THE MUNICH AGREEMENT HAS BEEN THE SUBJECT OF A VAST literature. There are only a few points which I should like briefly to make. The first is that for the Czechs the main horror of Munich was not that it deprived them of valuable territories, but that it was imposed on them by their allies. The Anglo-French ultimatum of September 1938 profoundly wounded President Beneš and the whole Czech nation. If they had had no friends at all, the Czechs might have fought alone and perished, or they might have surrendered, the tragedy would have been simple. But their false friends told them that if they resisted they would be in the wrong, they deprived them even of the chance of defending themselves. This was to have lasting effects on their national morale.

IN A RECENT ISSUE OF Government and Opposition AN ATTEMPT WAS made to answer at an abstract level the question, ‘Why Political Systems Change’. The aim of this article is more limited. It is a tentative preliminary attempt to explain why important changes took place in a particular political system – that of Czechoslovakia – in January 1968 and to examine the changes themselves and what remains of them in the wake of the Soviet intervention.

It must be emphasized straight away that the January changes in Czechoslovakia were not so sudden as their treatment by the western mass media perhaps implied. For something close to five years before the January reforms pluralistic developments could be discerned in Czechoslovakia. Limited though they were, they expressed themselves in the form of a less severely censored press, greater scope for interest group activity, a slight relaxation of detailed central party control over the National Assembly and local government, and in more debate within the ranks of the Communist Party.

THE PHRASE ‘SOCIOLOGY OF POLITICS’ UNMISTAKABLY INDICATES A sub-field, a subdivision of the overall field of sociology – like sociology of religion, sociology of leisure and the like. By saying sociology of politics we make clear that the framework, the approach or the focus of the inquiry is sociological.

The phrase ‘political sociology’ is, on the other hand, unclear. It may be used as a synonym for ‘sociology of politics’, but it may not. When saying political sociology the focus or the approach of the inquiry generally remains unspecified. Since political phenomena are a concern for many disciplines, this ambiguity turns out to be a serious drawback. This is particularly apparent in Europe, where many scholars share Maurice Duverger's view that ‘in a general way the two labels (political sociology and political science) are synonymous’. This view is very convenient, is particularly successful among European sociologists eager to expand to the detriment of political scientists, and for this very reason goes a long way towards explaining the persistent lag of political science in Europe.

MY STARTING POINT IS THE RATHER PLATITUDINOUS PROPOSITION that political science is a branch of scholarship which can be defined in terms of the activity studied but not in terms of the method adopted, which is to say that it is not a discipline like history or physics. To say that these subjects are disciplines is to indicate that historians and physicists are committed both to a certain method of acquiring data and to a certain mode of explanation. Because political scientists are not so committed they are inevitably involved in controversies about method and explanation, and the view I propose to discuss here is the view that, although several modes of explanation are open to students of politics, only the historical mode, and on a different level the philosophical mode, are appropriate. Those who hold this view lean heavily on the writings of Professor Michael Oakeshott and I shall begin with a very brief reference to Oakeshott's account of the main modes of experience and explanation. Subsequent sections will discuss the relevance of this account to students of politics, the nature of historical explanation, and the possibility of alternatives such as sociological explanation.

FOR THIRTY-TWO YEARS GENERAL FRANCO HAS REMAINED HEAD OF the Spanish State and has retained control over the political system which he fashioned during the Civil War. But once Franco is removed from the stage what will happen to the system?

The system depends upon the support of a number of groups in Spanish society which coalesced during the Civil War in support of the nationalist cause. These groups were united by a desire for victory over the Republic, but had long term conflicts of interest. Franco's own authority has been due to his skill in arbitrating between these competing elements and in welding them into a durable form of coalition government. Each group has been granted a stake in the regime; for example, conventions have grown up regulating the distribution of government offices between them. But Franco has never permitted any one of them to obtain a monopolistic position. By remaining relatively independent of all factions he has always been free to manoeuvre between the competing interests and to retain the initiative. At the same time, his system has benefited from the reluctance of all groups in the society to press their differences to the point where violence might be renewed.

CONTRARY TO EXPECTATIONS, THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SALAZAR FROM the political scene has not, in the short-run at least, led to a serious succession crisis in Portugal. A few weeks of hard but covert bargaining within the ruling circles culminated in the appointment by the President, Admiral Tomás of Dr Marcello Caetano as Prime Minister. Admiral Tomás was himself appointed by Salazar and chosen partly for his docility and innocuousness to replace the rebellious Craveiro Lopes in 1958; he has no power base of his own. Although in a fluid situation such as this his role has allowed him a greater latitude of choice than in normal circumstances, his decision probably reflected the balance of forces within the ruling circles. Caetano's background is typical of a whole generation of ‘counter-revolutionary’ monarchists, whose political formation matured within the matrix of the Portuguese Maurrassist movement, the integralismo Insitano. Somehow his monarchist allegiance, if not his authoritarian-corporatist convictions, waned as his career within the Estado Novo waxed. He was one of the young (in their twenties and thirties) integralista experts whose services were vital in Salazar's transformation of a mindless military dictatorship into a ‘respectable’ authoritarian regime.