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To all appearances, the transition program of General Abdusalam Abubakar has, from the beginning, been torn between two contradictory policy and strategic choices. The first is whether to appease the prodemocracy and human rights groups by accepting the convocation of a sovereign national conference, with all this entails, including a postponement of the disengagement date. The second is whether to ignore these groups, and organize a rapid, short, and sharp transition program, even if fundamental issues, such as the "National Question," and restructuring the federation and the military, are sidetracked. By choosing the latter, the Abubakar junta demonstrated first that it would undertake the transition mainly on its own terms and with its own ideas.

This paper is based on an address given at the Oz Child Annual General Meeting on 7 December 1998 in Dandenong, Victoria.

Harry Eckstein's Theory of Stable Democracy briefly revolutionized thinking about authority structures in nongovernmental organizations but has left little lasting mark. Indeed, the theory failed as an account of stable democracy but, by emphasizing correctly the commonalities between public and private authority, it pointed the way to a general theory of authority in organizations. Such a theory is now emerging, chiefly from work on authority in capitalist firms. It is time for students of politics again to look beyond the state, as Eckstein argued, to the much wider universe of authority relations.