The widespread adoption of mainframe computers by all levels of governments is a phenomenon that has been seriously neglected by political scientists. While a few isolated, popular issues have been noticed, little academic attention has been paid within the discipline to the effects of computers on our political institutions and processes. The development of a cadre of data processing specialists is introducing a new and powerful set of values into public decision-making. Interest groups and political parties are scrambling to adjust their mobilization strategies. The growing employment of arcane and often questionable decision models diminishes even further the public's already limited ability to monitor their governments' activities. As a discipline, political science has much to do if it is to meet these challenges to its understanding of governments and how they work.

The Quiet Revolution is commonly regarded as the single most important turning point in Quebec's recent history. This article questions the conventional paradigm that the institutional and structural changes in Quebec during the 1960s were merely symptoms of, and secondary to, the essence of the Quiet Revolution, that is, widespread changes of mentality, attitudes and values. The authors argue that the changes encompassed by the Quiet Revolution are not as complete as many have suggested and that the tension between the forces of tradition and the forces of modernity is still an important focus for understanding contemporary Quebec. More specifically, empirical data confirm that the push for secularization in Quebec, secularization being the cutting edge of the Quiet Revolution, has not run its course and that traditional religious values continue to play an important role in Quebec politics.

Socialism is often defined in terms of “community,” or, as Professor John Wilson once put it, as a “society of friends.” Thus defined, it is contrasted with the competitive relations of bourgeois society. But in some recent theory and practice, political competition is taken to be a defining feature of a legitimate socialist order. The persistence of political institutions is thus stressed, both by Western socialist theorists and by reformers in Eastern and Central Europe, and the orthodox view that “state” is to be superseded by “community” is sharply rejected. These two critiques differ, however, in one major respect: for Western socialists, the state is to be legitimated by the principles of socialist rationality, while for many reformers of Eastern and Central Europe it is to be legitimated by political life itself. From this second point of view, neither “friendship” nor “rationality” responds to the tensions which a socialist polity, no less than any other, will face: for both these concepts, to the extent that they are taken to set pre-established norms, constrict the “space for political action, ” and thus remove the necessary conditions for legitimacy.

Cicero's great reputation as a political thinker has sharply declined in the twentieth century. Commentators, if treating him at all, usually focus briefly on his ethical ideas and neglect the significant economic dimension of his thought. In view of the importance of the conception of property in the history of political theory. Cicero deserves to be taken more seriously today by political scientists. An “economic individualist” who recommended the enlightened pursuit of self-interest and defended property differentials, he was the first major political thinker to conceive of the protection of private property as the primary purpose of the state.

The Supreme Court's decisions on constitutional amendment made possible and then sanctioned a political compromise which conflicts with the logic of the only provision of the BNA Act dealing with amendments to the division of powers. The implications of section 94 have been overlooked partly because judges are ill-disposed to arguments based upon the structure of the BNA Act, and partly because of Frank Scott's misleading essay on the subject. Scott's centralist interpretation of section 94 is untenable, largely because that section does not restrict provincial sovereignty or federalism but gives constitutional recognition to them. Section 94 also implies a formal amending procedure of unanimity: neither unilateral action by the federal Parliament nor substantial provincial consent has any application to the division of powers. Since the centralist interpretation of the Canadian constitution cannot be reconciled with a significant provision of the BNA Act, a conception of Canadian federalism is required which gives greater recognition to the constitutional autonomy of the provinces.

A formal analysis of the amending formula of Canada's Constitution Act, 1982 is presented. It is shown that larger provinces have greater voices in determining constitutional amendments, except that there are two groupings of provinces within which power with respect to constitutional amendments is exactly equal. Further, it is argued that differences in power among the provinces are disproportionately small in comparison to differences in population, so that the amending formula systematically directs greater influence to the individual citizens of smaller provinces.

Social choice theory demonstrates that interesting and nonobvious perversities can result when majoritarian methods are applied to the selection of a single alternative from among more than two alternatives. The “voters paradox” is a well-known example of this phenomenon. This note demonstrates that the outcome of the 1983 federal Conservative party leadership convention is another example of the interaction of a decision rule and preferences producing a nonoptimal outcome.

The import of social choice theory lies in its examination of the various choice rules available for the recording and weighing of preferences in an election and the consequences of those rules for democratic political life. A choice rule is a method for aggregating individual preferences into a collective determination. Choice rules vary in their capacities to maximize (and minimize) various values desired in a system of decision-making. They also vary in their capacities to reveal information about preferences.

Professor Levesque's note raises a number of interesting and important questions. I shall be concerned directly with only one of these—the question of whether or not John Crosbie was the “best candidate,” as that term has been defined in Levesque's note. I shall try to show that while there was good reason to suppose that Crosbie was the “best candidate,” in fact he was not. I shall then comment briefly on why Brian Mulroney won the convention. The data on which these observations are based are from a series of surveys of delegates to the convention—the first conducted by mail beginning in the first week of May, the second conducted face-to-face by student interviewers during the three-day registration period at the convention, and the third conducted by mail beginning two weeks after the convention.

Professor Carmichael's critique appears to demolish my reading of Hobbes so completely, and contains such minute reasoning, that readers will be apt at least to carry away the impression that there can be no smoke without fire. In this case, there is. As I shall show, Carmichael's most confident judgments, and his essential arguments, are without foundations.

As C. B. Macpherson allows in his comment, my critique of his interpretation is based upon “minute” reasoning and textual analysis. It would not be appropriate (or even possible) to reproduce that analysis here, or to defend it in detail against Macpherson's rebuttal. The best response to his remarks, therefore, is the critique itself, as originally stated: I can only hope that those who are interested in these issues will read it with care. Here, I will confine myself to a few general observations.