The role of the ‘universal’ instability in auroral phenomena is discussed. Excitation of the instability in the non-homogeneous magnetospheric plasma at R E ≈ 6 may modulate particle precipitation into the ionospheric auroral regions and account for some of the observations on pulsating (optical) auroras and X-ray pulsations. It is shown that a good correlation exists between the temporal and spatial variations of particles precipitation and the properties that might reasonably be expected from a drift wave model.