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IN ROBERT DAHL'S ACCOUNT OF THE SUBJECT 'OPPOSITION' IS SEEN AS a political actor, opposing the government in parliament, having goals and strategies, being cohesive or not, well identifiable or not, aggressive or less aggressive in its action, and so on. As it is a 'theory of action', applying it would necessarily require (as Jean Blondel also shows in his essay) determining the 'goals' of the opposition. One would then be able to predict what a certain opposition would probably be doing, and explain why one type of opposition must be classified as different from another. I maintain, however, that the concept of 'the goals of a political actor' is a very elusive, and at the very least, an oversimplified concept. Indeed, it is impossible to match it with the facts and operationalize it. The analysis of the Italian case during the First Republic shows this clearly.

'ONE OF THE PECULIARITIES OF THE SUBJECT OF OPPOSITION IS THAT, although the problem of opposition is one of the oldest, very few works have ever dealt with it specifically and exclusively.' These introductory remarks to their 1968 volume by Ghiţa Ionescu and Isabel de Madariaga still hold remarkably true, despite a number of subsequent works and collections devoted to the subject. Their explanation was that although opposition is the altera pars of government it is a concept which is necessarily relative to that of power upon which political action centres and around which political science moulds itself.

WHILE 'REPOSITIONING' MAY BE AN APPROPRIATE TERM TO DESCRIBE developments in political opposition in many contemporary societies, it falls some way short of capturing the significance of changes in Russia, where in a few years the political landscape has changed out of all recognition. Until little more than a decade ago, political opposition in the Soviet Union was barely visible and, with rare exceptions, of little consequence. In the decades following Stalin's death in 1953, the existence of interest groups and lobbies within the party and state apparatuses was persuasively argued by foreign observers; and occasionally fractional opposition within the ruling elite surfaced. The latter aimed at reversing specific policies and, twice, at replacing the country's leader — Khrushchev on both occasions, unsuccessfully in 1957 and successfully in 1964. From the 1960s onwards, dissent from the regime's values and goals was reflected in the statements and actions of individuals and small groups, often described as the 'Soviet dissident movement', though lacking either common objectives and strategy, or impact on the Soviet Union's rulers.

FIRST, TWO DISCLAIMERS. DIPLOMATS ARE NOT ACADEMICS. THIS WILL be a personal account, based on some firsthand experience of contemporary Japanese politics (pursued always in terms of the UK interest) supported by some — though not enough — background reading. It will not, however, be an academic text.The second disclaimer is more complicated. Japan had five different prime ministers during my relatively brief stay in Tokyo. It experienced four coalitions of varying complexions. Fluidity was the name of the game. It challenges ingenuity, to define 'opposition' in this context. And it must be right to pay some regard to the culture. To say that times and fashions change is to undersell a more tricky and rewarding set of questions about Japan's political characteristics. This is not just another G7 system. The strength of Japan's culture hits the newcomer to Tokyo like a wave. Moreover, within continuities, Japan has undergone repeated convulsions. Today's political structures draw on domestic as well as foreign traditions, in a subtle mixture.

In political systems defined by legitimate opposition, those who hold power allow their rivals to peacefully challenge and displace them, and those who have lost power do not seek to sabotage the winners. Legitimate opposition came under assault at the American capitol on January 6, 2021, and is menaced by populists and autocrats across the globe. Here, the author provides the first sustained theory of legitimate opposition since the Cold War. On the orthodox view, democracy is lost when legitimate opposition is subverted. But efforts to reconcile opposition with democracy fail to identify the value of the frequently imperfect, unfair and inegalitarian real-world practice. Marshaling a revisionist reconstruction of opposition's history, this book provides an account of opposition's value fit for the twenty-first century and shows why, given the difficult conditions of political life, legitimate opposition is an achievement worth defending.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- ONE. Introduction -- TWO. Opposition's Value: The Adversarial Conception of Legitimate Opposition -- THREE. Opposition under Attack: Democracy, Populism, and the Specter of Electoral Autocracy -- FOUR. Rethinking Opposition's Boundaries: Athens, Ostracism, and Monopolistic Power -- FIVE. Opposition without Democracy: Roman Competition, Violence, and the Limits of Clockwork Constitutionalism -- SIX. It's the State, Not Parties: Why Legitimate Opposition Is a Preeminent Constitutional Principle -- SEVEN. Democracy without Opposition: Condorcet, Sieyès, and the French Revolution -- EIGHT. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z.

CONTRARY TO EXPECTATIONS, THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SALAZAR FROM the political scene has not, in the short-run at least, led to a serious succession crisis in Portugal. A few weeks of hard but covert bargaining within the ruling circles culminated in the appointment by the President, Admiral Tomás of Dr Marcello Caetano as Prime Minister. Admiral Tomás was himself appointed by Salazar and chosen partly for his docility and innocuousness to replace the rebellious Craveiro Lopes in 1958; he has no power base of his own. Although in a fluid situation such as this his role has allowed him a greater latitude of choice than in normal circumstances, his decision probably reflected the balance of forces within the ruling circles. Caetano's background is typical of a whole generation of 'counter-revolutionary' monarchists, whose political formation matured within the matrix of the Portuguese Maurrassist movement, theintegralismo Insitano. Somehow his monarchist allegiance, if not his authoritarian-corporatist convictions, waned as his career within theEstado Novowaxed. He was one of the young (in their twenties and thirties)integralistaexperts whose services were vital in Salazar's transformation of a mindless military dictatorship into a 'respectable' authoritarian regime.