Justice Frankfurter is fond of quoting an old English saying that “the devil himself knoweth not the mind of men.” The mind of a man who happens to be a judge is the center of many contending impulses when he is making it up, and an external reconstruction of the process is quite impossible. However, the rules of the game require that judges supply clues to their thought processes in the form of written opinions. In every major case decided by the Supreme Court, one or more of its members provide a written justification for the decision announced. The individualistic tradition of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, moreover, permits justices who do not agree with the views of their brethren to say so, and to give their reasons for dissenting. Thus the Supreme Court on decision day takes on the aspect of a small legislature in which votes are cast pro and con on significant issues of public policy, with accompanying explanations much more coherent and systematic and better-reasoned than are customarily available in explanation of votes cast, say, in the United States Senate.

While it has not been usual to do so, these judicial votes can be subjected to the same kinds of analysis as have been traditionally employed for the study of legislative voting behavior.

The study of comparative politics has been primarily concerned thus far with the study of the formal institutions of governments—particularly the governments of Western Europe. It has been in this sense not only parochial but also primarily descriptive and formalistic. Its place in the field of political science, while suffering from all the ambiguities and methodological inadequacies of the field in general, has been ill-defined. Is the student of comparative politics primarily concerned with the meticulous description of the formal institutions of various polities or is it his role to undertake comparison? If the latter, what is the meaning of comparison? Is it confined simply to the description of differences among various institutional arrangements? Does comparison stop when we note that England has had a two-party system whereas France has had a multi-party system? Does a description of the institutional arrangements of the Soviet Union reveal in any sense the most relevant factors that account for the differences between it and Western democracies? If comparison is to be something more than the descriptive portrait of formal institutional differences, what should be its aim, scope, and method? Should the student of comparative politics attempt to compare total configurations? If not, then he has to develop a precise notion of what can be isolated from the total configuration of a system or systems and compared, i.e., understood and explained with reference to similar patterns wrenched from the total configuration of another system.

As the American Political Science Association nears the half century mark of its existence it seems appropriate to consider the broad significance of a professional group devoted to the study of government. Political science as a subject of systematic inquiry started with Aristotle but as a profession it has won its greatest recognition in the United States and within our generation. One fact is clear: no other country in the world today has so large, so well-trained, so competent a profession dedicated to the teaching and analysis of government.

Whatever the current climate of opinion may be, these are the men and women who, from day to day in classroom and study, must explain in lectures and in writing the nature of political systems, foreign and domestic. This profession, which has flourished so greatly in the last fifty years, is now a part of our national strength: it is the core of that broad and continuing study of government and thoughtful concern with politics vital to the successful operation of free institutions. I want to tell you why I think the study of governmental matters and a wider understanding of political problems has a fresh urgency for us as a nation and the bearing this in turn has on the development of political science as a discipline.

“Liberalism” is a late modern word, appearing first (along with “conservatism,” “socialism,” and “communism”) in the early nineteenth century. Its basic ideas are old. The particular freedoms called for have changed as the denials of freedom have changed. The demands have been for liberation from oppressive political rule or intolerant ecclesiastical authority; or from a status of slavery or serfdom; from restraints embodied in laws and customs that hamper the rise of new productive forces, or from limitations on equal opportunity resulting from narrow concentrations of private economic power; from limitations on voting rights and from interferences with freedom of religion, speech, and association. The constant concern has been with pleas for deliverance from restraints which, although perhaps widely regarded at a given time as a normal part of life, have come to be regarded, by some in the community, as unnatural and intolerable.

Let me first of all thank you most heartily for your kind invitation to this luncheon. As an old hand in the political science field myself, I take a special pleasure in this opportunity of establishing contacts with your Association. Need I tell you that no occasion offering me such an opportunity could have been more welcome than this one because of the honour which you bestow today upon Ralph Bunche. The election of Dr. Bunche as President of your Association is a high tribute to his personal qualities and achievements. I am proud to be present here today to join in that tribute.

The political scientists had a great share in the creation of the United Nations Organization. And they are doing much in the classroom, in publications, and by their daily influence on public affairs to explain, to strengthen, and to help the Organization. Meeting you here today it is natural for me to try to explain how the United Nations' world looks from the inside to a social scientist who long ago had to abandon scientific work but who, in the back of his mind, in whatever job he has had to try, has given much thought to the challenge that the special activities in which he was engaged presented to his scientific imagination and conscience.

