INDIVIDUAL DECISIONS ARE TAKEN BY EACH INDIVIDUAL FOR HIMSELF (regardless of whether he is inner- or other-directed). Group decisions imply that decisions are taken by a ‘concrete’ group, i.e. a face-to-face interacting number of individuals which may thus be said to share (partake) such decisions. Collective decisions are hardly amenable to a precise definition; but they are generally understood to mean decisions taken by the ‘many’. We then have collectivized decisions. Collective and collectivized decisions may be said to share the property of not being, in any meaningful sense, individual decisions. Even so, collectivized decisions are very different from all the others. Individual, group, and collective decisions all make reference to an actor, to who makes the decision. Collectivized decisions are, instead, decisions that apply to, and are enforced upon, a collectivity regardless of whether they are taken by the one, the few, or the many. The defining criterion no longer is who makes the decision, but its scope: whoever does the deciding decides or all.

EXTERNAL POLICY HAS HAD QUITE A LOT TO DO WITH THE establishment of the Communities. The cold war was in fill1 swing when the first of them, the European Coal and Steel Community, came into operation in 1952. The projected European Defence Community was an attempt to find a European response to the Soviet military threat which was the obsession of the early 1950s. A few years later, the trouble in which the European countries found themselves - over oil afier the Suez crisis, at the end of 1956, undoubtedly served to speed up the negotiation and conclusion of the Treaties of Rome. However, this political background did not affect the actual content of the Common Market Treaty, which as regards external relations is quite on traditional lines. It keeps the assertion of the Community's external identity and responsibilities very definitely subordinated to its internal development, that is, to the achievement of economic integration.

THE RESULT OF THE FEDERAL ELECTION OF NOVEMBER I972 APPEARED to many as a turning point in the post-war history of the German Social Democratic Party. For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic, the SPD. was the largest party winning 45.9 per cent of the list votes (230 seats in the Bundestag) to the CDU/CSU's 44.8 per cent (225 seats). In 1957 the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union had enjoyed a lead of 18.4 per cent over the SPD. This lead was steadily whittled away after the party adopted the moderate Bad Godesberg Programme in 1959. The SPD gained 4.4 per cent in 1961,3. 1 per cent in 1965, 3.4 per cent in 1969 and 3.2 per cent in 1972

‘INFLATION IS ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE A MONETARY PHENOMENON resulting from and accompanied by a rise in the quantity of money relative to output.’ ‘We face a new inflationary problem. Its origins are social and political, not economic or monetary.’ These two quotations summarize briefly, but well, the two most widely held yet sharply conflicting views on the causes of inflation. Which view is correct? Is it possible, perhaps, that.in a paradoxical sense both are? These are the central questions which are addressed in this paper. First an analytical framework is presented within which it is possible to pose the major relevant questions about the causes of inflation, concentrating articularly on the possible interactions between political, soci af and economic factors. That fiamework is then used to present the two most commonly advanced and yet sharply distinct views about the causes of inflation and, by implication, what would have to be done to stop it. These two views are then evaluated on the basis of the empirical evidence. This evaluation is more impressionistic and historical than econometric and technical though the two approaches do in fact tell the same story. Finally, the policy implications which follow from the analysis are examined. This policy evaluation is conducted in broad political, rather than narrowly technical, economic terms.

IBN KHALDUN, LIKE EMILE DURKHEIM, IS PRIMARILY A THEORIST OF social cohesion. His central problem is - what is it that keeps men together in society? What is it that leads them to idendy with a sacid group, to accept and observe its norms, to subordinate their own individual interests to it, in some measure to accept the authority of its leaders, to think its thoughts and to internalize its aims? This is a question which sociologists, moralists and political osophers share. One of the interesting traits of Ibn Khaldun owever is the extent to which he is a sociologist rather than a moralist: modern sociologists may preach Wertfreiheit, he ractised it. Even when, as a kind of Maghrebin Machiavelli, he offers advice to princes, it is basically technical advice on points of detail, or on the wisdom of knowing things for what they are: but when it comes to the basic features of the social system, he indulges in no preaching. No advice is offered to the social cosmos as to how it should comport itself. Things are as they are. The thinker's job is to understand them, not to change them. Marx's contrary opinion would have astonished Ibn Khaldun. In this sense, Ibn Khaldun is more positivistic than Durkheim, whose thought is far more often at the service of values and of the concern with social renovation.