During the past four years several Middle Eastern countries have experienced governmental changes in which the army took an active part. In Syria and Egypt the army deliberately intervened to overthrow discredited regimes and to depose the heads of state. In Lebanon and Iraq the heads of state, themselves alarmed by an intense struggle among rival political parties, invited the army to intervene in order to maintain order. In Lebanon the army refused to crush the opposition, acting only as a caretaker; in Iraq the army agreed to support authority against disorder and the effect of its intervention cannot yet be foreseen.

This control of government by the military is indicative both of serious defects in democratic processes in the Middle East and of the eagerness with which Middle Eastern leaders seek high political office. In Western democratic countries, traditions have developed which tend to keep the army isolated from domestic politics, although military advice has often been sought on foreign policy, and persons whose careers have been in the military service are not infrequently elected, or appointed, to high political positions. This is a quite different matter, however, from the military's choosing to occupy high political office through the weapons of its own profession.

Japan, on October 1, 1952, held the first general election for members of the House of Representatives since the end of the occupation. In that election, the conservative government party, the Jiyūtō (Liberal party), won a clear majority, the Communist party failed to elect a single candidate, and there was a marked advance by the two Socialist parties.

The official beginnings of the Cooperative Research Project on Convention Delegations date from the opening of the project office at the Association's headquarters in Washington on March 10, 1952. But the project had roots reaching far back into previous activities. Two committees of the Association had made suggestions for activities similar to those eventually put under way by the project: the Committee on Political Parties and the Committee for the Advancement of Teaching. In September, 1951, following the Association's meeting in San Francisco, the then chairmen of those committees, Bertram M. Gross and Claude E. Hawley, began actively seeking means of organizing field work and creating teaching materials on the forthcoming preconvention campaigns and national political conventions of 1952. For a time it appeared that a project along those lines might be organized under the auspices of the Brookings Institution; and the director of the present project became involved in the conversations. Later it became clear that if the project were to be organized at all, it would probably need to be under the Association's own auspices, although the cooperation of the Brookings Institution was an important factor in early planning.

By November, 1951 the Executive Director of the Association had cleared a draft proposal with the other officers and began negotiations with several foundations. One of those foundations, although uninterested itself, passed on the proposal to Dr. Will W. Alexander, an adviser of a newly established family foundation in New Orleans.

On June 13, 1952, with two senators on the floor, the Senate of the United States gave its advice and consent to the ratification of three treaties which thereby became a part of the supreme law of the land. One of the senators did not vote. The other voiced his “aye” while serving as presiding officer.

The conventions approved by the voice vote of one senator were the Consular Convention with Ireland; a Protocol Supplementary to the said Convention; and the Consular Convention with the United Kingdom.

Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution provides that the President shall have power “to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur….” Even though, under Article I, Section 5, Clause 2, “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, …” how, as a matter of law, was it possible for the Senate, with but two senators on the floor, one of whom did not vote and the other of whom was in the chair, to give its advice and consent to a treaty? And as a matter of policy was the Senate in this case properly discharging its responsibilities?

The textbooks contain singularly little systematic analysis of the role of party in local government. They abstract the relevant statutes. They expound more or less orthodox suppositions. Voting on local candidates corresponds closely with presidential voting. Party groups compete for control of local government more or less as they do on the national level. Or, the contrary notion is argued that party has little place in local politics. Personal followings or essentially non-party courthouse cliques determine all. This paper represents a modest attempt, by analysis of Ohio data, to test a few of the standard suppositions and to suggest lines of inquiry that might be fruitful in the study of local politics.

Relation of voting for county and presidential candidates. Contrary to the belief that the presidential tide almost invariably carries with it the local candidates of the winning party, the Ohio record indicates a fairly high degree of independence of national party trends in the selection of county officers. Although in most instances a Republican county presidentially chooses Republican county officers and a Democratic county, Democratic county officers, the departures from this consistency are of sufficient magnitude to excite attention.

In October, 1951 Winston Churchill returned to head Britain's government; the Labor ministry which had held power since the summer of 1945 had been narrowly defeated in a general election and Clement Attlee's six years as Britain's first Minister were ended. But this change of leadership marked no change in the British political wars—and one of the most interesting, and most revealing, of the areas of these wars has been that of the by-elections.

These by-elections, special votes to fill vacancies in the House of Commons, took place in ten widely separated districts during the fourteen months from the general election of October, 1951 to the end of 1952. Four of the vacancies they were held to fill were caused by the death of a sitting MP, two by resignation, and the other four by elevation or succession of the incumbent to the House of Lords.