The original plan of this paper included a general survey and critique of the leading tendencies in the study of politics during the last thirty or forty years. It was intended to compare the methods and results of the various types of political thought—to pass in review the historical school, the juridical school, the students of comparative government, the philosophers as such, the attitude of the economist, the contributions made by the geographer and the ethnologist, the work of the statisticians, and finally to deal with the psychological, the sociological, the biological interpretations of the political process.

It would have been an interesting and perhaps a useful task to compare the scope and method of such thinkers as Jellinek, Gierke, Duguit, Dicey and Pound; the philosophies of Sorel and Dewey, of Ritchie and Russell, of Nietzsche and Tolstoi; to review the methods of Durkheim and Simmel, of Ward and Giddings and Small; of Cooley and Ross; and to discuss the developments seen in the writings of Wallas and Cole.

It would have been useful possibly to extend the analysis to the outstanding features of the environment in which these ideas have flourished, and to their numerous and intimate relations and interrelations.

What is the pluralistic theory of the state? Roughly speaking, we may identify the pluralistic theory as that theory which denies the logical validity and the practical and moral adequacy of the traditional doctrine of state sovereignty, or of the doctrines of sovereignty which have prevailed since the eras of Bodin and Hobbes, and have in a peculiar degree dominated political thought since the time of John Austin. Although the pluralist dogma does not take precisely the same form for all of its adherents, views held in common by them all are to be found in the chief criticisms which they offer against what they regard as the now prevailing notions of state authority and competence. The pluralists maintain that sovereignty is not, in any community, indivisible, and they deny that the state either is or ought to be sovereign in any absolute or unique sense. They cite many facts of recent political and social experience to discredit the belief that the state does persistently exercise sovereignty over other essential social groups; they argue that the tendency of social and industrial change today is in the direction of a progressive weakening and narrowing of state power; and they hold that the effect of a still further disintegration and decentralization of authority will be to improve the economic, moral and intellectual well-being of man and society.

The constitutional convention of Massachusetts which assembled in the city of Boston, June 6, 1917, and finally terminated its labors at a short session of two days in August, 1919, is the fourth body of this kind which the Old Bay State has had. The first convention was held in 1779 and 1780 in Cambridge and Boston, and formulated the constitution of 1780. This instrument, to which sixty-six amendments have been added, is the oldest written constitution now in force anywhere in the world. The second convention was held in 1820, and submitted a series of resolutions part of which were adopted and part rejected by the people. A third convention met in 1853 all of whose proposals were rejected. After an interval of sixty-four years, a fourth convention was called, which met in 1917 and again in 1918 and yet again in 1919. It submitted to the people twenty-two amendments and a revised draft of the constitution, all of which were accepted.

The convention was composed of 320 delegates. Of these 16 were elected at large, 4 were elected by each congressional district, and the remaining 240 were elected from the districts created for the purpose of choosing members of the state house of representatives. They were elected without party designations, but before the election took place, the lines between the friends and the opponents of the initiative and referendum were rather sharply drawn, and this served practically all the purposes of party organization and designation. In fact, this question dominated the whole of the first session of the convention and overshadowed other questions which were probably of greater importance.

It is now nine years since the outbreak of the Chinese revolution. It is fifteen years since the Manchus attempted to maintain their control by introducing representative institutions into China. The development toward constitutional and representative government under the Manchus was checked in 1911 by the revolutionary movement. When the Chinese Republic was established as the successor to the alien Manchu Empire it was felt that the problem of modernizing China bade fair to be solved, and that in an orderly way her political institutions would be brought into harmony with western standards. Unfortunately that orderly progress has not come. Parliamentary government under the Nanking (provisional) Constitution was replaced by the dictatorship of Yuan Shih-kai under the arrangements of the so-called constitutional compact, which in turn was followed by the attempt to reëstablish the monarchy. The failure of the monarchy movement brought back parliamentary government, but before a permanent constitution could be adopted Parliament was again dissolved, and a government controlled by a military clique set up in its place. Since this military government was unacceptable to the southern provinces, the country became divided. So far it has not been possible for the country to reconcile its differences. Instead of an ordered constitutional progress, has come apparent failure in the effort to establish representative government. The name of a republic has been maintained, it is true, and the forms of constitutional government have been retained, but a permanent national government has not been set up, nor has popular government replaced the paternal despotism of the past.

Bills defining the relation of public officials and employees to the state have recently been presented to the legislatures of Great Britain, France, and the United States. Great Britain has already enacted an important statute regulating the status of the police forces of England, Wales, and Scotland. The general intent of the law is to establish an official police organization, known as the Police Federation; to forbid its alliance with any trade union or other body outside the police service; and to furnish opportunity to make its influence felt in matters relating to the government and conditions of service of the police force.

Arturo Alessandri, whose inauguration as president of Chile took place on December 23, entered upon his five-year term as the victor in a political campaign which attracted attention beyond his own country. He is the first member of the Radical party, and the first representative of the middle class, to attain the Chilean presidency. His friends assert, too, that he is the first and only “dry” South American president.