What do citizens and political leaders have in mind when they think about democracy? This article deals with the relationship between different conceptions of democracy and the level of support for democracy among both ordinary citizens and political elites in two post-Soviet countries, Russia and Ukraine.

Data collected through personal interviews in 1992 and 1995 reveal that the mass and elite in these post-socialist countries hold different conceptions of democracy. The elite tend to emphasize law and order and the rule of law, whereas the citizens stress freedoms in their understanding of democracy. Involvement in politics, especially in a political party, has a significant influence on the meaning of democracy as well as on the consistency among attitudes reflecting support for democratic principles. Different conceptions of democracy are also found to affect the perceived extent to which the current regime fits with the individual's idea of what a democracy should be like.

Ernest Gellner's is the best-known modernist explanatory theory of nationalism. This article summarizes its expression and development before considering its strengths and weaknesses. Discussion centres on Gellner's functionalist mode of explanation, the place of nationalism in his philosophy of history, the predictive and retrodictive nature of his theory, and the merits of his typology of nationalism. The apolitical character of his writings is emphasized: in particular, though Gellner established the connections between nationalism and egalitarianism in modern societies, he did not emphasize the mutually reinforcing relationships between nationalism, egalitarianism and democratization; moreover, his contempt for nationalist doctrines is not something liberals, socialists and conservatives need share.

British civil servants have a clear constitutional duty to obey their ministers. Yet civil servants may be confronted with situations in which they believe, on the basis of their knowledge or expertise, that the course of action a minister favours would have sharply damaging consequences for the government or the country. What should higher civil servants do then? We use data gathered in two rounds of interviews with senior civil servants (Grades 1–3) in 1989–90 and 1993–94 to explore how far civil servants feel able to go in challenging either inappropriate ministerial requests for services or policies they believe to be sharply damaging. Senior civil servants are divided on the appropriate course of action in such circumstances.

Following the Republican victory in the 1994 mid-term elections, the balance of power in the US House of Representatives between committees and central party leader shifted decisively in favour of the latter. The central thrust of the procedural and personnel changes instituted under Newt Gingrich in 1994 and 1995 was to consolidate party government. This article reviews these important changes and analyses their impact on the legislative process. The return to party government is explained as a product of Gingrich's partisan vision of legislative organization, the destabilization of existing institutional relations as a consequence of the shift in partisan control, the unusual conditions of the 1994 elections, and the strong team spirit and high levels of Republican party support. The article speculates that a return to more autonomous, less party-dominated committee system is unlikely given strong Democratic support for robust centralized party leadership, important changes in Congress's policy agenda, high membership turnover, and the probable continuation of split-party government, but the potency of these centralizing forces will probably be mitigated by familiar decentralizing pressures in contemporary American politics.

A late-twentieth century political theorist presented with an essay on ‘Theories of Justice’ would be able to predict with some confidence what he or she was about to read. Justice is widely acknowledged to be a legitimate topic for political theory, and there are a number of recent studies which are exemplary as to content and style – most obviously the work of Rawls, but also of, amongst others, Nozick, Walzer, Sandel, Scanlon and Barry. These exemplary studies have generated an extensive secondary literature: the major figures in the ‘ Justice’ industry comment upon and develop each others work, and are, in turn, the subject of commentary by the next generation. Obviously there is, as yet, no consensus as to the actual nature of justice, but there is quite general agreement as to how to go about investigating the subject. In short, this is, to apply a Rawlsian term, a ‘well-ordered’, professional, branch of political theory – and Rawls is an appropriate reference point here, since the professionalism of this discourse is largely attributable to the central role played by his work and the literature it has generated.An excellent example of such an essay would be David Miller, ‘Review Article: Recent Theories of Social Justice’, British Journal of Political Science, 21(1991), 371–91.John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974); Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1983); Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Thomas Scanlon, ‘Contractualism and Utilitarianism’ in Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, eds, Utilitarianism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 103–28; Brian Barry, Theories of Justice (Hemel Hempstead, Herts: Harvester-Wheatsheaf, 1989); and Justice as Impartiality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).See Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 453. The dominance of Rawls can, of course, be exaggerated, and there are important contemporary writers who do not simply disagree with his account of justice, but regard his project as misconceived; see, for example, Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (London: Duckworth, 1988).

Redistricting has a substantial influence on parties' electoral fortunes, so the process receives extremely close attention from those potentially affected by changes to the pattern of constituency boundaries. In the United Kingdom, redistricting recommendations are made by independent Boundary Commissions, but the political parties can influence the nature of those recommendations through the representations that they make during the consultative process. When a Commission has made provisional recommendations for a county (in England and Wales), region (in Scotland) or London borough, individuals and organizations have one month in which to make written representations, either favourable or unfavourable, regarding all or part of the recommendations, and they can suggest alternative sets of constituencies for the area concerned. The Commission may then hold a public inquiry, at which the interested parties can promote their views and contest those put forward by others. The assistant commissioner who conducts the inquiry reports to the commission, which may publish alterations to the provisional recommendations as a result of his/her advice. If their suggestions are adopted by the Commission for its final recommendations, then those promoting them at the public inquiry will have influenced the redistricting outcome.For detailed discussions of the work of the Boundary Commissions, see D. Butler, ‘The Redrawing of Parliamentary Boundaries in Britain’, Journal of Behavioural and Social Sciences, 37 (1992), 5–12; I. McLean and R. Mortimore, lsquo;Apportionment and the Boundary Commission for England’, Electoral Studies, 11 (1992), 293–309.

In the study of politics, as in political life, ‘plus ça change’ is not always an accurate description. Recent models of the interelection dynamics of support for British governing parties illustrate the point. Unlike their traditional rivals that accorded pride of place to macroeconomic indicators, especially inflation and unemployment rates, the new models have focused on the effects of voters' subjective evaluations of economic conditions and their assessments of the performance of the prime minister. By incorporating these variables, analysts have articulated aggregate party support models more closely to the micro-analytical literature on voting behaviour and election outcomes. To date, however, another variable, party identification, that has been the subject of longstanding controversies in that literature, has been neglected because of a lack of appropriate time-series data. Such data are now available, and they enable one to investigate the dynamics and determinants of British ‘macropartisanship’, and to incorporate party identification variables in vote intention and prime ministerial approval models. This Note does so in a study of Conservative party support over the January 1992–November 1995 period. For references to a number of the more recent studies, see Harold D. Clarke and Marianne C. Stewart, ‘Economic Evaluations, Prime Ministerial Approval and Governing Party Support: Rival Models Reconsidered’, British Journal of Political Science, 25 (1995), 597–622. For more comprehensive literature reviews, see, for example, Michael S. Lewis-Beck, Economics and Elections: The Major Western Democracies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988); William L. Miller, ‘Studying How the Economy Affects Public Attitudes and Behavior: Problems and Prospects’, in Harold D. Clarke, Marianne C. Stewart and Gary Zuk, eds, Economic Decline and Political Change: Canada, Great Britain, the United States (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989); Helmut Norpoth, Confidence Regained: Economics, Mrs Thatcher, and the British Voter (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992).‘MacKuen, Erikson and Stimson introduced the term ‘macropartisanship’ in their study of the aggregate dynamics of party identification in the United States. See Michael B. MacKuen, Robert S. Erikson and James A. Stimson, ‘Macropartisanship’, American Political Science Review, 83 (1989), 1125–42.