No present political tendency is more marked than the extension of law to cover ever wider fields of conduct. Political scientists and constitutional lawyers have come to recognize that this tendency can be properly assessed only by examining how law operates in contrast and connection with other agencies of order such as custom, ethics, religion, and economic forces. When one wishes to understand the failure of such laws as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act or the Volstead Act to accomplish the results expected of them, or when one wishes to form a judgment of the effects to be anticipated from the operation of a minimumwage law or from the codification of international law, it is important to understand the relation to the other forces which are giving direction to human conduct. There are regularities and patterns of adjustment in human behavior due to other causes than law administered by government; and these regularities not only work at times toward the same, or some of the same, ends which it is sought to attain by law, but at times they form a highly resistant part of the material against which law must work. An effort will be made in this paper to present the problem of law and government as part and parcel of the whole wider problem of social order, beginning with an attempt to understand the nature and operation of what may be called the “non-political” agencies of order. The task is facilitated by the contributions which anthropology has made to our knowledge of primitive peoples, and by the light which psychology has shed on the springs of conduct. We no longer have to rely like Hobbes and Rousseau on a naive theory of human nature or upon a fancy-picture of savage life. The outstanding result of the newer contributions has been to emphasize the central significance of the principle of relativity in the social no less than the physical sciences.

One of the results of the passage of the manhood suffrage law of 1925 in Japan has been the rise of proletarian parties and the election of eight of their candidates as members of the Diet. In the House of Representatives these new members find themselves in the company of half a dozen minor parties and a group of independents, alternately ignored and courted by the two major parties. Their appearance coincides with a time when liberal opinion in Japan favors the two-party rather than the multiple-party system. But the economic significance of the new parties has saved them from the aspersion of merely adding to the confusion of minor groups. Moreover, the failure of Japanese liberals to develop a great party of liberalism invites a new association to seize a vantage ground so long unoccupied.

On the eve of the general election of 1928 the founders of the proletarian parties had reason to hope that careful strategy in the campaign would give the new parties a good start upon the same road that led the Labor party in Great Britain to the leadership of the parliamentary opposition and finally into office. The manhood suffrage act had increased the electorate from 3,341,000 to 12,534,360. Among the nine million new voters are included practically all the male factory toilers and agricultural workers. Here, indeed, is a rich field for proletarian vote-getting.

(December 3, 1928, to March 4, 1929). “I have stated universally to various callers,” wrote the President-elect to the President on January 28, 1929, “that it would be improper for me to express any views on current matters of the administration.” It is aside from the point to question the complete consistency of Mr. Hoover's added remark (the subject being the cruiser construction bill): “As you know, I warmly support your own views, and you may so inform others if you wish to do so.” The truth is that the President-elect would have set the tone of the short session if he had merely failed to state that there would be no special session. As soon as his willingness to call Congress back in April was known, most of the steam escaped and pressures in connection with farm relief which might have involved the whole program were forestalled. Under these relaxing circumstances, the cynosure of the session came to be the ironical juxtaposition of the left-over cruiser bill and the multilateral peace treaty in the Senate. Meanwhile the momentum of the inherently decentralized congressional system carried it past the dead-points of the interregnum and produced interesting, and even noteworthy, bits of domestic legislation.

It is the purpose of this note to bring down to date an analysis of the selection and tenure of bureau chiefs in the national administration offered by the writer in this Review in 1926. A complete enumeration of the changes that have taken place at this crucial level in the civil service during an interval of nearly three years has suggestive value, at least in indicating the trend of our bureaucracy.

The mode of approach in the original study was primarily biographical. The bureaus were classified with reference to the manner of selection and the nature of the prior experience of the bureau chiefs then in office. The same method and arrangement are used in dealing with shifts since 1926.

First to be considered are the new bureau chiefs whose positions are in the classified competitive service under the supervision of the Civil Service Commission. Replacements in this group since 1926 have involved the amalgamated Bureau of Chemistry and Soils, the Bureau of Dairy Industry, the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, the Bureau of Biological Survey, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Entomology, and indirectly the newly constituted Food, Drug, and Insecticide Administration and the Plant Quarantine and Control Administration—all in the Department of Agriculture; also the National Park Service in the Department of the Interior. In two instances competitive examinations have been employed; in another, one has been ordered; in the remaining cases the new chiefs have been chosen by promotion from within the competitive classified service.

