STALINISM IN RETROSPECT: HANNAH ARENDT

Established writers whose reputation is affixed to a particular line of argument are typically ill disposed to change their minds in public. Some authors sincerely believe that the historical record vindicates them. Others are determined that the historical record will vindicate them. Still others ignore the historical record. Among students of totalitarianism, no one had more at stake reputationally than Hannah Arendt. It is not just that The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) established her as the premier thinker on its topic. It is also that totalitarianism, as she understood it, ribbons through all of her subsequent books, from the discussion of “the social” in The Human Condition (1958) to the analysis of thinking in the posthumously published The Life of the Mind (1978). How ready was she to adapt or to change entirely arguments she had first formulated as early as the mid‐to‐late 1940s? “Stalinism in Retrospect,” her contribution to Columbia University's Seminar on Communism series, offers a rare opportunity to answer, at least partially, this question. Arendt's foil was the publication of recent books on Stalin and the Stalin era by three Russian witnesses: Nadezhda Mandelstam, Roy Medvedev, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. According to Arendt, the books meshed with her own theoretical conception of Bolshevism while changing the “whole taste” of the period: they contained new insights into the nature of totalitarian criminality and evil. “Stalinism in Retrospect” documents Arendt's arguments and challenges to them by a number of the seminar's participants. Of particular note is the exchange between her and Zbigniew Brzezinski, an expert on the Soviet Union, a major interpreter of totalitarianism in his own right, and soon to be President Carter's National Security Advisor (January 1977–January 1981). Notes by the editor, Peter Baehr, offer a critical context for understanding Arendt's argument.     

‘A Rather Novel Constitutional Experiment’: The Formation of the 1977–8 ‘Lib‐Lab Pact’

By March 1977, the Labour government which had narrowly been re‐elected in the October 1974 election, had lost its parliamentary majority, and was facing a vote of confidence tabled by the Conservative opposition. Senior Labour figures thus desperately sought to secure support from one of the minor parties. Unable to broker a deal with either the Ulster Unionists or the Scottish National Party (SNP), largely due to ideological differences, the Labour leadership entered into negotiations with the Liberal leader, David Steel. The result was that the Liberal Party agreed to provide the Labour government with parliamentary support, in return for consultation, via a joint committee, over future policies, coupled with the reintroduction of devolution legislation, and a pledge to provide for direct elections for the European parliament (ideally using some form of proportional representation). There was some surprise that Steel had not pressed for more, or stronger, policy commitments or concessions from the Labour prime minister, James Callaghan, but Steel was thinking long term; he envisaged that Liberal participation in the joint consultative committee would foster closer co‐operation between Liberals and Labour moderates/social democrats, and eventually facilitate a realignment of British politics by marginalising both the Labour left, and the increasingly right‐wing Conservatives Party.     

Sustainable Water Management Policy: Lessons from Amsterdam

This article focuses on the identification of critical water policy instruments, and opportunities and barriers to transforming urban water use in a sustainable and efficient direction in Amsterdam (The Netherlands). The main lessons that can be inferred from past and current water policies and management practices in Amsterdam show (1) the relevance of common action for increasing the quality of or general control over water resources when shared interests of different actors using the same water resource are present; (2) that the effectiveness and applicability of water policy instruments are strongly conditional upon receiving the support of both water users and suppliers; (3) that the governance structure of water provision plays a crucial role in increasing the efficiency of water use.