well into the third stage, it is referred to chiefly for purposes of example and comparison. The farmer no longer “hunts” his cattle, nor “collects” wild rice or fruit.

Progress in the debate over rational deterrence has always depended on the ability of scholars to identify a body of evidence that would be appropriate for testing a wide range of propositions derived from the theory. Notwithstanding the tremendous amount of time and energy spent on producing a suitable list of cases, and several noteworthy surveys of the literature, cumulative knowledge about deterrence, both as a theory and as a strategy, remains elusive. It still is unclear whether decision makers have acted according to the logic derived from standard applications of the theory. Moreover, the most prominent testing strategy, originally designed by Paul Huth and Bruce Russett, and later criticized and revised by Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, continues to be plagued by ongoing disputes over methods and case listings. Although debates over the accuracy of historical accounts are constructive, lingering divisions over coding of deterrence successes and failures have become counterproductive, primarily because each side has produced evidence to support their interpretation of events. Very little effort, by comparison, has been directed towards (a) developing alternative testing strategies that lie outside the success/failure framework, or (b) looking at a wider range of propositions derived from the theory. This analysis attempts the task, analyzing in the aggregate 28 cases of superpower rivalry.

Proposals to strengthen regional representation in national institutions are premised on the assumption that representation of (regional) interests and accommodation of conflicts between competing interests are compatible roles, and most likely when national decision makers represent all contending interests. The article argues that the two roles are not necessarily compatible. The behaviour of MPs on the agriculture and transport committees in debating three bills during the 32nd Parliament shows considerable efforts at representation but much less at conflict management. The emergence of specialist interest groups promotes representational efforts by MPs but often at the expense of conflict management. Other factors affecting the joint occurrence of interest representation and interest accommodation include the individual and collective characteristics of members, their partisan incentives, and the diversity of the goals of their client groups.

Abstract. The outcome of the 2007 elections in France raises a number of questions about the current state of democracy in that country. To put these elections into perspective, we examine the evolution of the French party system and electorate throughout the Fifth Republic. We look first at the pattern of party electoral movement over time. Then we evaluate the partisan cycle with respect to certain equilibrium conditions, namely stability, competition, and democratic rule. Based on these patterns, we arrive at a classification of French national elections using the Michigan school's theoretical framework. A key conclusion is that, in general, these Fifth Republic elections are in disequilibrium and often fail to express the majority partisan will. The 2007 results, which represent a return of the traditional right, are examined against the Iowa forecasting model, to see if they depart from these troubling conclusions.

Résumé. Les résultats des élections de 2007 en France soulèvent une série de questions à propos de l'état de la démocratie dans ce pays. Afin de mettre ces élections en perspective, nous examinons l'évolution du système partisan et des inclinaisons idéologiques de l'électorat français sous la Cinquième République. Nous nous attardons d'abord au mouvement dans le temps des appuis partisans. Nous évaluons ensuite l'équilibre du cycle partisan en France sur la base de certaines conditions, à savoir la stabilité, la compétition et la gouverne démocratique. Cet exercice permet d'en arriver à une classification des élections nationales françaises inspirée du cadre théorique de l'école de Michigan. La conclusion principale de cette analyse est qu'en général, ces élections attestent d'un déséquilibre, car le plus souvent, elles n'expriment pas la volonté majoritaire de l'électorat. Les élections de 2007, marquées par un retour en force de la droite, sont enfin analysées à la lumière du modèle de prévision électorale dit «de l'Iowa» afin de vérifier si elles s'inscrivent ou non dans cette dynamique de déséquilibre.

Since the Second World War, a public policy on human rights has been put into place in Canada to control discrimination through human rights legislation and human rights commissions. This policy has changed over time, incorporating elements both of expansion in human rights protections and of restraint in the enforcement of the legislation. This study seeks to explain this change by examining the evolution of the policy in the province of Ontario, home of the oldest and largest commission in Canada. The conclusion drawn is that the evolution has been shaped largely by conflicting pressures for reform and restraint, reflecting an underlying conflict between rival liberal ethics which comes into play as consciousness grows of gaps between the principles and practice of rights.

The predominant view of Marx's communist society is that it is a form of Utopia in which there is complete social harmony, with no private space for individuals, no conflicts, and no politics. The author argues that this “orthodox” view is a misreading of Marx's works, especially of certain key early works. According to his interpretation, in Marx's communist society there is private space, private/particular interests, controversy, politics, and rights. The author discusses the major theoretical/ methodological errors of the “orthodox” interpretation, such as interpreting key statements by Marx at the wrong level of generality.

Be he economist, educator, or politician, the man who will say of any industrially advanced country today that it provides an excess of education is rare indeed. It is not that education is viewed as a good thing in itself, so good that it is virtually impossible to have too much of it. The pronouncements in favour of ever more education are supported above all by assertions concerning the economic value of education. Never before has there been so much education. Yet never before has there been so much talk of the shortages of trained people or of the need to expand education as an investment in the formation of human capital. In an Alice-in-Wonderland sort of way it seems that the more we have the greater the shortage. Shortage is “in,” along with the “affluent society.”

