This article aims at examining how the difference in an institution such as the parliament and the election affects the activity of political association, and then leads to divergent of political consequences by comparing Bahrain with Kuwait. Among the Gulf countries, Bahrain achieved its political liberalization second after Kuwait. After 27 years of suspension by constitutional revision, finally in 2002, Bahrain resumed its parliament, which was quite different during the years in 1973-75. The election for the Bahraini Chamber of Deputies was held twice in 2002 and 2006. In 2005, the law of political association was created to authorize the political association to participate in the 2006 election. As a consequence, candidates representing major political associations won most of the seats. Now, we can see these political associations as "quasi-parties" because they are de facto parties in terms of their function. I would like to examine causal correlation between the divergence of political consequence in Bahrain and Kuwait, focusing on the institutional differences and its effect on the organization including the activities of "quasi-party" and also analyzing the parliamentary politics and the election in Bahrain. In conclusion, from the perspective of the formation of "party system" which consists of the "quasi-party" as the basic unit, Bahrain has more developed "party system" except for the room for participation in power.

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This article examines the human rights policies of the European Community towards Turkey at two different time periods: the period of military rule (1980-83) and the period preceding the ratification of the Customs Union Agreement between Turkey and the Community. These periods correspond approximately to the times when the Community did not have an institutionalized human rights policy toward third parties (the early 1980s) and when such policy gradually came into being (the 1990s) respectively. The article seeks to find out in relation to these cases whether the existence (or conversely the absence) of an institutional approach to human rights in the external relations of the Community made any difference as far as the perennial dilemma of norms versus interests is concerned in the pursuit of foreign policy. This dilemma is especially relevant for the Community because the ideals of democracy and human rights have increasingly played a salient role in the Community's identity construction, yet its members hold tangible material interests, constraining the pursuit of these ideals beyond the borders of the Community. With a view to exploring this dilemma with regard to the case studies in question, the article looks into the issue of coherence among the policies of the Council, the Commission, and the Parliament and the human rights instruments deployed by the Community along with the rationale behind them.

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