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Civil religion denotes a religion of the nation, a nonsectarian faith that has as its sacred symbols those of the polity & national history. Recent scholars have portrayed it as a cohesive force, a common canopy of values that helps foster social & cultural integration, but this perspective may now be at odds with a complex reality. In an increasingly differentiated society, with the rise of group politics & subcultures, the forms of civil religion remain, but the cultural cohesion it purportedly reflects is dissolving. Civil-religious discourse has become a tool for legitimating social movements & interest-group politics. A critical examination of the current uses of civil religion must lead to a critical reanalysis of the society at large, as well as the concept itself. HA

Book reviews in this article:PUBLIC POLICY IN BRITAIN Martin Burch and Bruce Wood.POLICY ADVICE AND ORGANIZATIONAL SURVIVAL Michael J. Prince.TAX POLICY‐MAKING IN THE UNITED KINGDOM Ann Robinson and Cedric Sandford.THE FRAGMENTED STATE: THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF POWER Ronan Paddison.TERRITORY AND POWER IN THE UNITED KINGDOM J. Bulpitt.PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY K. Koenig, H‐J. von Oertzen and F. Wagener (eds.).GOVERNMENT AND URBAN POVERTY: INSIDE THE POLICY MAKING PROCESS Joan Higgins et al.PLANNING FOR PRIORITY GROUPS Howard Glennerster, Nancy Korman and Francis Marslen‐Wilson.POLICIES, PROGRAMMES AND DISADVANTAGE: A REVIEW OF LITERATURE Roger Fuller and Olive Stevenson.SOVIET LOCAL POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT Everett M. Jacobs (ed.).THE POLITICS OF THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE Rudolf Klein.BRITISH POLICY AND THE IRISH ADMINISTRATION 1920–22 John McColgan.

Contemporary world politics is a matter of life and death. Studying international relations means studying war — a traditionally tragic subject that has become existentially overwhelming today — and peace. Orthodox theories of international relations proclaim the inevitability of periodic warfare; modern science informs us of the likelihood that human civilization at our present standard would not survive an all-out nuclear exchange.Since they are aware that the world is a dangerous place, it is not difficult to persuade eighteen-year-olds of the importance of studying world politics. The prospect of nuclear destruction can powerfully concentrate the mind. So can the possibility that America's ruling class would once again send young men to fight in jungles on behalf of ill-defined causes combining ideology with a peculiar version of Realpolitik.

Data from the 1980 National Election Study are used to examine the claims that: (1) those voters who shifted to Ronald Reagan in 1980 (New Republicans) were drawn disproportionately from the lower to middle strata of the population; (2) they were social conservatives motivated by issues like abortion & the Equal Rights Amendment; & (3) they were more religious & alienated from the federal government than average. The results strongly suggest that all of these assertions are false & thus question the emergence of a neopopulist or Middle American Radical political constituency on the right wing of US politics. The findings also have implications for prominent theories about conservative political movements & about the changing nature of party politics in a postindustrial society. 8 Tables, 25 References. AA.

THIS ARTICLE IS AN INVESTIGATION OF THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION ON POLITICS. IT SHOWS HOW CERTAIN EARLY NATIONALISTS RELIED ON A FORM OF MILLENNIAL THEORY TO SHAPE AN EARLY VERSION OF NATIONALISM. THESE "POLITICAL MILLENNIALISTS" ARE INTRODUCED THROUGH A REVIEW OF THEIR ORATIONS, PAMPHLETS, AND SERMONS. THEIR COMPLEX BRAND OF MILLENNIALISM IS DISCUSSED IN THE CONTEXT OF RECENT SCHOLARSHIP. THE ARTICLE DEMONSTRATES THAT THEIR RELIANCE ON MILLENNIAL THEMES LED THEM TO CREATE A FORM OF NATIONALISM CHARACTERIZED BY INTERVENTIONISM, ISOLATIONISM AND XENOPHOBIA. THROUGHOUT THE 1790S, THIS POLITICAL MILLENNIALISM EXACERBATED CONFLICT AND INSTABILITY IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC. AT THE END OF THE CENTURY, IT WAS REJECTED IN FAVOR OF A MORE PRAGMATIC POLITICS. BUT MILLENNIAL THEMES PERSISTED, AND FOR BETTER OR WORSE, THEY ARE SEEN IN OUR NATIONALISM EVEN TODAY.

Book reviewed in this aticle:Inner City Poverty in Paris and London By CHARLES MADGE and PETER WILLMOTT.The Politics of Poverty By DAVID DONNISON.Understanding the Unemployed By JOHN HAYNES and PETER NUTMAN.Housing Policy and Housing Needs By PAUL N. BALCHIN.The Myth of Home Ownership By JIM KEMENY.The Politics of Mass Housing in Britain 1945–1975: A Study of Corporate Power and Professional Influence in the Welfare State By PATRICK DUNLEAVY.Rural Housing Competition and Choice By MICHAEL DUNN et alDoctors and the B.M.A. By PHILIP R. JONES.Delegation in General Practice. A study of Doctors and Nurses By ANN BOWLING.A Bridge to Independence: The Kent Family Placement Project By NANCY HAZEL.The Residential Solution By ANN DAVIS.Demographic and Social Change in Europe 1975–2000 By MAURICE KIRK.A Sociology of Special Education By SALLY TOMLINSON.Equality By WILLIAM RYAN.