Here are two sciences—Philosophy and Political Economy—both bankrupt. The one went through the courts at least a hundred years ago and is now a cheery old bankrupt, bright and garrulous in old age. It talks most interestingly about its case, citing a long list of opinions and judgments that go back to the Greeks. The other bankrupt has just been thrown into the receiver's hands, still protesting angrily, still claiming that it has wonderful assets, that everything will be all right. It cites a wilderness, not of opinion, but of statistics and facts, all apparently bearing on nothing, gets confused, breaks down and cries—a very picture of senile collapse.

There are those who dislike metaphor; let us say the same thing in a plain way. Philosophy means the attempt to discover the ultimate nature of existence, of consciousness, of time and space. Has it found it? No. Is it going to? Not a chance of it. Where is it? Nowhere. Some people do not understand this. They read of the work of the Mayos and the Carrels and the Rutherfords and think that they are getting somewhere. In the philosophical sense it is not so. No ultimate dissection of the human body will ever find the human soul. The substitution of Rutherford's atom for Huxley's—replacing a solid particle infinitely small by a huge cavern empty except for centres of force—does not carry us one inch further in our quest of the final relations of mind and matter. Our greatest medical men know no more of the ultimate nature of consciousness than did a horse doctor in Asia Minor B.C. 500. Einstein, as far as the ultimate truth of space, time, and number goes, is no further on than Rodin's “Penseur”—his statue of the primitive man, buried in stubborn thought and trying, let us say, to think out whether two and two is four, or is five.

At a congress of the International Political Science Association held at The Hague in 1952, Professor Georges Langrod delivered a paper entitled “Local Government and Democracy,” subsequently published in the British journal Public Administration. The incisive logic and unorthodox conclusions of that paper seemed at the time to demolish, once for all, the justification of local representative government commonly found in much traditional liberal political theory. Mr. Keith Panter-Brick, facing a skilled prosecutor, and doing the best he could with a difficult case, replied in a later issue of the same journal. Dr. Leo Moulin next entered the discussion in defence of Langrod, and Panter-Brick wrote a second rejoinder. I felt that the contest, although conducted with flair by all parties, left far too many important questions unsettled. The object of this paper, however, is not to reopen points raised in dispute by the recent combatants; it is rather to suggest that the problems connected with the theory of local self-government ought to be approached in different terms.

The question to be considered refers to the relation between local self-government and democracy. By local self-government is meant that system of subordinate local authorities which has developed in many modern states. Each unit of local government in any system is assumed to possess the following characteristics: a given territory and population; an institutional structure for legislative, executive, or administrative purposes; a separate legal identity; a range of power and functions authorized by delegation from the appropriate central or intermediate legislature; and lastly, within the ambit of such delegation, autonomy—including fiscal autonomy—subject always, at least in the Anglo-American tradition, to the limitations of common law such as the test of reasonableness.

The role of interest groups in influencing policy decisions in Canada has received little close analysis, yet it is obviously important. Lobbying is inevitable when government regulations touch everyone's affairs; the only defence for those adversely affected is to seek to influence the government itself. Anti-combines legislation offers a particularly good example of this process because it is the case par excellence in which the interests of business, particularly big business, and those of the public, both as citizens concerned with freedom and as economically self-interested consumers, conflict. The 1960 amendments to the Canadian anti-combines legislation were implemented by a new government whose attitude on the combines question when it assumed office was not clear. Consequently those concerned with anti-combines questions set about converting the new government to their point of view. Fortunately for the researcher, the written submissions to the government on this question were tabled in the House of Commons, and of course the proceedings in Parliament and its committees are part of the public record. Consequently in this instance the general pattern of lobbying and its effects can be pieced together.

The study of politics in the United States today is something in size, content, and method unique in Western intellectual history. As Professor Pendleton Herring has recently said: “Political science as a subject of systematic enquiry started with Aristotle but as a profession it has won its greatest recognition in the United States and within our generation. One fact is clear: no other country in the world has so large, so well trained, so competent a profession dedicated to the teaching and analysis of government… . This profession … is now part of our national strength.” Not merely has the size of “the profession” grown so much since Aristotle's day, but the method has also markedly changed. American methods have consciously aspired to the modern concepts of natural science. There has been an advocacy of an integrated science of society, resting especially on concepts drawn from modem physics, biology, and psychology, and on a marked displacement of speculative philosophy and historical study. There now follow, from a sceptical foreigner, some reflections on the claims of Professor Herring. It is surely important for friends and neighbours to make some judgment on how a political science profession can become a “partof … national strength” and how relevant these new methods can be to the peculiar historical experience of the United States.

Media intrusion theory holds that the advent of electronic media, especially television, has accelerated or even precipitated party decline. This is evidently borne out by the declining membership of, and weakening support for, the two major Australian parties which each enthusiastically embraced new forms of political communication. However, “media intrusion” has arguably strengthened rather than weakened Canada's already frail brokerage parties. This different experience may be explained by the dissimilar legislative, federal and media environments in which Canadian and Australian political parties operate. Curiously, although the new forms of political communication have had different impacts, these have triggered changes in Australian political parties which have increased their resemblance to their Canadian counterparts.