Steady progress in the improvement of the processes of public administration marked the year 1928, but possibly of even greater significance has been the development of research interest in administrative problems by organized bodies of public officials. The greatest hope for realization of higher standards of performance necessarily lies in the body of officials who are responsible for the conduct of public business, and their new interest in research as a means of discovery of improved methods is of great significance. Among the groups of officials who are breaking new ground in this direction are the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the International City Managers' Association, the reorganized Civil Service Assembly, and some state leagues of municipalities. The appointment of four research fellows by the New York State Tax Department is also full of interest. Specific reference to some phases of their work will be made in the following paragraphs.

Academic interest in research in this field has also been exceptional. During the year Dr. W. F. Willoughby prepared for the Policy Committee of the American Political Science Association a survey of the institutions carrying on studies in public administration, and during the year also the Problems and Policy Committee of the Social Science Research Council appointed a special Advisory Committee on Research in Public Administration, the chairman of which is Professor Leonard D. White, of the University of Chicago. Other committees of the Social Science Research Council also have dealt with special phases of administration, especially the Advisory Committee on Industrial Relations and the Advisory Committee on Social and Economic Research in Agriculture.

The government at Nanking set up in April, 1927, by the Kuomintang (Nationalist party), in promulgating an “organic act” on October 4, 1928, took the title “national government.” On the seventeenth anniversary of the outbreak of the Republican revolution, October 10, 1928, the system of government provided for by the act was inaugurated. The act was drafted by the law codification bureau at Nanking and revised by a committee composed of Wang Chung-hui, deputy judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice, Hu Han-min, and Tai Chi-t'ao.

Since November, 1924, when, upon the ousting of President T'sao K'un, the “permanent” constitution adopted a year before was suspended, China has been without a fundamental instrument of government. The four intervening years, like the eight which preceded them, have been filled with interregional warfare. At Peking a provisional president, Tuan Ch'i-jui, was followed by a dictator, Chang Tso-lin. Elsewhere, regional capitals exercised the actual powers of government. From Canton in May, 1926, was initiated a campaign to bring all China under Kuomintang authority. The success of the campaign enabled the Nationalists to establish a government which received recognition by the United States on July 25, 1928, and has since been recognized by every state having important relations with the country. Japan has extended recognition of the government as de facto only.

The coup d'état, so-called, which, on January 6, 1929, brought into being a new form of government and established a new type of constitutional régime in the kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, marked the end of exactly a decade of experimentation with the traditional principles of parliamentary government. That this “critical period” had not been an unqualified success is admitted by statesmen, diplomats, and politicians alike; that it was abruptly ended by the personal intervention of King Alexander and the supercession of the Vidov-dan constitution is equally a matter of fact. From Zagreb to Belgrade the passing of the political order which had obtained in the triune kingdom since 1918 has brought general rejoicing; outside the country, however, the queries have been raised: Is the change indicative of the future fate of all democracies, and have not the doctrines of fascism, of military dictatorship, of camarilla government, simply been transplanted to the Yugoslav capital from Rome and Madrid respectively?

The situation is not to be understood merely by drawing hasty conclusions as to the prospective demise of democratic or parliamentary government everywhere, nor is it possible to speak, with any scientific accuracy, of the new régime in the Serb-Croat-Slovene state as a Balkan adaptation of the Italian and Iberian dictatorships. The occurrence of this constitutional change in the life of the Yugoslav people has its own distinctive raison d'être and does not flow from mere facile imitation of dictatorial practices in other countries.

Following the adoption by Greece of proportional representation in the general election of November 7, 1926, that system was abandoned in the last election, held on August 19, 1928, on the ground that it failed to give the country a strong and homogenous government. The earlier operation of “P. R.” in Greece was set forth in a former number of this Review. In a total of 286 seats, in the election of 1926, the Venizelist Republican group secured 144, as against the Antivenizelist Royalist group which secured 130, there being also a unit of nine Communists and three Agrarians elected to that Chamber. In view of the impossibility of either of the major groups forming a cabinet with the strong support of the Chamber, a coalition ministry was resorted to, and it worked with marked success so long as a compromise program was followed. This cabinet, under the leadership of the veteran statesman, Dr. Alexander Zaimis, himself not a deputy, was supported in the Chamber by the 106 votes of the Liberal Union, the 18 of the Republican Union, the 63 of the Popular Royalists, and the 54 of the Free Opinion Moderate Royalist party, thus having a total support of 241 votes, against 45 disunited and leaderless opponents. This coalition was able to heal the serious breach that had split the Hellenic nation since 1915 over the question of Greek participation in the World War or absolute neutrality. The ministry was, furthermore, instrumental in bringing some order into the chaotic finances of the country.