ABSTRACT
Is the study of politics a sensible activity? Any watcher of television news can see that democracies vary in apparent effectiveness, equality and longevity, from peaceful and egalitarian regimes as in Switzerland and Sweden, through the controversial case of the United States of America, to apparently fragile new democracies in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Dictatorships seem to thrive at one time like the former Soviet Union, sending the first satellite into space and dominating half the world, only to crumble away as the result of forces which few seemed able to predict. There are times when it is difficult not to sympathise with the view that such matters
are both out of the control and beyond the understanding of ordinary people.
