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Political science holds a relatively minor place in thé French intellectuel field. As an autonomous, socially constituted discipline, it barely exists when considered in relation to mundane and self-justifying discourse. The causes are the peculiarities of its historie emergence and the working rules of its various markets (trading posts and places where the prices of knowledge products are established). Five markets are examined: the national and the international market of the discipline, the market of the national System of social science research, thé market of general cultural goods, the specifically political market of the compétition for professional political positions.

Les caractéristiques des chômeurs (population résiduelle) et l'absence d'une définition scientifique du chômage expliquent, pour l'essentiel, que la relation entre chômage et politique soit difficile à analyser et reste mal connue des politologues. Des travaux sociologiques ainsi que des études de politologues américains suggèrent un effet direct faible, si l'on entend par là l'action des chômeurs eux-mêmes, qu'il s'agisse du vote, de l'engagement partisan et syndical ou de mouvements de révolte. En revanche, en ce qui concerne le vote, on peut faire l'hypothèse que s'exerce un effet indirect et limité, dû plutôt aux non-chômeurs et conduisant à un léger déplacement du vote vers la gauche. The characteristics of the unemployed (residual population) and the lack of a scientific definition of unemployment explain for the most part why the relation of unemployment to politics is difficult to analyse and remains little understood by political scientists. Sociological research as well as studies by American political scientists suggest that the direct impact (i.e the political action of the unemployed themselves) is weak, whether one considers voting patterns, party and trade union involvement or movements of revolt. The data suggest however that there is an indirect and limited influence on voting, due as a whole to employed workers, which leads to a slight shift to the left.

Public sector extension has led some economists to systematic interest in the behavior of political agents. The link between unemployment and leaders' political popularity plays an important role in the political-economic models which have corne out of this research. Data from the major Western countries show that unemployment, alongside inflation and income growth, weighs significantly on the popularity rates of politicians in power. France is no exception and thé high increase of unemployment in the last months of the presidential campaign played a great part in Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's defeat in May 1981.

British public opinion in favor of some kind of Welfare State, as shown by Gallup poils in thé 1940's, led thé Tories to accept most of thé Labour Party's postwar measures. Expectorions were satisfied in the fields of employment, social welfare and, above all, health, much less in that of housing. As far as women's conditions and the family were concerned, the Welfare State fell short of public opinion expectations.

La presse britannique, qui a soutenu sans réserve l'effort national au cours des années de guerre et a pris une part active à la campagne pour les élections de 1945, joue, au lendemain de la guerre, un rôle essentiel dans l'évolution des mentalités. C'est elle qui structure très largement les perceptions du public pendant la période de reconstruction. Au moment où le gouvernement Attlee jette les bases du système d'assurance national et tente de résoudre le problème du logement et de remédier à la pénurie alimentaire, on relève dans la presse nationale trois attitudes nettement différenciées. Le Daily Mirror voit dans les différentes mesures décidées par le gouvernement travailliste les voies d'un renouvellement des rapports sociaux, auquel la population doit être associée de façon concrète dans sa vie quotidienne. A l'inverse, le Daily Telegraph donne à contrec?ur son aval au programme d'action sociale tout en refusant d'en attribuer la paternité au seul gouvernement socialiste qui, au nom de l'idéologie, risque d'en pervertir l'application. Quant au News Chronicle, organe libéral, il apporte à l'expérience un soutien raisonné. Le Welfare State est ainsi perçu par la presse nationale, tantôt comme un système global cohérent, tantôt comme un ensemble de mesures isolées, parfois légitimes, mais a priori suspectes puisqu'elles sont le produit d'une idéologie jugée pernicieuse. The British press, which unstintingly supported the national war effort and took an active part in the campaign for the 1945 general elections, played an essential role in shaping the public's perceptions in the reconstruction period. While the Attlee government was setting up the bases of the National Insurance Scheme and trying to solve both the housing and food shortage problems, three distinctly different positions emerged in the national press. The Daily Mirror saw in the Labour government's measures ways for a renewal of social relations to which the population should be associated, daily and concretely. The Daily Telegraph gave half-hearted support to the social programme but refused to credit the socialist government alone for it, for fear that its socialist ideology would pervert its implementation. The Liberal News Chronicle provided a balanced support. The Welfare State was perceived by the national press either as a consistent global system or as a package of isolated, often legitimate, measures, but viewed by their very nature with suspicion because they were the product of an ideology judged harmful.

Ten years after the post-war Labour government set up the Welfare State, Britain was often described as an "affluent society". However, in the late fifties, the "New Left" insisted on the shortcomings of the Welfare State : poverty and inequality had not been eradicated, and thé Welfare State could in no way be considered the first step towards a socialist Britain. For the New Left, the impact of the Welfare State in housing, education, health and poverty relief the financing of its welfare policy showed that the Welfare State was not a social revolution opening the way to socialism. At best, it was improved capitalism, for which the New Left coined the word «welfarism».

Island particularism is a generally acknowledged phenomenon, but ils political implications remain less researched. Many European island ragions have their own specifie institutions or have been enjoying for ages greater or lesser degrees of autonomy. Others are on the verge of obtaining, or have just recently obtained, institutional recognition of their particularity. In Scotland, the Western Isles (or Outer Hebrides) have been granted special status under the 1975 reform of Scottish local government. This article describes the causes and effects of the local government reform and outlines the consequences of institutionalization for the islanders.

II existe deux catégories de vagues de grèves que l'on peut désigner par les termes de crise et de conflit. La crise est un processus multipolaire qui s'étend par contagion plus que sous l'effet d'une action volontaire issue d'un centre unique. La fin de la crise ne définit ni gagnant ni perdant. Le conflit est un processus organisé qui met aux prises des adversaires dans un duel et désigne un vainqueur et un vaincu. L'analyse morphologique des vagues de grèves en France montre la pertinence de cette distinction et débouche sur une conception de la crise comme manifestation d'un conflit qui n'a pas d'objet politique. There are two types of strike waves, which may be called crisis and conflict. Crisis is a multipolar process spreading more by contagion than by deliberate action from a single center. At the end of a crisis neither winner nor loser is identified. Conflict is an organised process in which opponents fight a duel, and which ends with clearly defined winners and losers. A morphological analysis of French strike waves shows the relevance of the distinction between crisis and conflict: a crisis is a conflict without political object.

When did the words " communism" and "socialism" appear and what do they really mean when applied to workers' parties? Between 1852 and 1918 thé term "communist" was not used for these parties. It was only in 1918, under Lenin's influence, that it surfaced again, and the Communist International generalized ils usage in 1919. Spécial conditions explain why all parties under the banner of marxist communism and leninist organization principles have not yet placed the term " communist " in their names.

For almost a century there has been an interesting although officially ignored aspect of French political life: the action of parliamentary interest groups, set up within the assemblies according to non-party criteria. These parliamentary interest groups (which attempt to defend a special interest) grew up in French parliamentary life during the Third and Fourth Republics. One of the most famous was the defense group for alcoholic beverages. There was much criticism of these groups because they were thought to be contrary to the general interest. Such judgements should be revised, ail the more as under the Fifth Republic these groups' actions have been more limited. Nevertheless, such groups' legitimacy must be asserted. Their action is one of the contemporary democratie mearts of expression. It is, however, necessary that they function within a legal framework.

progressively became the pointer of the decay and death of a certain society. The tension in Visconti between his marxist «faith» and his aristocratie culture does not explain everything. The author of Senso and Rocco was a victim of the censorship which reigned in Italy in the 1950s. But he also understood, as did others, that times had changea and that revolutionary fervor in the cinema was no longer relevant in the Italy of the « historic compromise ».