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In recent years there has been a marked revival of Marxism in the intellectual life of western societies. This has resulted not only in some impressive synoptic studies dealing with the structure of contemporary capitalist societies, hut in a renewed concern with social change in these societies, and specifically with the role of the working class in the future transformation of capitalist society. This paper questions the importance attached to the proletariat as an actual or potential agent of revolutionary change. It asks: why did Marx and Engels see the proletariat in this role? What historical and theoretical considerations led them to this view? How plausible is it? The paper concludes that on the historical and sociological evidence Marx and Engels drew unwarranted inferences concerning the future role of the working class as an agency of the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consolidated democracies involve structured linkages between citizens and political decision making elites that are typically organized via political parties. Given the economic and institutional instability and uncertainty in post-communist emerging democracies, it has often been maintained that a structuring of party systems in such countries is slow to emerge. This paper demonstrates with data from a 1991 pre-election study in Bulgaria that significant aspects of political structuring may in fact appear in post-communist polities quite early. The structuring is based on citizens' individual resources which they expect to convert into economic benefits in the economic market economy, their market location in occupational terms, their general ideological dispositions, and their evaluation of the economic performance of the incumbent governments. While the structuring of party systems may still be weaker than in Western Europe, the Bulgarian evidence casts doubt on the tabula rasa hypothesis in the study of post- communist politics. Of course, further comparative analysis of post-communist democracies is required to buttress our conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides an account of Marx's position of Schumpeter's three categories: capitalism, socialism and democracy. Marx's conception of capitalism is established as more wide-ranging than sometimes thought, covering any form of society where commodities pre-dominate, and implying a polarized class structure independent of considerations of manual or lowly labour. It is not therefore essentially a political conception, nor does its application turn on the question of private ownership. Socialism, for Marx, involves the abolition of commodities and therefore of money and the wages system. Accordingly, his conception of socialism is not one of state ownership or nationalization, as Schumpeter claims. His commitment to democracy arises from the nature of socialist society and sets him apart from vanguardist political theory. It is therefore more deeply-rooted than Schumpeter suggests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers a favourable re-assessment of the thought of Gaetano Mosca, a most unfashionable thinker. Three elements of his thought are examined: (1) his 'historical method', (2) his 'unmasking' of the democratic ideal, and (3) his critique of Marxian socialism. It is argued that his model of an objective political science, based on empirical observation, was essentially sound, though he himself did not live up to its rigorous requirements. Whatever the flaws in his methodology, however, his analysis of the parliamentary system seems convincing enough. As for his complaints against marxism and socialism, these cannot be dismissed as the fulminations of a reactionary, for the simple reason that most of them have been echoed, in one form or another, by Marxists and socialists themselves. It is concluded that social critics could learn much from Mosca, in spite of his conservative leanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a relatively short period of time, Romanian political science has made considerable progress, moving from virtual obscurity to unchallenged local prominence. This article examines the efforts to date to institutionalize political science as a separate teaching and research discipline by presenting recently established political science university-level programs, the major groups of authors carrying out research on political phenomena and the recurrent themes emerging from relevant literature. Though the present article is concerned mainly with current developments, occasional references to the political science's position during the communist period are also made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the development of political science in Croatia. It describes the origins and development of political science as a social science discipline. It also analyzes the region's institutional development and comments on its other relevant activities. The author reveals the fundamental change in the state and in the political environment meant for Croatian political science. He also examines the challenges, problems and opportunities of democracy and independence following the 1990 fall of communism and collapse of Yugoslavia.

The article discusses the transformation of the political system in Poland from communism to socialism. The author examines the book entitled "Solidarity" that was published in 1985 which focuses on issues related to the country's political, social and economic development. It states that the declaration of martial law on December 13, 1981 has brought various problems in the development of criminal law as well as offered challenges in achieving economic development. It was inferred that the implementation of socio-political system in the country had been widely rejected in the mid-1980s. It shows that the political transformation from communism to social democracy posed various problems towards the country's political system.

During the 1970s the Italian Communist Party had, contrary to the preceding decades, extremely variable electoral results. In this article, trends in the communist vote in the 1970s are studied, through an ecological analysis of electoral results in the Italian provinces. It also takes into account the organizational presence of the party and the socioeconomic characteristics of the electorate. The central thesis is that in the 1970s the Communist vote is different from both previous and subsequent results not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively, in as much as it is characterized by different connotations and explanatory factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today the interest in Eurocommunism is declining. Between 1976 and the end of 1978 some observers had seen it as a new sort of Communism characterised by a readiness to adopt the principles and practices of Western democracies and by an emphasis on independence from the Soviet Union and its socialist model. The author examines the tactical reasons for and the scope of this "liberal Communism" and underlines that the PCI has gone much further than the PCF. In any case this liberal Communism has preserved its Communist identity. Eurocommunism represents a further step in the process of polycentric decentralisation of the International Communist Movement. It does not, however, constitute a threat to the hegemony of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. A modus vivendi seems to have been established between orthodox and Euro-communisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on political dimensions in the Scandinavian party systems at five non-electorate "levels" of dimensional analysis (content analysis of party programs, content analysis of expressions of party stances on current issues, positions taken by the parliamentary parties as behaving units, roll call analysis and interviews of individual legislators, and interviews with leaders and members of party organizations) justify the rejection of the unidimensional spatial model of party competition. Data on the social structure, attitudes and opinions, and voting behavior of the supporters of different parties provide indirect information about the dimensions of political cleavage. More directly, the "perceived party dimensions" can be concluded from aggregates of individual assessments for which the parties as such are the stimuli. Averaged rank orderings of the parties provide ordinal measures that have been used as inputs for multidimensional scaling techniques. An experiment of measuring the mutual distances of political parties in Finland used percentages of the second and the two last party choices as measures of party distance. A qualitative analysis of the exceptions to regular orderings along the basic left/right dimension suggested the presence of six additional political dimensions: the producers and agriculture/the consumers and urban industries; the established parties/the temporary small parties; recognized and noted centers/the "forgotten people" (populist dimension); Finnish-Swedish; communism/non-communism; and victorious/losing. Three developments can be envisaged in future dimensional analysis of multiparty systems: comparisons across countries, comparisons between different levels in the political system, and predictions of emerging political changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]