Britain may fairly be called the classic home of two-party government. This claim is justifiable because of some characteristics for which the system, as employed in Britain, is distinctive. Chief among these is its long duration. Although there is room for disagreement among historians about the time and circumstances of its birth, it would be difficult to deny that two-party government was established earlier, has lasted longer, and at the present time is probably more firmly rooted there than in any contemporary state. Indeed, the practice of simplifying the complexities of politics into a contest for office between a pair of major claimants has endured in Britain through a catalogue of changes which would assuredly have wrecked a less effective system. In that country it has survived the evolution from an oligarchy of aristocrats to a democracy of the whole people; the transfer of power from monarchy to parliament and then from parliament to cabinet; the rise of large-scale industry with its social aftermath; the switch in economic policy from mercantilism to laissez faire and from this to state planning; and withal, the expansion and subsequent shrinkage of Britain's international might.

Disenchantment with moral abstractions as the hallmarks of enlightened foreign policy has recently revived infatuation with the slogans of “national interest,” “power politics,” and “balance of power.” Until the eve of World War II, these ideas had been recessive—at times moribund—for at least half a generation. Naive belief in the efficacy of professions of good will, reliance on weak instruments for effectuating simply noble intentions in the complex realms of policy and practice, and contentment with lofty exhortations, had too often become the directives of policy unconcerned with the harshness of politics or the intricate give-and-take of sustained diplomacy.

Since the Republic's inception, statesmen have proclaimed national interest as the firmament on which our foreign policy rests. To that concept they have repeatedly referred as a guide and rationale for action in foreign affairs. Over the years the concept of national interest has been endowed with a varied and changing content. Therefore, interpretation has been a matter of historical, rather than etymological, enquiry. Certainly, a single dictionary definition will not do. Nevertheless, while dominant meanings at different moments and a long-term trend in the development of meaning are alike discoverable, or imputable, the actual meaning in our own day rests largely on the setting of current controversies. A particular concept of the national interest, therefore, is not “automatically” warranted and acceptable by appeal to tradition and great names, any more than by formal definition.

Following the general election of September, 1953, the German Social Democratic party (SPD) finds itself in the role of a sole opposition party, a phenomenon in modern German politics. Confronted by a nearly solid phalanx of anti-socialist parties, the SPD approaches a period of crisis and of continuous strain. The ability of the Government to marshal an absolute majority at all times and a two-thirds majority when need be, threatens to relegate the party to virtual legislative impotence. Yet there are several factors militating for the continued existence of the SPD as a vigorous opposition party. Not having to compete with an irresponsible Communist organization in Western Germany, the SPD can be considered as the principal representative of the working class. Furthermore, its long history, its highly developed organizational apparatus, the discipline and devotion of its rank and file, coupled with the will to attain power, make the SPD a factor of relative significance in German as well as in European politics.

On the other hand, the dynamics of the East-West conflict, and especially Germany's geographic and political relation to it, tend to affect the political fortunes of the party somewhat adversely. The international situation represents a deadly challenge to the SPD and its survival as an influential political organization may well depend upon its ability to generate a counterforce to the pressures exerted upon Germany by the super-powers.

The widespread interest in understanding the political behavior of the American electorate has been served by a number of different methodological approaches. One of the most widely known and used is the analysis of aggregate voting statistics along the lines indicated by the work of Louis Bean. Major problems susceptible to study through aggregate behavioral measures include those related to the consequences of urbanization, population migration, drastic economic crisis or long-term change, or important international developments. Trends in voting behavior and regional differences in voting fall within this type of analysis, with census tract information and political sub-division voting statistics providing much of the relevant data for investigation.

A different approach to the study of political behavior is provided by the analysis of data on individuals, information pertaining to the behavior of identifiable persons. This approach allows flexibility in the ultimate units of analysis. The use of data on individuals not only provides such gross information as the percentages of people forming large groups (Democrats and Republicans, well-informed and poorly-informed) in the population, but it also provides information about various characteristics of these groups within the population.

Contemporary political science assumes that the representative system, in addition to its influence on the formal structure of government, is functionally related to the internal cohesiveness and equilibrium of society itself. This fact takes on the greatest significance in the modern democratic state, in which the size of the population requires that the representation be indirect. For the political scientist, therefore, a challenging situation arises out of the following question: how can the modern democratic state insure the most adequate and accurate political expression of the elements and currents within it, while still maintaining a government which can function and a safe margin of stability for the society?

That there are no simple formulae for resolving this problem is attested by the many theories of representation which have been propounded and tried during the last century. That a formula is almost desperately needed is demonstrated by postwar European experience. Italy is one of several countries in which the question of representation not only is significant but threatens to divide important segments of the society. The recent Italian elections point up this danger. But the elections, and the parliamentary experience which preceded them, also offer the political scientist a rich store of analytical raw material concerning the process of government and the group behavior which characterizes it.

