IN RECENT YEARS IT HAS BECOME A COMMONPLACE OF BOTH academic and financial discourse that we are living in a new economic and political world in which financial globalization is destroying the economic autonomy of individual states and hence the foundations of the nation-state as the focus of political authority and the possibilities of politics. Of course, other threats to the nation-state exist — most crucially, the inability to reconcile its virtual monopoly of political authority, and the constraints it imposes on cooperation between states, with ecological causality — but it is the macro-economic crisis of the state which has captured most attention. Undoubtedly, the contemporary international financial environment makes macro-economic management an extremely difficult practical task for many states. With the daily value of foreign exchange transactions amounting to over $1200 billion, governments run the perpetual risk that their choices, or indeed those of other governments, will precipitate an unsustainable rise or fall in the value of their currency. At the same time they must, if they wish to borrow in international capital markets, pursue policies which will secure, and retain, the confidence of international investors. This, of course, creates a very considerable incentive for governments to choose policies which, in both fiscal and monetary terms, prioritize low inflation over growth and employment.

FOR SOME YEARS NOW, WESTERN ACADEMICS AND POLICY-MAKERS HAVE embraced the cause of democratic reform in Central and Eastern Europe. To take but one well-known example, President Clinton in the 1994 State of the Union Address cited the absence of war among democracies as a reason for promotion of democracy around the world. Assistance to former Warsaw Pact and newly independent states has been made conditional to varying degrees on the acceptance of democratic change. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the European Union, the United States Agency for International Development and associated non-governmental organizations have unleashed armies of promoters of democracy throughout the region to: observe elections; monitor human rights; draft new constitutions and laws defending civil and political rights; train judges and police personnel; and organize and assist political parties, media and non-governmental pressure groups. In short, they have sought to transplant the fabric of civil society and democratic institutions. These armies have landed on terrain often quite foreign to them and have often displayed little sensitivity to the social, economic and political context in which they are operating. This may have contributed to results other than those intended.

AT THE START OF THE 1990S, THE CONSTITUTIONAL STATUS OF opposition movements in tropical Africa was dramatically transformed. Prior to 1990, in only a minimal number of states had legally tolerated opposition parties even been permitted, while in no case had any opposition party been able to assume power after defeating the incumbent government at the polls. Within a few years, multi-party systems were introduced within almost all African states, while several opposition parties achieved the ultimate test of gaining state power by electoral means. At first sight, at least, opposition in Africa had undergone a radical shift, bringing the continent into line with a movement towards multi-party electoral political systems that was taking place throughout the world.

EUROPEAN INTEGRATION — THE PHRASE WAS USED SO EASILY TO connote a process that might, over a period, incorporate most of the continent. But in the four decades when the cold war segmented Europe the notion of extensive integration seemed irrelevant; in practice integration has been consolidated as an essentially West European phenomenon. The policy scope, the economic application, the security implications and the institutional frameworks of integration became concentrated around the core countries of Western Europe. Similarly the underpinning understandings about solidarity and mutual commitment were formulated on the assumption that a hard boundary separated those Europeans capable of being engaged from those who were prevented from so doing. There were few among those who studied this West European process who kept the wider Europe in mind. Ghiţa Ionescu was unusual in always keeping an eye open to developments in both parts of the continent, a legacy that all of us who worked with him cherish. The burden that he leaves us is of trying to figure out whether integration can be given substance as a process for pan-Europe.

ONE OF THE VERY RARE OVERVIEWS OF OPPOSITION IN THE ARAB states was published by Professor Lisa Anderson in 1987. The very title set the tone: ‘Lawless Government and Illegal Opposition’ (emphases mine), as well as the opening quotation, ‘A government which is not beholden to any law ceases to be legitimate’, by the famous Sayyid Qutb, one of the prophets of radical Islam (as it came to be named) who was executed by Nasser's government. Opposition was meant to combat a tyrant (a lawless government meaning an unjust government, unjust because disregarding the laws and the religious Law) and to restore Justice, Law and Order. Admittedly, Professor Anderson's purpose was much broader: she would stress the close relationship between the exercise of political power, and particularly the modern state as the organizational framework of political life (the independent variable, so to speak) and, on the other hand, opposition as a response or reaction to the state and the government.

AMONG THE FOIBLES BY WHICH HUMANS ENHANCE THEIR PEACE OF mind, few are as persistent as the habit of endowing transitory practices and institutions with permanence. We tend to assume that things known since childhood, particularly if they are important to us, are timeless and immutable. The modern nation state, for instance, is seen as a perpetual fixture on the landscape when, in fact, it is a relatively new, and probably passing phenomenon, at least as we now know it. The state emerged only in the modern era, when governments succeeded in freeing themselves of feudal and ecclesiastical constraints; the period from then to the present is a mere thimbleful of time in the history of governance.

