Suchergebnisse

The analysis of political change in Britain has been dominated by the swing. The swing is inadequate because it measures only a relationship between changes in party support and sheds no light on the processes of political change. This paper critically examines the swing concept and suggests an alternative standardised measure which eliminates a number of problems associated with the use of the swing.

IN A RECENT ISSUE OF Government and Opposition AN ATTEMPT WAS made to answer at an abstract level the question, 'Why Political Systems Change'. The aim of this article is more limited. It is a tentative preliminary attempt to explain why important changes took place in a particular political system – that of Czechoslovakia – in January 1968 and to examine the changes themselves and what remains of them in the wake of the Soviet intervention.It must be emphasized straight away that the January changes in Czechoslovakia were not so sudden as their treatment by the western mass media perhaps implied. For something close to five years before the January reforms pluralistic developments could be discerned in Czechoslovakia. Limited though they were, they expressed themselves in the form of a less severely censored press, greater scope for interest group activity, a slight relaxation of detailed central party control over the National Assembly and local government, and in more debate within the ranks of the Communist Party.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Morocco was ruled by the traditional central government, the Makhzen, which had existed in various forms for nearly a millennium. From 1912 to early 1956 final authority rested with the Protectorate powers, France and Spain. The last twenty years of this period were marked with increasingly bitter and effective nationalist agitation, which culminated in Morocco earning its independence. The magnitude of this move to independence is examined in this book.