In March, 1952 the Carnegie Corporation made available to the Social Science Research Council a research grant to support a major study of factors influencing the popular vote in the 1952 presidential election. Under the sponsorship of the Council's Committee on Political Behavior this project is currently being carried out by the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan.

The study was developed around six major objectives:

1. 1. To identify the voters and non-voters, Republicans and Democrats, within four major geographical areas, in regard to

   a. socio-economic characteristics;

   b. attitudes and opinions on political issues;

   c. perceptions of the parties and the candidates.

2. 2. To compare these groups to the corresponding groups in the 1948 presidential election.

3. 3. To trace the resolution of the vote with particular attention to the undecided and changing voters.

4. 4. To study the impact of the activities of the major parties on the population.

5. 5. To analyze the nature and correlates of political party identification.

6. 6. To analyze the nature and correlates of political participation.

The emergence in full flower, during the past twenty years, of the “positive state” has meant a great extension of administrative activity. This activity has been attacked as undemocratic by some persons whose concern was primarily with the programs carried out rather than with the means used to execute the programs. But the friends and even the originators of the programs have sometimes had an uncomfortable feeling that the traditional administrative mechanism has undemocratic tendencies. They have sought some means of democratizing the administrative process.

The most ambitious—indeed, the only thoroughgoing—attempt has been the use by the United States Department of Agriculture of the farmer committee system for the field service administration of agricultural price and income support programs, begun in 1933, and, since 1936, of the Agricultural Conservation Programs. This farmer committee system comprises over 100,000 farmers elected or appointed to serve on approximately 48 state, 3,000 county, and 29,000 community committees. The champions of this system believe that it decentralizes administration, putting authority and responsibility in the hands of those immediately affected by the programs. Further, it supplies new vitality to administration by drawing the clientele into the administrative processes. These objectives have imposed a significant structural requirement upon decentralized administration—the use of the committee system, a plural executive, in preference to a single administrator.

The new Italian Constitution was written by the 556 deputies the Italian people elected to their first Constitutional Assembly on June 2, 1946. The Assembly approved the Constitution on December 22, 1947, by a vote of 453 favorable, 62 opposed, and 31 absent. After this approval the Constitution was promulgated by the Provisional President of Italy, Enrico de Nicola, and became effective ten days later, on January 1, 1948. Numerous evaluations of the Constitution are available, and it is not our purpose here to duplicate this work. We are concerned solely with discovering to what extent the Constitution was actually in effect during the four and one-half year period following its promulgation and with explaining, if possible, why there has been so much delay in implementing some of its basic provisions.

What we shall find is that some enabling legislation was passed by the Constitutional Assembly in the interim period between the effective date of the Constitution and the election of the first Parliament in April, 1948. Parliament has implemented a few more constitutional provisions, but vast and basic sections of the Constitution are still ineffective, owing to Parliament's inaction. To a lesser degree the administration and the courts are in a position to implement the Constitution.

The British Commonwealth of Nations is the oldest international organization of states in existence. Its uniqueness lies in its unbroken historical continuity, the loyalty of its members to each other, their solidarity on vital matters of common concern, the fluidity of their machinery for dealing with such matters, and their abhorrence of constitutional contracts within the family of the Commonwealth. These are its features so far as we can see them yet in the perspective of history. This article will discuss some of these features and advance an hypothesis for research on the nature of Commonwealth.

Continuity, with change but without revolution, has been the British political formula for the Commonwealth. The evolution of the Commonwealth was one of the long-range consequences of the American Revolution. In a broad historical sense the Commonwealth is the lesson that Britain drew from that revolution. There have been other examples in history, such as Rome and Spain, of the expansion overseas of a people and of its concepts, language, traditions, and institutions. But only in the case of the Commonwealth has historical continuity been maintained without catastrophic change or revolution. It is true that revolution severed the main branch of the first British Empire. The cause of that revolution was the still unresolved deadlock between executive and legislature which had caused the revolt under Cromwell in the preceding century.

Isolationism, a persistent refrain in the history of American foreign policy, has received its full share of recent investigation. These investigations have followed a number of approaches, varying from historical research into the interaction of isolationist and interventionist groups and individuals in the pre-World War II period to studies of the underlying causes of isolationist thinking. It is the purpose of this paper to consider one of the ambiguities that still remain; that is, the commonly accepted assumption that in recent decades the Midwest has been the hard core of isolationism.

