SINCE 1952, THAT IS SINCE THE SETTING UP OF THE FIRST European Community for Coal and Steel, there have been two views of European integration: the first regards and continues to regard European integration as the removal of state powers from the national administrations in specific sectors. This deliberately restrictive approach, with its overriding concern for efficiency, considers it is enough to limit the activities of national bureaucracies at European level. The view is that to a large extent one can do without the control and safeguard mechanisms which are usually built into the exercise of state power in all our member states. One eminent proponent of this view, Professor Ispen, an expert on German cotstitutional and European law, has described this form of integration, and the European Community it has produced, as an ad hoc association.

The second view is also based on removing the exercise of state power from the national administrations in certain restricted areas. However it is not satisfied with a technocratic and bureaucratic approach but is concerned to preserve hard-won rights in the area of the control and exercise of sovereignty. I am of course thinking here first of all of the democratic element. Those who belong to this school of thought can cite the text of the Treaties establishing the European Communities in support of their view: the Preamble to the ECSC Treaty refers to ’… the basis for a broader and deeper Community among peoples …’. The Preamble to the EEC Treaty speaks of laying ‘the foundations for an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe’.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WIDENING AND DEEPENING HAS been a recurrent theme since the foundation of the Community, when Britain refused to join in taking what the Schuman declaration, which launched the European Coal and Steel Community in May 1950, called ‘a first step in the federation of Europe’. When Britain sought membership in 1961, Jean Monnet, who had drafted the Schuman declaration, got his Action Committee for the United States of Europe to affirm that the British would be joining, not just the Community as it then stood, but ‘the economic and political union which is in the process of formation’; and the Committee called -for the establishment of a European Reserve Union as ‘the first step’ towards the goal of a European currency. Both the widening to include Britain and the deepening in the direction of a union were vetoed by President de Gaulle. But both projects outlasted him; and, when British membership was once again considered after his departure in 1969, the French government devised the formulation that widening must be accompanied by ‘completion’ and ‘deepening’.

THE PUBLIC REACTION OF WESTERN GOVERNMENTS AND commentators to the suspension of the electoral process in Algeria following President Chadli's resignation on 11 January was profoundly mixed. Relief at the fact that Algeria was not about to become ‘a second Iran’ very quickly gave way to disapproval of the manner in which this prospect had been conjured away at the last moment, as numerous leader writers in London and Paris and no doubt elsewhere indulged themselves in vigorous criticism of what they had not hesitated to call a ‘military coup’.

THE ABORTIVE COUP IN VENEZUELA, ON 4 FEBRUARY 1992, came at first sight in a very surprising place and at a very surprising time. Venezuela has enjoyed uninterrupted democratic rule since 1958; the last serious attempted coup was as long ago as 1962. Moreover, many Latin American countries whose experience of military rule was much more recent, have moved in the direction of democracy during the last few years. Textbooks which discussed and sought to explain Latin America's recent move toward democracy have only recently been published. Do Latin Americanists now need to start rehearsing their after-the-fact explanations for a new series of democratic breakdowns? The decision by President Fujimori in Peru to close his national Congress in April 1992 might suggest that the Venezuelan case is by no means isolated.

THE MOST SURPRISING BENEFICIARY OF A SERIES OF upsets in European elections which have shaken established political forces is probably the Lega Nord (Northern League) which wants to make the north of Italy effectively self-governing within a radically decentralized Italian state. In the Italian general election of 5 – 6 April 1992, its national vote rose from 0.5 to 8.7 per cent making it Italy's fourth largest party, while in the north it lies second behind the ruling Christian Democrats. The 3,394,917 votes which it has amassed represents a serious challenge to over a century of centralized rule in which before, during, and after the fascist period, consistent efforts were made to create a single nation, with uniform traditions and laws, out of diverse regions of the Italian peninsula. The League message is one which appeals to a range of social groups who feel that their interests are no longer served by a blocked political system unable to correct serious abuses in Italian public life. Despite warnings of chaos and instability if the Christian Dcmocrats and smaller governing parties were not given enough seats to form a new coalition, exasperated voters were prepared to reject existing arrangements.

THIS ARTICLE COMPARES THE US AND BRITISH EXPERIENCE OF privatization policies. In both countries there is no ‘proof’ that privatization has led to any empirically measurable benefit, or that the new structures are necessarily more consumer-oriented. First the perceived need for change in the public sector is explored, outlining the dynamic provided by the New Right. Next the importance of managerial and professional power to this process of change is explained, before the role of privatization as a ‘cutting edge’ used by liberal/conservative governments (that is governments conventionally labelled as conservative, but which have adopted ideologically liberal policies) is discussed. The paper concludes with an illustrative case study of the privatization of the British Electricity Supply Industry.