I ShouldLike to begin by making a few remarks about our English universities. Most of the difficulties which face them are similar to those which confront other universities all over the world, but I shall be especially concerned with those which seem to me to be peculiarly important to us in our small overcrowded island, and I shall discuss some of the problems in the new universities which were created in so many countries by expatriate Englishmen.

The enterprise called political theory is very old; so old that to some it seems to have outlived its time. At long last — 13 years ago to be precise — it was pronounced dead. Since that pronouncement seems not to have been widely heard, or sufficiently heeded, a second certificate testifying to its demise was issued two years later.

Three powerful ideologies emerging in the first half of the nineteenth century combined to destroy the Old Order in Western Europe and shape its future: liberalism, nationalism and socialism. Little is known about the genesis of the three words that served to designate these ideologies. The most casual research will reveal astonishing contradictions among the recognized authorities, the lexicographers, not to speak of some glaring mistakes that appear in the writings of notable historians. For such shortcomings there is no lack of excuse. Indeed, in order to produce a sound and indisputable history of these three master words, it is necessary to sift so much material—no less than the whole printed output of the age—that the task appears quite hopeless. The present essay, therefore, is clearly open to criticism and revision; it has no other purpose than to suggest some guidelines of approach and to patch together some of the scraps of evidence now available. All this, let it be well understood, being confined to the French language and scene. Similar probes in the English or German soil would undoubtedly reveal different patterns.

The humanities are central in today's academic turbulence and in the cultural crisis of which it is a manifestation. The crisis, with its long genealogy and manifold issues in society and the academy, is real enough. The heritage of an age of individualism in which many traditional forms of authority had survived is passing through the ordeal of irrelevance. In exaggerated reaction to the communitarian requirements of society, not to mention industrial society, this heritage is not simply found wanting but is pronounced to be corrupting, misleading or irrelevant. The disparity between institutions, values and received ideas and the needs of society is so great that past experience may also be dismissed as irrelevant for what some will ponderously call “the end of the neolithic age.” Ill-equipped and confused we face the problem of adaptation and innovation required by the encounter of civilizations in our world.

We live in a state verging on anarchy. We have a government that does not govern. We have a government, but no governing purpose. The level of politics is low; so too is the level of citizenship. Why? Why have we become a fragmented and lawless society—a society no longer united by standards of civilized conduct? Why do youth complain of alienation, of lack of identity? Why do they say their education is without relevance? What forces have undermined the moral consensus on which this nation was founded, and what was that moral consensus? This essay seeks to answer these questions.

Francois-Etienne, due de Choiseul-Stainville, chief foreign policy-maker of France between 1758 and1770, sought to reverse the Peace of Paris which marked France's humiliating defeat by England in the Seven Years War. The objective of his “Revanche” was the restoration of the prewar maritime, commercial and colonial equilibrium with the British. To accomplish it, he relied on the Family Pact of 1761 with Spain, then the world's third naval power, and on the defensive Franco-Austrian alliance concluded in 1756 and revised in 1759, which Choiseul believed would suffice to keep the European continent at peace while the Bourbon powers concentrated all their forces, military and financial, for a purely naval war with Great Britain.

SaudiArabia as a state has rarely been an object of interest for political scientists in the West, and the reasons for this are clear. Fluid in the location of her territory, lacking power and a sense of threat to her vital interests, encumbered with a xenophobic religion and a society in compressed transition from a nomadic to a feudal way of life, Saudi Arabia until the mid-1950's was inactive in international politics, even at the regional level. Like the United States and Russia in the early stages of their national development, Saudi Arabia first found her energies absorbed in affairs that could only with difficulty be distinguished as “domestic” or “foreign.” Saudi Arabia's main concern was to consolidate a territorially and socially expanding habitat and thereby to become an Arab state equal in scope with the Arabian peninsula. Specifically, this meant expansion in a south-easterly direction to the outermost limits possible, for Saudi Arabian power was too limited to challenge the more established positions of Great Britain in Iraq and Transjordan in the north. Only when revenues derived from oil resources being exploited by ARAMCO (the Arabian-American Oil Company) provided Saudi Arabia with the economic base of modern power and when revolutionary pan-Arabism gave her a political rationale for exercising her growing power did she begin to pursue a consistent “foreign” policy at the regional level.

On July 23, 1953, a tax official paid a visit to the town of Saint-Cere in southwestern France, hoping to examine the accounts of some of the local shopkeepers. Barring his access to the books, however, he discovered a resolute, and rather menacing, band of merchants, formed the previous evening to prevent him from carrying out his duty. The tax official discreetly withdrew, and the books remained unaudited.

TheMultiracial society of South Africa is unique and fascinating. In addition to an African majority, it includes the Cape colored community, the Indians originally introduced as indentured labor on the Natal sugar estates, and a large and long-established European minority from within which Afrikaner nationalism has emerged as the predominant political power. These groups have been progressively integrated in a modern and dynamic economy and consequently subjected to the tensions of an industrial revolution.

Rousseau's injection of the human element onto the austere scene of politics drawn in Du Contrat Social comes as a surprise. This element, personified by the legislator in Chapter 7 of Book II, serves two purposes. It dramatizes the political forces in Rousseau's scheme for not the most perfect, but perhaps the best attainable, regime. As the contemporary condition of civic slavery called for radical reform, that is, a regeneration, man must reassure himself that the birth of a good order is possible by delving back to the foundation of government. In doing so man might also learn something about how and why it takes place. The second reason for introducing the legislator relates to the vital threefold functions he performs as the eyes, brain and motive force of the people.