Midwestern isolationism is actually only one part of the larger question concerning the existence of a regional or geographic isolationist sentiment. On the untested assumption that isolationism is regional has rested the geographic explanation that isolationism is strongest in interior states because of the sense of insulation from international affairs that such location fosters. In this paper certain non-regional factors will be examined for their possible relationship to geographical centers of isolationist strength. Non-regional, socio-political factors might actually form the basis for several separate studies, and their consideration here is only intended to be suggestive of the further limitations these factors impose on a simple geographic explanation of isolationism.

Both political scientists and lawyers are in quest of better understanding of the same problems about the same processes of the same administrative agencies carrying out the same programs. Yet the two professional groups characteristically work quite independently of each other. Acting in the belief that both lawyers and political scientists should benefit by increased mutual criticism, I propose to record my impressions of that area of political science which overlaps with and is contiguous to administrative law. The point of view will be that of one who is concerned primarily with law and legal education.

This paper is designed (1) to evaluate the case studies edited by Harold Stein, entitled Public Administration and Policy Development, (2) to contrast with the case studies the basic method of instruction marked out by some of the conventional texts on public administration, (3) to criticize the undue emphasis upon broad perspective at the expense of detailed facts in the literature of public administration, (4) to call attention to the inordinate amount of misinformation about administrative law in some of the texts on public administration, (5) to express doubts about the choice of subject matter for some of the texts on public administration, and (6) to attempt constructive suggestions for further research on political science aspects of administrative law problems.

The structure of the British Commonwealth of Nations is peculiar. If it did not exist, you could not invent it. Its peculiarities reveal themselves at once if we try to find an answer to what looks like a fairly simple question, namely: How do we know whether a country is inside the Commonwealth or outside it? This question has never been very easy to answer. It is not enough to say that a country is within the Commonwealth if it is one of the Queen's dominions. That is quite true so far as it goes. It covers the cases of such important countries of the Commonwealth as the United Kingdom itself, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, Ceylon, and the British West Indian Colonies. But it will not suffice to describe the position of such countries as Malaya, or Nigeria, or Uganda, or the Gold Coast, or Kenya, or Tanganyika. Large parts or all of the territories of these countries are not part of the Queen's dominions, strictly speaking. They are either protected states (as in Malaya) or protectorates (as in most of the African territories) or, as in the case of Tanganyika, Trust Territories under the United Nations. What we must say of these countries of the Commonwealth is not that they are part of the Queen's dominions but that they are under the Queen's protection or jurisdiction.

In an age of mass movements and pressure groups, even the most rugged individualists find that organization pays. So it is that the French peasants, surely among the most rugged of all individualists, have embarked since World War II on a major experiment in syndioal unity. In place of their prewar organizations, which were relatively weak and deeply divided, a single Confédération Générale de l'Agriculture has brought together approximately 80 per cent of all French farmers. In the lobbies of Parliament, in the antechambers of the ministers, in the Economic Council, and in some 280 government commissions, the CGA represents the interests of the agricultural profession. Its existence plainly constitutes a new socio-political factor in the Fourth Republic.

Potentially, a united farmers' organization would seem destined to be the most powerful pressure group in France. Organized labor has mass voting support; the organized employers have rich financial resources; but only the farmers possess both of those weapons. Yet the CGA today, after eight years of existence, continues to be a somewhat marginal power factor in French politics. Its dues-paying membership has dropped off markedly since the 1947 peak; its lobbying activities have produced only spotty results; its central organs are weakened by internal feuds and tensions. Critics proclaim from time to time that the CGA has no real influence among its members and no real prestige in the nation; they predict that it is doomed to disintegration or collapse. Clearly, the organization has not yet fulfilled the hopes of its founders.

In the wake of the Hoover Commission reports, a great majority of the states authorized special inquiries into the organization and operation of their executive institutions. With very few exceptions, the numerous postwar movements for state reorganization appear to have resulted in only moderate or negligible legislative acceptance of the reorganization proposals. The spectacle of such meager accomplishment from so much effort invites reflection on the politics of management improvement in the states.

Through the generous cooperation of professional colleagues about the country, data were assembled on the successes and failures of these reorganization movements, upon the initiation, organization, and scope of the surveys, and upon the methods of presenting the survey reports to the legislatures and to the public. The data cover thirty states, in twenty-four of which the state legislature has had at least one chance to consider commission recommendations. In the remaining six states the reports are still in the process of preparation, or await legislative consideration. Included in the twenty-four are four states in which the study group has made some reports but continues in existence to make further reports, so that the success of the efforts in these states must be, tentatively judged on the basis of legislative reception of reports so far received.