THIS STUDY IS ONE OF COMPARATIVE STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS deliberately avoiding a sociological definition of the situation. It is assumed that two societies had existed in Czechoslovakia for some time and the difference between them, and possible analogies, are examined. There is also an assumption that the division of Czechoslovakia occurred especially because ‘Czechoslovak society’ as such had not yet been established; this was in spite of the fact that the two societies, at the time of the split, had substantially more in common than they had had at the time of Czechoslovakia's formation. There exists the view, which we want to verify, that during the decline of the federation the following factors were significant:

• 1. The differences in economic, social, cultural and dispositional structures;

• 2. The asynchronous and differing processes of modernization in both societies;

• 3. The different consequences of the formation of societies of Soviet type in the Czech Lands in Slovakia;

• 4. The differing processes for rectification of political, economic and cultural institutions in both republics after November 1989.

This Rather Cumbersome Title Might Be Easier to understand if it was first explained in which sense the two concepts which it contains are taken here. Thus ‘information revolution’ is taken to mean not only the scientific and technological revolution, which has culminated in the microelectronic revolution, but also the two major geopolitical consequences of the information revolution: ‘interdependence’ and ‘globalization’. The question posed here is how this vast complex influences and changes the functioning, some would say, even the existence of parliamentary sovereignties.

THE WEST GERMAN STATE HAS FACED TWO DAUNTING challenges brought about by the movement of refugees into its territory since the end of the Second World War. The first occurred immediately after the end of the war and involved the resettlement of ten million refugees of German nationality expelled from East European countries and 3.5 million evacuees from Soviet-controlled East Germany. It was a challenge that was met with dramatic success. With the help of a number of governmental programmes, and a rapidly expanding economy, these refugees were fully integrated into West German society in the two decades after 1945. Indeed, by the end of the 1960s, the success of this massive resettlement attempt, along with the country's uniquely broad constitutional article which recognized a right of asylum for all political refugees, had rendered the Federal Republic, in spite of its catastrophic past, something of a model for all states in the handling of refugees

For Anyone Interested in Modern Politics There Could scarcely be a more pressing issue than how best to approach the task of identifying and comprehending the novel political challenges and opportunities which flow from the ever increasing interdependence of the destinies of human populations. At the intersection between challenge and opportunity there lie both fresh processes of policymaking and implementation and distinctly older political routines and habits of mind: the attempt at worst to pour very new and volatile wine into disturbingly antiquated bottles, or at best to bring the accumulated resources of centuries of statecraft to bear upon a bewildering array of often unprecedented hazards.

The Transition Process in Hungary Produced Well-established parties and a developed party system. Parties came into existence along political and ideological lines. Parties had an organization, party programme, membership and party discipline similar to those of political parties in the Western European countries. The organization and structure of these parties resembled those of middle-class parties more than socialist or communis/fascist parties. Hungarian parties also had ‘direct structure’ with individual membership. All of them were closer to mass parties than to cadre parties, i.e. their primary aim was electoral success. But none of them became a mass party in terms of membership figures, which were rather low (the total membership of the six parliamentary parties was below 200,000 in 1990, so it was about 2.5 – 3 per cent of the electorate. There were ‘catch-all’ parties (HDF, AFD), parties with specific interest representation (SHP) and parties organized along some ideological principle (CDPP).

THE STAKES IN THE COMPETITION TO DEVELOP HIGH Definition Television (HDTV) are high. In the face of intense competition from Japan, the European effort has had the earmarks of a mission-oriented, Japanese-style industrial policy. But political support for a politically-derived European HDTV standard is matched by market demand. This case study reveals that the nature of government-industry relations in the EC has changed very little when large, politically powerful firms are involved, despite the increasingly prominent policy role of the European Community and the creation of the internal market.

IN ITS MOST ELABORATELY ARTICULATED FORM RACISM IS AN array of theoretical views about the epistemic clarity and human import of the practice of individuating human populations in terms of their presumed biological descent. In this form the term can refer with some precision, and largely independently of context, to a quite specific body of beliefs. In far more diffuse and far less theoretical forms, however, and in forms which are also far more widely distributed in human history, it can and does refer just as readily to the highlighting of distinctions which are certainly at least as much cultural as they are genetic, and which are inextricably located in a context of more or less intimate and painful confrontation between human groups. In this second form there cannot in principle be anything comparably determinate for the term racism to refer to.

In These Pages We Will Discuss The Thesis That in order to understand the present problems of Italy, one must look back on an era of international politics dominated by the bipolar and conflictual relationship between East and West. This came to an end finally after the failed Moscow coup in mid-1991.

From 1946, without interruption, in a Europe divided by the iron curtain, Italy was the frontier country where the cold war was most bitterly fought, because the Italian Communist Party (PCI) was the strongest communist party in the world outside the Soviet empire. From many viewpoints, the Italian Communists were ordinary politicians peacefully involved in cooperatives and in the trade unions. Their management of some important regions and municipalities was judged very favourably by many scholars. In public declarations they stated their preference for a peaceful way to socialism, conversion to liberty, independence from Soviet influence, and acceptance of a democratic system. In fact they shared Moscow's orientations in every international problem where East and West were opposed. Now we understand why: they were heavily financed, directly and indirectly, by the Soviets. But after Yeltsin had thrown out many skeletons from the Kremlin closets, we had the proof that the staunch anti-communists were right. The big lie about Bolshevism concerned Italy also, where the PCI had been helped from Stalin to Gorbachev. This is why still in 1985 the Italian Communists declared the USA to be the only imperialist state in the world.

At First Sight it Might Appear Somewhat Curious to be studying the efficacy of the liberal democratic state just at that historic moment when liberal democracy seems to have triumphed on a global scale. Yet within contemporary Europe, the nature of political community and sovereign power have been thrown into question by the resurgence of ethnic nationalism, the intensification of regional integration and global turbulence. Taken together, these forces appear to deliver a fundamental challenge to the democratic ideals which underpin liberal democratic states. This article seeks to evaluate the nature of this challenge. It invites specific consideration of the consequences of these ‘threats from above’ and ‘threats from below’ for the character of the modern state.