the total number of Baltic nationals, but Soviet industrialization policies led to
huge numbers of Russians moving into these countries.
The opportunity to re-assert their identities came from two sources: the
Helsinki Final Act (seeHelsinki process) of 1975, and enthusiastic support
for the liberalizing policies of Gorbachev, in particular the idea of glasnost. By
the time of the attempted coup against Gorbachev in 1991, popular feeling was
so intense, and Western support so strong, that the collapsing Soviet Union was
in no position to oppose their demand for independence. Although these
countries have experienced all the problems that the larger and more estab-
lished Central and Eastern European countries had to go through after their
own revolutions in 1989, they have managed the transition to liberal democ-
racy remarkably painlessly—unlike, for example, in theBalkans. Each has set
up a parliamentary form of government with competitive political parties,
written constitutions and human rights protection. They have been especially
eager to join Western Europe at the institutional level, and have above all
sought to become members ofNATO, though this as yet unachieved goal has
more to do with establishing a Western identity than any actual defence need.
Their economies have become modernized relatively rapidly, helped in part by
the fact that the Soviet Union had itself relied heavily on them for its own
economic needs, and had invested relatively generously. The real key to their
political success, however, has been the uniformity of their culture, lacking any
serious social, linguistic or religiouscleavages, itself in part a reflection of the
long-maintained covertnationalism. It may be significant that, after the
Second World War, they continued to have at leastde jureexistence because the
Western nations never formally accepted their annexation by the Soviet
Union. In this sense, at least, they felt less deserted and more respected than
some areas controlled from Moscow.
Behavioural
Behavioural approaches inpolitical sciencebecame important in post-war
America and spread to some university departments in Europe. Technically, a
behavioural approach is one that concentrates on explaining overt political or
social behaviour in terms of other overt or express phenomena. For example,
when consideringvotingthe only part of the process which can be subjected
to a behavioural study is the actual casting of the vote, which can be observed
externally and objectively; the ideology of the voter cannot be studied as here
more subjective matters are involved. Other objective factors, such as class,
religion, region and age can be taken into consideration when describing the
voting process, but individual policy preferences or attitudes to issues are much
more difficult to study. More generally, however, behaviouralism has come to
mean a rather naı ̈ve distinction between the more apparently ‘science-like’ part
Behavioural