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This paper offers a distinctive perspective on English regionalism based on a study 'from below' (of Cornwall & Devon) and on an analysis of the 'logical demons' contained in the concepts used to discuss the subject. Local and regional sources of evidence lead to the picture of rational analysis and argument presented by regionalists of all types - academics, politicians, administrators - dissolving into contradiction, moralising and pious moralising. The concept of peripherality is essentially contested and the concept of region both systematically misleading and insidiously ambiguous. Both words are therefore ideally suited to political argument and at the same time very dangerous for the ambitious researcher.
Ignorance, ambiguity and confusion create a licence to make claims for a wide range of alternative policies, but in the circumstances of the Far South West only certain sub-regional 'solutions' are likely to be beneficial to the area and popular with its leaders.

Introduction When a new field of research and analysis becomes fashionable it is sometimes given a special name which im‐plies that it is a sub‐discipline which should develop in its own distinctive way. In some cases this is both desirable and necessary but when one politically significant social difference is singled out for specific attention it is more im‐portant to make sure that research is integrated with general intellectual developments than to assert an auton‐omy from existing specialisations. If students "parachute" into a subject they ought to carry with them basic ideas to use in analysis which have gained some acceptability in other spheres.

Those who study politics systematically today are engaged in a search for methods of analysis which will answer the two sorts of question that all would-be disciplines have to face: questions of identity (such as those relating to ^autonomy' from other subjects) & questions of legitimacy (such as those relating to the scope & rigor of their methods). Many past attempts to create a viable science of politics have tried to transfer concepts from more prestigious disciplines, but it is better to employ a reductionist methodology. Past attempts include both the behavioralist protest of the 1920s & its heirs & the antibehavioral reaction of the late 1950s & 1960s. These have failed to identify the basic problems of the current dominant paradigm-statistical explanation; if the logical difficulties of the latter are seen, then the pressures of the need to solve the problems of legitimacy will drive political scientists toward a new paradigm. This new methodology will be based on the exploitation of the properties of deductive reasoning, which is the only form of analysis which offers a solution to the problems of legitimacy. AA.