Every schoolboy knows that ‘England does not love Coalitions’; yet the briefest acquaintance with the history of British politics in the present century would reveal that Britain has been governed by self-styled coalitions for more than a third of the period, although the ministries which can be regarded as coalitions for the purposes of this essay cover a much shorter span: the Asquith coalition (May 1915-December 1916); the Lloyd George coalitions of December 1916-December 1918, and December 1918-October 1922; the MacDonald national government (August 1931-September 1932), and the Churchill coalition (May 1940-May 1945). It is also the case that, on the fifteen occasions since 1943 when Gallup Polls have questioned the electorate about their views on coalition government, the proportion of those regarding such ministries as desirable has never fallen below 22 per cent. If these magnitudes are not evidence of love, at least it is clear that the electorate is on some occasions prepared to engage in mild flirtation, and their politicians in not too-infrequent marriages of convenience.

When Walter Bagehot first published his English Constitution in 1865, it was already possible to regard ‘Her Majesty’s Opposition’ as an established part of the constitution. Indeed, Bagehot regarded it as an essential concomitant of cabinet government, and remarked that a ‘critical opposition is the consequence of cabinet government’. Already the folklore of politics was full of apposite quotations from statesmen of the old school about the virtues of an opposition, although perhaps only Disraeli and Derby were prepared to accept the doctrine, attributed to George Tierney (1761-1830) that ‘the duty of an Opposition was very simple – it was to oppose everything and propose nothing’.

There is no need, perhaps, to repeat that as in other European countries, and especially France, but not in Great Britain and the United States, the most characteristic feature of Italy’s contemporary political life is the fact that within its liberal-democratic political system the main opposition is carried on by a party or parties which deny in principle the structure and purposes of the liberal-democratic state, and the values of electoral representation and its institutions. The interchange between government and opposition in countries like Great Britain and the United States is centred around the agreement between the parties to play fair and to acknowledge the rules of the parliamentary process as the permanent basis of the country’s political life. But the communist parties, and in the countries where they still exist the fascist or neo-fascist parties, reject these principles and proclaim that when they come to power they will replace them by forms of ‘direct’ or ‘all people’s’ democracies. This ideological argument about the respective merits of the purely political or parliamentary and the social-economic centralized forms of democracy is at the core of the doctrinal discussion between the communists and the neo-fascist parties, and the other Italian parties.

The elections which were held on 23 May 1965 will doubtless prove to be a watershed in Belgian politics, as were those of 14 October 1894, in which universal suffrage, tempered by the use of the plural vote, was first put into practice, and those of 16 November 1919 in which universal suffrage, with the exception of most women, was first fully introduced.

In 1965 and 1966 Africa and India shared once again the adversity of widespread famine in their respective areas. A Commonwealth initiative by Britain, Canada, and Australia – designed to cope with aspects of the famine problem – was announced early in January 1966. And the United States launched a programme of food aid for the areas. Such rescue operations were crucial under the pressure of an emergency. What persisted after the worst was over was the basic vulnerability of such areas as India and Africa to the whims of their climates.

There is a standing temptation, at least in Britain and the United States, to equate ‘opposition’ with ‘alternative government’. Politics is seen as something like cricket, one team batting, another fielding. When the last batsman is out, the other side is ready immediately to take its place. This preoccupation tends to prevent English students of politics from recognizing the many forms that opposition may take in countries where the game of politics is played according to different rules. Consequently, they often fail to understand other political systems. One such system exists no farther away than the other side of the English Channel. Only fitfully and intermittently has France ever possessed an alternative government, ready to take over smoothly from the one in power. Changes of government have usually been either reshuffles within coalitions—plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose—or complete changes of regime. When the regimes become more authoritarian opposition manifests itself in other ways. This article seeks to show that in the first seven years of the Fifth Republic the Conseil d’État has played an opposition role. Such a possibility becomes more credible against the background of history.

Latin America is a continent of underdeveloped countries, by any criteria. A terminological discussion as to whether they are underdeveloped or developing would be quite irrelevant. The fact is that Latin America has an explosive population expansion, a low educational level, low health standards, a low life expectancy, poor work conditions, a small middle class, problems of national integration, a low level of industrialization, low per capita income and GNP, low development of agricultural and fishing resources, low consumption of mechanical and industrial energy and excessive expansion of the commercial sector, not to mention the character of the political situation and its consequences. In these countries the majority of the people live in very poor conditions, under a traditional social structure of a few ‘haves’ and a large number of ‘have-nots’.

Imperial Germany had a monopolistic elite which managed to establish and uphold, with the assistance of an authoritarian welfare state, the apparent paradox of an industrial feudal society. Members of this elite held many of the leading positions in German society themselves, but others they passed into strange, if safely controlled hands. The monopoly broke along with the political system of Imperial Germany. But the memory of—and at times nostalgia for— the masters of the monopoly, whose passing turned out to be a long process, followed their surviving servants throughout the Weimar Republic. In any case, no distinct new political class emerged before that created by the National Socialist leadership clique and this was, once again, if in a more precarious version, monopolistic. East German society has followed in this tradition in its own, apparently similar, although substantively peculiar, manner. Moreover, there can be no doubt that these traditions reverberate in West German society as well; not even total defeat produces a social tabula rasa. But two features characteristic of traditional German elites are now absent: first, the monopoly of one elite, or indeed the claim to it; and secondly, the nostalgic memory which the leadership groups of the Weimar Republic had of such a monopoly.