Since World War II, a spate of interpretations of empire and imperialism has issued from the press. In part the interest stems from the progressive decolonization of much of what had previously been part of European empires. In part it arises from a present-minded concern with expansion by the modern superpowers, the United States, the Soviet Union and, more recently, China. Nor does the decline of the former great powers of western Europe lessen interest, for their loss of empire seems, for some, a manifestation of Spenglerian theory and for others, a causal factor in that decline. Certainly Great Britain's plummet from first-rate-power rank to a considerably lesser plane has been most spectacularly accompanied by a recessional from palm and pine. Not surprisingly, given the context of their writing, the new sociological and psychological studies and assessments are markedly critical of and variant from the old. New perspectives presented by an epoch seemingly finished and new techniques drawn from the behavioral sciences have molded historians’ assessment of the old “new imperialism's” apogee between 1870 and 1914.

Apartheid and international monetary reform have received much attention in recent years yet littleof the discussion of these issues has linked them in any meaningful way. The call for changes in the international monetary system has been based upon an alleged insufficiency in international liquidity anda need for an adjustment mechanism for secular balance of payments disequilibria. Opposition to apartheid, South Africa's segregationist racial policy, has been based upon humanitarian concern for the condition of black Africans in that country.

My subject is the World Bank and the Third World. The Bank has taken on the overwhelming task of helping the development of the countries we call, for want of a better word, “underdeveloped,” less favored or, to use a kindlier expression, “developing.” In short, the poor countries. My talk will be divided into three chapters. The first will deal with the origins of foreign aid, the second with the present situation and the last with what we should do to improve our procedures, enlarge our sources of income and perfect their use in the developing world.

AlSmith, so the story goes, was in the midst of his camaign for president in 1928 when a newspaper friend remarked, that the Lutherans would not vote for him because of a grievance, one or two hundred years old, that they had against the Roman Catholic Church. “Well, holy smokes,” the Happy Warrior retorted (“holy smokes”being a journalistic substitution for a somewhat more profane utterance), “they are going back pretty far to get an issue against me.”

The importance of the communist movement in the Soviet Union was demonstrated once again by the international conference of communist parties held in Moscow in June, 1969. To be sure, Soviet foreign policy decisions have always been made on the basis of pragmatic calculations of state interest. Ideology, moreover, does appear to be waning as a motive force on the Soviet domestic scene. Nevertheless, the Soviet Union has maintained a deep commitment to the institutions and forms of the communist movement which go back to Lenin's time, a time which has become glorified, and grossly simplified in Soviet literature as a period of heroic victories. The convictions and institutions of this period have become hallowed: and today Moscow regards the preservation of their forms, if not their substance, as vital if further progress is to be achieved by communism in the international sphere.

The legal system of Thailand is a product of history. For 10 centuries it evolved in an eclectic process. Territorial expansion and external threats eventuated in new legal values and institutions. Contact with the West caused an amalgamation of indigenous and foreign laws to maintain and strengthen the kingdom. Today the law is a vital factor upholding national unity and progress during a time of international tension in Southeast Asia. In this article I propose to survey the development of law in Thailand and analyze its role in the political affairs of the nation.

In his ideas on education, Alfred North Whitehead was a man of good sense as well as of wide experience, a traditionalist and yet full of new life. Freshest and as if novel are two ideas: there should be spontaneous joy in learning: joy is its life; and although reason and logic are of course necessary, vital intuitions belong to the essence of learning.

The development of Marx's mature social and political theory may be traced back in his writings to his political journalism of 1842–43, where a germinal doctrine on man's social nature supports a normative concept of the nature and function of political institutions. But his developing theory first achieved a measure of systematic rigor in his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. This work, Marx's earliest major theoretical writing, has lately received increased attention from scholars. My purpose here is to complement existing studies by highlighting certain methodological features of the work, specifically the way in which Marx combined elements of philosophical and political criticism in a systematic effort to develop his own political theory in opposition to the method and institutional conclusions of Hegel.

Some years ago Charles G. Sydnor made a rather revolutionary interpretation of politics in the ante-bellum South. He argued that the location of political power was for themost part to be found in the counties and, more particularly, in the county courts, which were usually the governing bodies of the counties. He, furthermore, suggested that county government was in many ways the most influential and meaningful government for the majority of the southern citizenry. Not many people, he contended, had direct dealings with either state or national governments because of the limitations and locations of power, the problems of communication and transportation and the essential provincialness of most of the nation. The business of most was with the various agencies and agents of county government. Regrettably scholars have ignored Sydnor's imaginative interpretation and its implicit challenge to investigate more completely the workings of county government in the South. Few revealing accounts have been published on the political realities of local government below the Mason-Dixon line. This article will seek partially to correct this historiographical deficiency by attempting to identify and explain the majorthemes of the politics of county government in antebellum Kentucky.

WithRespect to its international prospects the leadership of the Soviet Union entered this decade with enthusiasm; it is ending the decade on a note of disillusionment. And there is no area in which this phenomenon is more striking than that of the triangular relationship among the Soviet Union, the United Nations and the emerging “third world.” Both the “ups” and the “downs” of this relationship are to some extent attributable to the remarkable influence (and abrupt departure) of a single dynamic and quixotic personality, Nikita Khrushchev. Associated with his rise and fall, however, were objective historical factors which had a significant impact on the course of Soviet foreign relations. Read in the context of the origins and development of Soviet attitudes on international organization and on the role expected of nations liberated by the downfall of imperialism, this decade may well have marked a turning point in history. The outcome is not yet clear, but it is evident that Soviet policy has gone through another of those remarkable shifts from optimistic certainty to pragmatic reassessment which have marked historic moments in the past. The transition is both interesting and instructive.