THE CONFERENCE ON ‘THE EUROPEAN ALTERNATIVE’ ORGANIZED BY THE Research Committee on European Unification of the International Political Science Association, in collaboration with the European Commission and the Europcan Parliament, was held on 9, 10 and 11 June at the headquarters of the European Commission. It was attended by high oficials of the European Commission and Parliamcnt, the rapporteurs, and by tcams from ten Western universities, the contre-rapporteurs. Indeed, one of the original characteristics of the Conference, and of the work which it produced, was that for the first time the experts of the European Commission and the European Parliament put forward, in a joint research, their views on the problems with which they deal officially. These views have been analysed by experts from European universities working on the same project. The fact that the Conference was able, in each case and in general, to reach harmonious common conclusions is highly significant.

THE ENERGY POLICY OF A COUNTRY OR OF A GROUP OF COUNTRIES IS simply the optimal use of resources, which are limited although essential to all branches of the economy and to the well-being of the people. The volume of energy consumption at a given time is in direct relation to the degree of industrialization and the increase in the consumption of energy is in direct relation to the increase in overall demand, in other words, of the gross national product.

Group IV, Energy Policy, under the chairmanship of Mr John Pinder, agreed with the parallel conclusions of the reports of Mr de Bauw and Professor Guy de Carmoy on the causes and developments which led to the oil-crisis of 1973. Thc discussion concentrated therefore on the general, past and present, problems faced by a European Energy Policy.

FRANCE IS A COUNTRY IN WHICH PAST POLITICAL BATTLES ARE IN the forefront of the minds of those who are engaged in contemporary conflicts. The March 1977 elections in the 36,383 communes of metropolitan France could evoke memories of 1877 and 1947. The thirtieth anniversary of the Gaullist landslide of 1947 was directly concerned with local elections as such, while 1877 recalled the defeat of President MacMahon's attempt to impose his choice of government a century ago, which finally settled the struggle between Left and Right over the regime of the Third Republic. Anticipation that the regime established by General de Gaulle would be put to the searching test of a clash between the President and a Left-wing Assembly majority converted in some people's minds the March 1977 local clections into a prologue to this decisive national confrontation.

WESTERN EUROPEAN SOCIALISTS HAVE LONG BEEN PLAGUED BY THE existence of factions and cleavages within their party ranks. But it is quite consciously that Socialists defend internal party democracy as the best guardian against the abuses of arbitrary decision-making and bureaucratic fossilization. This aspect of party life continues to divide the Left movement into Socialist and Communist camps. The Socialists, however, believe that the means employed very much determine the nature of the end; that ‘if you have a revolution by a Bolshevik Party, you will end up with a Bolshevik society’. A Socialist Party therefore is not expected to bc homogeneous, but pluralistic - like the future Socialist society it seeks.

AS LONG AS FRANCO LIVED, ALL MILITARY, LEGAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE powers centred on his person. Regional autonomies were suppressed, unions outlawed and political parties banned on the metaphorically medical grounds that ‘Spain’ was historically addictive to the ‘demoliberal system of inorganic democracy’. But Admiral Carrero Blanco, Franco’s éminence grise, was assassinated on 20 December 1973. His death marked the burial of Franco’s plans to perpetuate the regime beyond his grave. Juan Carlos, son of Don Juan - the heir to Alfonso XIII’s throne - pledged at his inauguration in November 1975 to create ‘a real consensus of national concord’. Spain was to become a full member of Europe, ‘with all that this implies’. Neither pledge was attainable without at least a major reform, or at most a dismantling of the regime’s characteristic institutions: the National Movement and the state syndicates. Both were eventually accomplished by a de facto alliance between the monarch and all political forces in the country opposed to a maintenance of the status quo.

THE CANADIAN POLICE SYSTEM IS VERY MUCH A LAW UNTO ITSELF. It does not have the authoritarian traditions of European countries and their successors in Communist regimes. It does not have the same societal involvement of the Japanese and Chinese arrangements. Since Canadians, unlike their southern neighbours, believe it is possible to be whole without being powerful, it does not have the American style cop. It shares many of the attitudes and disciplines of the British, but in institutional terms they are vastly different from each other.

To some extent these institutional peculiarities are matters of history, although not all of them are. Before Confederation each area had its own specific policing characteristics depending upon the time of settlement, the racial origin of the settlers and the characteristics of the country. In the cast the Maritime provinces (as they were to become) largely relicd upon military and naval patrols with provost marshals in the garrison towns, with some nightwatchmen on the civilian side. The countryside was little policed, although some local militias existed who could be called out if neccssary.