There are few Chapters of the Federal Republic'S History that could be written without a prominent reference to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Since 1949 Christian Democratic chancellors have led German governments for no less than 37 years. Even when in opposition, the Christian Democrats - composed at the national level of the CDU and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU)1 - constituted more often than not the strongest parliamentary party group (Fraktion) in the Bundestag, such as after the federal elections of 1969, 1976 and 1980. Also at state level and in the Bundesrat, which represents the individual states (L-nder) in the national decision-making process, the Christian Democrats quite often held a dominant position justifying occasional remarks of a ‘CDU/CSU bias’ within the German party system.

In France the Last Decade has Witnessed a Notable Attempt at renewing the theory and practice of representative democracy. This has taken the form of a campaign, first launched in 1992, to tackle the significant under-representation of women in all of France's main arenas of elective representation by according constitutional status to the principle of parite. The campaign focused on the claim that, as one half of humankind, women in democratic polities should have the right to hold half of all elective offices:‘Femmes: moitie de la terre, moitie du pouvoire. Its supporters contended that the requirement that elective positions be held by equal numbers of men and women would revitalize French democracy, ushering in a new form of democratic polity: une democratie paritaire.

The European Union has undergone four successive rounds of enlargement since its inception in 1957. Currently, the EU finds itself in the midst of a new wave of enlargement, in the context of a simultaneous process of ‘deepening’ and ‘widening’. The enlargement process in progress, aims to incorporate the former communist countries on the eastern periphery of the Community. It is rather ironic, however, that Turkey, one of the earliest applicants for membership of the Community, is not included among the group of states, notably the four Visegrad countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) which enjoy a serious prospect of being admitted into the Community in the near future. This constitutes a paradoxical development in the sense that the claims of these countries for full EU membership are very recent, dating back to their liberation from communist rule in the aftermath of the revolutions of 1989.

The twentieth-fourth general election in Japan took Place on 25 June 2000, shortly after Yoshiro Mori had succeeded his predecessor, Keizo Obuchi, as interim prime minister. (Obuchi had died after being in a coma following a stroke.) He, in his turn, had succeeded Ryutaro Hashimoto to the prime ministership when Hashimoto had resigned after the government lost a considerable number of seats in the election for the upper house in 1998. Keizo Obuchi had managed to increase support for the government by passing two substantial sets of legislative measures to stimulate the economy in 1998 and 1999.

Recent theoretical discussion and Empirical Evidence have shown that national identity is important at both collective and individual levels. The issue of national identity is particularly relevant to the community of Hong Kong, which was reunited with the People's Republic of China (PRC) on 1 July 1997. The fact that 97 per cent of Hong Kong's population is Chinese does not guarantee the automatic development of a sense of national identity. Mutual understanding between the people of the two places is not as easy and natural as one might expect, for objective differences, such as those found in the political, legal and economic systems, make the ‘other’ more stranger than kin. Such difficulties were compounded by the phenomenon that, unlike in many former colonies, the people of Hong Kong did not abhor their outgoing British rulers; in fact many were quite nostalgic about the colonial period.

Malaysia's impact on World Politics Exceeds the usual level of inf luence expected of a small state in an international system. It has exercised a leadership role in the Commonwealth, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Non-aligned Movement and South-South Cooperation, and has tried to modify the agenda of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation through the East Asian Economic Caucus. In addition, Malaysia has championed selfdetermination, articulated an ‘Asian’ approach to the issues of human rights and democratization, and has contributed to international peace-keeping operations under the aegis of the United Nations, where it has also served as a non-permanent member of its Security Council and chaired its General Assembly. These achievements in themselves are sufficient to draw scholarly attention to Malaysia although, it must be admitted, that the arena of foreign policy itself is part of domestic politics. In this domain too, Malaysia has long been of interest to political scientists. For an ethnically divided society, Malaysia has maintained a remarkable record of political stability. This in turn had contributed to sustained development, and up till the advent in 1997 of the Asian financial crisis, Malaysia was poised to be the next newly-industrialized country in the Asia-Pacific.