‘THE CLAIM WHICH IS BEING MADE IS THAT THE LIBERALIZATION is now becoming a generic and indeed a crucial phenomenon, as the Revolution had been; that, for good and in the main obvious reasons, it is replacing the earlier myth as a central political preoccupation or category; and that its basic assumptions are not merely more pertinent to our time, but probably also rather sounder by any criterion and at all times’. So wrote Ernest Gelher in a recent article destined in my view to initiate a vast debate.