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Unlike what happened in other countries and right front the beginning, the sociology of French catholicism assignée itself a task of social morphology: the description of the scope of religious influence in terms of objective indicators. The pastoral problematic, which very quickly took precedence in the statistical inquiries, led to the use of simple numerical indicators as means of measuring individual religiousness. Just when this sociology was refining ils tools and publishing ils impressive results, the Second Vatican Council repudiated the previous objective conception of affiliation in favor of a concept of identity resting on the word of the believer. Religious statistics probably reflect primarily this change from the world of the Council of Trento, for example different rhythms of evolution of the rates of practice and identification.

The 1979 and 1983 parliamentary élections show clearly the decline In the Influence of the Labour Party since the beginning of the 1950s. It is above ail the working class voters who are affected by the long process that the élections illustrate. While it is still true that a majority of Labour votes are cast by workers, it can no longer be denied that the majority of British workers has now deserted the Labour Party. The fragmentation and uprooting of a non-negligible part of the working class as a result of the restructuring of industry, the labour market and housing, but also as a result of the changes which are taking place in the very composition of the working place have gradually worn away the traditional social and industrial bases of the Labour Party and led to the slow dissolution of the social psychological and ideological dispositions which had provided the bases for the solidity of the relations between the Labour Party and the world of the workers.

Avec 32,9% de suffrages, la Démocratie chrétienne réalise aux élections législatives de juin 1983 son score le plus bas depuis la Libération. Les pertes ? près de 6 points par rapport à 1979 ? concernent cette fois tout l'éventail de Pélectorat du parti : d'opinion, d'appartenance ou de clientèle, populaire ou bourgeois, catholique engagé ou modéré. Au niveau du système partisan cependant, le choc de ces élections est amorti par l'absence d'une solution alternative. La gauche, en effet, n'a guère profité de l'échec de la DC : le PCI continue à baisser légèrement et le PSI n'a connu qu'une modeste croissance (+1,6). Le reclassement s'est fait essentiellement au centre, entre la Démocratie chrétienne et les partis laïcs (PRI, PLI), tandis qu'une frange toujours plus importante de l'électoral témoignait sa méfiance envers la classe politique par l'absention, le vote nul ou blanc ou l'adhésion à de petites listes régionales ou corporatistes. With 32,9 % of the votes, the Christian-Democrats achieved in the June 1983 parliamentary elections their worst results since Liberation. The losses ? nearly 6 points with respect to 1979 ? are across the board in the party's electorate : opinion, clientele, working class or bourgeois, active or moderate Catholic. The shock was reduced by the absence of an alternative solution in terms of the party system. Thus, the left barely profited from the Christian-Democratic failure. The Italian Communist Party continued its slow decline, and the Italian Socialist Party grew very modestly (+1.6). The realignment concerned mostly the center, as between the Christian-Democrats and the secular parties (PRI PLI), while an increasingly high proportion of the voters showed its feelings towards the political class by abstaining, voting blank or null, or by favoring small regional, or corporatist lists.

different logic. Since the end of the Second World War and for nearly 30 years, the hatred of the Jews has been repressed: anti-semitic Incidents have been relatively rare, sporadic, and occurring in an ideological vacuum; there was no believable ideology to justify them. A notable change has occurred recently. Not only has the number of anti-semitic acts increased, but a rationalizing ideology has been put in place and disseminated. Contemporary anti-semitism recalls many features of anti-Jewish ideologies : the same tendency to generalize, to attribute to Jews globally the same complaints, to judge them by the same stereotypes. It differs, however, by the specifie type of rationalization which links all these elements. Blaming the Jews, the Jewish people, or Judaism is now a political act. It is carried out by condemning the Jewish State and the nationalism which supports its raison d'être, Zionism.

The history of thé Middle East in the 20th century is that of the building of states. Palestine, caught up in Zionist colonialism, missed the turn of statehood during thé decade 1936-1948. Since 1948, however, new political elites emerged in and through the diaspora, structured within the framework of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The PLO has succeeded in acquiring an exclusive national legitimacy for the Palestine people and posing the issue of the state in the often unfavorable multi-Arab state context. The political socialization of the leaders of the armed organizations took place following a double path, that of the Fatah and that of the Movement of Arab nationalists, which gave birth to the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratie Front for