In a recent issue of NEWS, Professor G. Alan Tarr reminded us of how the feature film Nashville (1975) could be used as a springboard for thoughtful classroom discussion of American politics. While that film is ostensibly about country-music and its performers, Tarr makes a strong case that the Robert Altman film is "above all a commentary on political life." Nashville can be seen as an insight into a view of the voters and their indifference, indeed hostility to politics. The advance man of a presidential candidate is seeking to enlist big name performers for a rally but the candidate is never seen and the sound truck that advertises his campaign blares out the vague populist homilies which reminded many viewers of the then flowering Jimmy Carter speeches.

Liberal Christian activists have been accused of making politics Lord and the cure for the ills of the world. And by some of their near friends, too. In Up to Our Steeples in Politics (Paramus, New Jersey, 1970) Will D. Campbell and James Y. Holloway, publisher and editor of Katellagete and leaders of the Committee of Southern Churchmen, have questioned the gospel of relevance-and-realism. In approaching Evangelicals condescendingly, they argued, we have forgotten that the basic notion of these Christians is what we want persons to be—new men and women in Christ. To the question what should the people of today do, Campbell and Holloway answer, "Nothing." And to the question what should people be, they respond in an evangelical way: "What you are—reconciled, to God and man."

In spite of all the research stimulated by the English and Scottish Royal Commissions on Local Government, we still have no clear idea of why people go into local politics, or of what sorts of people become local councillors. A recent study of Glasgow politics threw some light on these questions.1 One of the things it did was to draw attention to the central importance of the political party. Both Royal Commissions ignored the part played by parties, despite the fact that in virtually every large town in Britain the council is dominated by parties.2 One of the major functions the parties perform is the recruitment of candidates and councillors. Indeed, in connection with recruitment the parties are almost the only active agencies.

The new states of Africa encounter particularly difficult problems of reconciling pressures for rapid socio-economic change with the orderly transfer of power to new leadership. A number of recent commentaries on the discontinuities and crisis of developing countries have challenged the notion, in large part derived from Western political experience, that some sort of incremental reconciliation between the social effects of development and the political restructuring of society will steadily occur. The models used in comparative politics admit conflict, but they do not go very far in telling us how these forces interact in the policy machinery of a developing country. Moreover, while the primacy of politics continues, it is doubtful if new social and economic forces in the society are welcomed, and sometimes even recognized, by the existing élite.

The recent commemoration of the fiftieth anniversaries of the Easter Rising and the meeting o f the First Dail firearm have done much to focus attention on this stormy watershed of modern Irish history and politics. The Civil War, for so long a topic of polemical argument, is becoming the subject o f serious study and unbiased analysis. So far, however, remarkably little original research has been undertaken in the shadowy area of history and politics stretching from the end of the Civil War to the emergence of Fianna Fail as a constitutional opposition party in Leinster House. The history of the post-1923 era obviously needs a considerable amount of research of a primary sort; and on top of that, additional synthesis in order to put the raw material in proper arrangement and perspective.

Some attention has been given to the politics of John W. Dafoe and of the Manitoba Free Press, but there has hitherto been no thorough consideration of the influence which the owner of the paper, Sir Clifford Sifton, exerted on its editor and thereby on its editorial policy. This thesis is an attempt to fill this void. This has been done by comparing Sifton's views with those expressed privately by Dafoe and publicly by the Free Press in regard to federal politics, and especially the federal political parties, in the period 1916 to 1921. From this study it has been found that Sifton, by his advice, political analyses and occasional ultimatums, did in fact influence Dafoe, and thus kept the paper's editorial policy within the bounds of which he approved.

Book reviewed in this article:Municipal Entertainment and the Arts in Greater London. By S. K. Ruck.Ruin and Resurgence 1939–1965. By R. C. Mowat.British Politics 1918–64. By L. J. Macfarlane.Since 1945: Aspects of World History. Edited by J. L. Henderson.Politics in West Africa. By W. Arthur Lewis.Halifax: The Life of Lord Halifax. By The Earl of Birkenhead.The British Communist Party. Its Origins and Development Until 1929. By L. J. Macfarlane.Power and the Sovietélite—"The Letter of an Old Bolshevik" and other essays. By Boris Nicolaevsky. Unpersoned: The Fall of Nikita S. Khrushchev. By Martin Page and David Burg.Marxism in the Modern world. Edited by milorad M. drachovitch.The Politics of Bureaucracy. By Gordon Tullock.Thailand and the Struggle for Southeast Asia. By Donald E. Neuchterlein.South East Asia in Turmoil. By Brian Crozier.

Although students of world politics have come increasingly to speak of their empirical domain as a social system, little effort has gone into the systematic observation and measurement of its formal or informal structure. One structural attribute of the inter national system which leaves a definite trace and is therefore readily measurable, is that of alliance patterns. This paper examines all written (peacetime only) alliances among system members, describes the procedures for classifying them, and then transforms such information into quantitative indicators of alliance aggregation for various forms of the international system for every year between 1815 and 1939. Such data make it possible to treat this particular system attribute as either a dependent or an inde pendent variable for purposes of hypothesis testing or exploration in world politics.

Hundreds of intergov'al org's have been formed since 1815, & since 1945 non-gov'al internat org's have multiplied. Most of these have exercised or are exercising a marked influence upon politics. The United Nations itself fosters the development & the strengthening of pressure groups by maintaining connections with non-gov'al org's thru the Econ & Soc Council & by receiving petitions from various groups from dependent territories through the Council on Protectorates. UNESCO presupposes the formation of nat commissions representing educ, sci & cultural activities. Finally, a pressure group may be an individual who is playing a part in internat politics. The exact effects of pressure groups are difficult to analyze without a precise definition of such groups & some technique for measuring their influence. Tr by J. A. Broussard from IPSA.