Most theorists on International Relations agree on recognizing natural resources, economic strength, technological development, political stability and military strength as the five bases of a state's power. This unanimity is in sharp contrast with the divergence in the operationalizations of the power of states. Most operationalizations use only one or two bases of a state's power and thus are very limited in scope. Therefore, the demand for an operationalization sticking as closely as possible to the unanimity among theorists, farces itself on the researcher. The present study is an attempt to transform the theoretical unanimity into an operational measuring.Such an operationalization was obtained by granting all five power bases an equal share in the index (in this operationalization each power base is represented by 3 subindicators), and by giving an equal weight to the sums of the arithmetical values for fifteen subindicators and thus for the five indicators. The nations'power index thus obtained was applied for 110 nation states (a number of very small states had to be kept out of the present research) as they existed in the beginning of the '70s. On this power scale, ratings diHer from 29,046 IWM (index points of world power) for the USA to 276 IWM for Gambia, and even less for a number of the smaller states that could not be investigated.

Switzerland's attitude towards the EEC is typical of the new foreign policy adopted by that country in 1947 under the heading «Neutrality and Solidarity». A number of centrifugal factors (the EEC is regarded as the centre or the pole of attraction) have kept Switzerland out of the EEC, although many other factors, economic and commercial in particular, but alsoideological, cultural, political and geographical ones tend towards closer ties with the EEC, and have acted as «centripetal» farces. The main «centrifugal» factors were: Swiss neutrality, the federal system and direct democracy, certain economic elements such as the fiscal and agricultural systems, and especially psychological factors including attitudes and ideas concerning the EEC and the consequences of membership. Moreover, timely corrections and adaptations in the international commercial field (EFTA membership, advantages gained from the Kennedy Round, the 1972 Free Trade Agreement with the enlarged EEC) havereduced the necessity to seek a closer relationship with the Community.

From the beginning of the 19th Century to the present feelings of national identity and religious sentiments have coexisted in a close but ambiguous relationship. For example, national movements in Poland, French-speaking Canada and Ireland have been inextricably linked with the Roman Catholic faith. Pan-Arabism and Zionism could not exist without the underpinnings of Islam and the Jewish faith respectively.On the other hand, these same national movements have frequently been in conflict with the prevailing religious establishment. In many cases, the religious hierarchy has been at odds with nationalist currents. Moreover, often the leaders of nationalist movements were themselve either non-religious or dissenters. However, in order to succeed national movements could not ignore and, indeed, made good use of traditionalreligious feelings. There is a complex relationship between religion and nationalism, and their interplay results in both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary tendencies.

This keynote address to the Xth World Congress of the International Political Science Association considers one of the effects of politics on either space or time: that of structuring them hierarchically, around the notions of center and border in the case of space; around the notions of origin, centre and end in the case of time. Various archetypes and explanatory models are considered.

These remarks are parts of a historical research on the ideological functions of Catastrophism. It is suggested that in mediaeval monasticism the closing of time might have contributed to the unprecedented technical development of Western European culture between the Xth and the XVth centuries. The opening of time and space conveyed by the scientific and industrial revolutions have led to the ideologies of illimited progressand indefinite growth today officially prevailing in the whole world. It is questionned whether the closing of time inherent to the contemporary ecological movement, as illustrated by Economist Georgescu-Roegen, will contribute to the psycho-sociological mutation indispensable if mankind is to survive.