‘IF YOU WANT QUICK RESULTS, PLANT LETTUCE; ENDURING results take longer.’ So said Léon Walras, France's greatest nineteenth-century economist and predecessor at Lausanne of Pareto, whom Sammy Finer wrote about with admiration. Finer's last and greatest work in three volumes and over 1,600 pages will be published in May 1997 by Oxford University Press. Unlike his contemporary political scientists, Sammy Finer had the self-confidence and breadth of vision singlehandedly to take on an immense work and almost bring it to completion before death imposed its own premature conclusion. As a foretaste of its contents, the first Finer Memorial Lecture, delivered at the University of Keele on 10 May 1995, is published in this journal, with which he had an especially close affinity. It can only suggest, in the most succinct way, what is to come. I am confident that the study of comparative government will never be the same once the whole breathtaking work appears in all its magnitude.

ANY INVESTIGATION OF POLITICAL OPPOSITIONS IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC must necessarily begin, if not end, with the obvious. First of all, there is the evident weakness of political oppositions in much of this part of the world today — whether we focus on the commonly capitalized ‘Opposition’ denoting ‘a political party opposing, and serving as a check on, the party in power’ (Webster's, italics added), or on the more variegated lower case ‘alternative oppositions’ often associated with so-called ‘non-governmental organizations’ of some sort or another. To a considerable extent, therefore, this question involves the compounded difficulty of not merely explaining the careers and conditions of manifest political groupings and their respective trajectories but also, significantly, of retrieving the historical traces, lived experiences and collective memories of oppositions displaced — whether by means of incorporation or of exclusion. Secondly, despite its remarkable recent rise in political, financial and academic discourse, ‘the Asia-Pacific’ remains a highly elusive — and eminently elastic — conception in terms of historical, economic and cultural content. Significantly, for the present discussion, no ‘wave’ of regime transitions comparable to those witnessed in other regions — Southern Europe, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Tropical Africa — can be discerned across the countries encompassed within ‘the Asia-Pacific’.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE NATION-STATE INTO A ‘COMPETITION state’ lies at the heart of political globalization. In seeking to adapt to a range of complex changes in cultural, institutional and market structures, both state and market actors are attempting to reinvent the state as a quasi-‘enterprise association’ in a wider world context, a process which involves three central paradoxes. The first paradox is that this process does not lead to a simple decline of the state but may be seen to necessitate the actual expansion of de facto state intervention and regulation in the name of competitiveness and marketization.

ALL GOVERNMENTS WHETHER OR NOT PARTICIPATIVE NEED TO KEEP an eye on public opinion if they are to maintain their legitimacy. Even autocratic governments have to provide some bread and circuses for their citizens if they are to stay in power. Autocratic governments throughout history have relied on achieving the acquiescence of their citizens first by convincing most of them that the status quo is the best available, given the constraints under which the government is operating at the time. Alternatively they have had to externalize their problems by convincing the citizens that there is external pressure which can be resisted only by the exercise of restraint and patriotic support for the government.

WHILE ‘REPOSITIONING’ MAY BE AN APPROPRIATE TERM TO DESCRIBE developments in political opposition in many contemporary societies, it falls some way short of capturing the significance of changes in Russia, where in a few years the political landscape has changed out of all recognition. Until little more than a decade ago, political opposition in the Soviet Union was barely visible and, with rare exceptions, of little consequence. In the decades following Stalin's death in 1953, the existence of interest groups and lobbies within the party and state apparatuses was persuasively argued by foreign observers; and occasionally fractional opposition within the ruling elite surfaced. The latter aimed at reversing specific policies and, twice, at replacing the country's leader — Khrushchev on both occasions, unsuccessfully in 1957 and successfully in 1964. From the 1960s onwards, dissent from the regime's values and goals was reflected in the statements and actions of individuals and small groups, often described as the ‘Soviet dissident movement’, though lacking either common objectives and strategy, or impact on the Soviet Union's rulers.

THE EVENTS OF 1989 IN EASTERN EUROPE HAVE BEEN INTERPRETED in diverse and often contradictory ways: from the end of history to its rebirth, as both negotiated revolutions and popular uprisings. In many countries a fundamental repositioning of opposition and dissident forces was observed — changing from groups of anti-system activists quite outside the political establishment into major statesmen and national leaders involving, in some cases, rapid transformation into the occupants of major or even prime ministerial roles. Similarly, the former monopolistic ruling parties often found themselves quickly relegated to the margins of political life as oppositions of dubious legitimacy and minuscule political influence. Yet these roles were also subject to rapid reversal and further repositioning in a number of countries. The major difference now was that former governments became formally constituted oppositions rather than political pariahs or enemies of the people. That was a measure of the significance of the change that had been effected.

HAVING BEEN THE OBJECT OF GHIŢA IONESCU'S GENEROSITY TOO many times to count — it was every time I saw him or spoke to him or even thought of him — I find it hopeless to try to even the score. But I will do my best to honour his memory with the following thoughts, as I believe they might have piqued his interest or provoked his disagreement. He was always interested in something new, but he himself belonged to neither of human nature's two great political parties, radical and conservative. He neither welcomed nor rejected the new merely because it was new. So here is a salute to a man strongly political, widely attentive, and wonderfully well-bred in taste and learning.