HUMAN RIGHTS HAVE RECENTLY ACQUIRED A NEW TOPICALITY. THERE are several reasons for this revival of public interest. One is the increasing ability of the ‘dissenters’ within the USSR and in the Soviet bloc to make their voices heard. At the same time black protest movements in Rhodesia and South Africa have achieved greater publicity for their claims. But another, more depressing reason for renewed attention to this to ic is the deterioration in the observation of human rights in a num er of third world countries, the most glaring example of which is Uganda. A third cause is the permanent consultation between East and West on the Helsinki ‘baskets’, notably on the basket dealing with human rights. Finally, a last and most important reason lies in the stancc taken by thc ncw President of the United States, who unlike hi3 predecessor, has explicitly stated that human rights are a matter of universal concern.

WHEN THE NEW GOVERNMENTS OF UNDERDEVELOPED AREAS supplanted colonial rule, many were optimistic that these governments could operate within a democratic framework. But these nascent governments drifted into authoritarian forms of political life as they faced the exigencies of self-rule. Representative institutions on the Western pattern broke down and were replaced by single-party arrangements headed by charismatic leaders. This form of government, in turn, has tended to give way to bureaucratic and military regimes.

IT IS SIGNIFICANT THAT THE FINAL ACT OF THE EUROPEAN SECURITY Conference, which was designed to promote the expansion of cultural exchanges, did not ay any special attention to the very institutions which are best fitted to achieve that expansion. The centres, which are only one instrument among many, could be an important stage in the development of cultural relations because they are probably the best-known and the most permanent form of cultural exchanges. But such was the lack of consensus among the signatories that no mention was made of them in the final Act. The debates were in fact marked by a violent disagreement between the USSR and France. Both advanced arguments which corresponded more to the ‘national’ cultural tradition than to the ideological cleavage in Europe today. Those who took part in the negotiations were aware of the abstruseness of the texts. They were therefore able to search out in the final Act the compromise which had been agreed on but which had been so watered down that it is difficult to see to what it refers. For example: ‘The participating States express their intention … to envisage other appropriate measures which would permit where necessary by mutual agreement among interested parties the facilitation of access to their respective cultural achievements in particular in the field of books’.

FROM 1967 UNTIL THE REFERENDUM, THE DEBATE ON THE COMMON Market in Britain produced a vast amount of literature devoted to the economic, political and social ramifications of joining. The main economic issues debated were the cost of entry and its effect on Britain's balance of payments, prices and the standard of living. The other problems centred around the tax system, including VAT, the flow of capital, unemployment, technological development, the value of the pound, the Community's agricultural policy, its regional policy, the volume of exports and labour mobility. In the social field the main concern was the standard of the social services, especially the National Health Service. In the political field debate centred around the undemocratic and bureaucratic nature of the EEC decision-making system; Britain's sovereignty, especially as regards the ability of Parliament to pursue independent economic, social and foreign policies; the connections between Britain and the Cornmon wealth, EFTA, the USA, Eastern Europe and developing countries. In addition the Treaty of Rome itself and the ideological, social and political nature of the Communities were debated.

THE CHANGE OF REGIME IN LISBON IN 1974 STIMULATED THE imagination of the far Left from Madrid to Santiago. For a brief period Lisbon was a political laboratory, attracting militants from every continent to test and analyse for future home consumption. What aroused this interest — unprecedented for a European upheaval since the Paris events of May 1968 — was a feeling that here was a rare example of history being made, not just by governments, but by the people themselves. How justified was this feeling, and how docs the Portuguese Revolution look now that it is, apparently, all over?

MANY COMMENTATORS HAVE DESCRIBED AND ANALYSED POLITICAL opositions in both democratic and authoritarian political systems. Scholars like Dahl, Lipset and Rokkan, Ionescu and Madariaga and Linz have advanced abroad taxonomies of oppositions. All seem to suffer from the difficulty in application to the specific political situation. Whether it be Dahl's categories of hegemony, polyarchy , near hegemony and near polyarchy ; Lipset and Rokkan's cleavages between church and state, landed estate and entrepreneur, employers and workers, and central and regional; or Ionescu and Madariaga's models which are based on the reasons an opposition is banned in a particular system, all have proved inadequate in describing the Portuguese opposition under Marcello Caetano. Even Linz's models of semi-opposition, alegal, and illegal opposition have failed to describe an opposition which is a combination of a semi-opposition and an alegal oposition. The object of this paper is to add information to the body of literature on oppositions within authoritarian systems and to provide a qualification to the Linz models, the semi-oppositionalegal opposition.