Contenu du sommaire

Gabriel Tarde : Fragments of future history. Readings from essay published in 1896: the reactions of the world population which a general cooling compels to organize a new, underground life. The great themes which are typical of a society are dealt with from philosophical and sociological standpoint.

Peter McDonough : The anatomy of party competition and electoral participation in India, 1952-1967. A model of the macro-party systems was proposed to solve the dual question of dominance/competition and bi/multipartism inherent in the classification of all party systems. Two simple parameters were found which could explain these two dimensions. This model was generated by operating on the basic data for the two leading candidates. The two parameters are 1) the proportions of the total vote for the first- and second-place candidates and 2) the cumulatives proportions of winning and second-place candidates. The four levels of competitive party system implicit in the interaction of these variables were derived: monopoly or dominance, oligarchy or dominance-by- default, polygarchy or competitive multipartism, and competitive bipartism. In the Indian case the rate of turnout tends to vary directly though loosely with increasing party competition. It proved possible to interpret the « left- right continuum » more readly in organizational than in ideological terms. The extremist parties tend to husband their resources to fit the distribution of electoral preferences. Finally, the system was analyzed in transition as well as at discrete intervals. These rankings corroborate the middle position of Congress and the relatively stronger consistency of the extremist parties and voters. A stochastic model testing the continuity of the inter-party competitive system against the results of the 1967 election proved that the system has undergone significant realignment.

Doris Bensimon : The perception of Jewish identity by North African Jews living in France. In a survey on the integration of North African Jews in France, the test « Who-Am-I? » (W.A.I.) was used experimentally. The purpose of this test in the questionnaire was: a) to study whether the people interviewed would spontaneously define themselves as Jews and to see whether the rate of response to this projective and indirect question would be better than to direct questions. b) To determine the salience of ethnic or national character, the people interviewed could define themselves as French as well as Jewish or North African. c) To study the correlation between definition of self as belonging to an ethnic group and other definitions of self. d) To use this test as a pre-survey for further research on Jewish identity. The responses were used for a content analysis. This test permitted a specific social-psychological profile of the different sub-groups in the sample studied. Ethnic and religious identity appear as an aspect of personality of the persons interviewed. These responses enrich and clarify the information obtained by direct questions.