The official American policy regarding a United Europe has developed rapidly since the end of World War II and has already gone far toward committing the United States to the establishment of a European Union of some kind. The first important overt act in this development was the declaration of policy in the Economic Cooperation Act of 1948. One purpose of this legislation, Congress declared, was “to encourage these countries [that is, European participants in the Marshall Plan] through a joint organization to exert sustained common efforts as set forth in the report of the Committee on European Economic Cooperation, signed at Paris on September 22, 1947.” With this encouragement the Organization for European Economic Cooperation was soon effected. The next step was to extend the area of American interest from the economic to the military field. One of the purposes of the Mutual Defense Assistance Act of 1949 was “to achieve international peace and security through the United Nations so that armed force shall not be used except in the common interest.” This legislation led eventually to the effort to organize a European Defense Community capable of playing an important role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A further step was the Mutual Security Act of 1951, which declared American policy to be “to further encourage the economic unification and the political federation of Europe.” Thus the American government finally became involved in the projected establishment of a constitution for a United States of Europe.

The Hoover Commission's personnel management report was published on February 9, 1949, early in the first session of the 81st Congress. Four sessions of the Congress have had an opportunity to act on the report, and the executive branch has had four years to take advantage of those recommendations that could be adopted by administrative action. This seems to be an appropriate time, therefore, to review the record of progress in both legislative and executive branches, in order to learn the extent to which these far-reaching recommendations for improvement of federal personnel management have been adopted.

Soon after publication of the report, intensive study and discussions began within the executive branch. The Civil Service Commission sent a preliminary memorandum of its views to the President on March 23, 1949, with a transmittal letter referring to the report as a “constructive document,” and agreeing with the objective of establishing a civilian career service. The Federal Personnel Council, composed of personnel directors of federal agencies and representatives of the Civil Service Commission and the Bureau of the Budget, made a detailed study of the report and submitted a number of comments to the Civil Service Commission.

The two dynamic political forces in the British Commonwealth are those of nationalism and democracy, and they are in close alliance. This fact is most evident in the older dominions, which were colonized from the British Isles, or, in the case of Canada and South Africa, partially colonized also from France and Holland. The genesis of their nationality was evident when as colonies they gropingly aspired to become autonomous political communities, standing on their own feet, seeking to shape their own future, not isolated from the metropolitan power, but also not subservient to it. In them the prevailing concept of a nation has been that of a people organized to achieve within the state the ends of popular freedom and political order. Owing to the liberating and levelling ways of the frontier, a new land provided special scope for the ideas and sentiments of democracy and hence the more readily generated among the people a potent sentiment for itself.

From one standpoint it is a truism to say that collective security is something new under the sun. In past eras and especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, war was conceived of as a duel in which contestants should be isolated and restrained by the rest of international society. When nations engaged in armed conflict their neighbors sought to localize the struggle and alleviate its poisonous effects. However short-sighted their actions in not meeting the conflict directly and turning back aggression at its source, the nations pursuing these policies were sometimes successful for varying periods of time in preserving islands of peace in a warring world.

On August 8, 1932, however, Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson proclaimed the revolutionary fact that the modern state system was entering a new era in which warring powers were no longer entitled to the same equally impartial and neutral treatment by the rest of society. He announced to the New York Council of Foreign Relations that in future conflicts one or more of the combatants must be designated as wrong-doer and added: “We no longer draw a circle about them and treat them with the punctilios of the duelist's code. Instead we denounce them as lawbreakers.”

The 1951 Term of the Supreme Court, during which there was no change in its makeup, continued to exhibit the behavior pattern of the previous Term, both in the mechanics of operation and the drift of decision. The work of the Truman Court is a compound of new Justices and the shifting concatenation of historical forces. It operates amidst the strains and tensions of the Cold War. The leading cases of this Term, dealing with such subjects as presidential seizure of private property, the treatment of aliens, by-products of the trials of Communists, and the pressure on civil liberties generally, all reflect the push of current history.

The total number of dispositions during the 1951 Term, 1207, was almost the same as the number for the 1950 Term, which was 1202. There were only 83 signed opinions, as compared with 98 in the 1950 Term and 87 in the 1949 Term. Twenty-five years ago the number of signed opinions averaged around 200 per Term. The reduction in the number of signed opinions was matched by a growing number of dispositions on the merits by memorandum order. The Court disposed of 200 cases on the merits; 101 came up by appeal (in about equal numbers from the federal district courts and the state courts) and 99 reached the Court on certiorari (72 from the federal Courts of Appeals, 24 from state courts, and 2 from the Court of Claims). The Court continued to keep a tight rein on its discretionary jurisdiction.

International cooperation through multilateral organizations sharply distinguishes the post-World War II economic policies of the United States from those it employed following World War I. After World War I, the United States eschewed any form of international economic organization, which some governments thought should be continued; early in the more recent conflict, United States officials pressed hard for the acceptance of world-wide institutional cooperation. The purpose of the present article is to review, through an examination of its policy toward multilateral financial arrangements, some of the important discussions and decisions which moved the United States towards internationalism in economic relations; to emphasize the role of political factors in the development of financial organizations, in the retreat from international “democracy,” and in the growth of regional cooperation; and to examine some of the difficulties of international financial cooperation.

A primary objective of the United States government's postwar policy preparations was the re-creation of a method of conducting international economic transactions which would not result in economic warfare; the major technique was that of international agreement on accepted rules for conducting transactions. Government officials considered that this approach was not only desirable but also possible, in view of the success of wartime collaboration.

Since the outbreak of the Korean War, the free world has made erratic but continuous progress in its effort to achieve military parity with the Communist bloc. Success in this enterprise and the realization of a “situation of strength” would bring to the fore the problem of serious negotiations with Soviet Russia. Several analysts, including Winston Churchill, have already made strong pleas for reviving the “lost art” of diplomacy as a means of obtaining some settlement of the Cold War.

Speaking in a somewhat different military context, before the U.S.S.R. developed the atomic bomb but prior to the Western rearmament effort, Churchill observed:

One of the most interesting generalizations in the field of social science is Robert Michels' “iron law of oligarchy.” The commentary on this hypothesis has usually been motivated by a desire to attack or to support it; seldom has anyone made a serious attempt to understand it before passing judgment. This situation is partially Michels' responsibility, since his statement of the law of oligarchy is badly confused and quite incomplete. Nevertheless, the notion that “oligarchies prevail” has a high degree of general credibility, and even the realization that Michels' statement of it is inadequate and his evidence for it inconclusive does not destroy its intellectual appeal.

In this paper I shall be concerned exclusively with an attempt to make the law of oligarchy understandable. This involves formulating the generalization as precisely as possible, defining its important terms, and stating its sources of evidence. This is not an investigation into what Michels “really meant,” but an examination of what he said that is good political theory. I shall feel free to make any changes or additions which appear necessary to me. But such alterations will be primarily matters of definition and logical organization.

In 1866 an uncommonly knowledgeable gentleman, Alexis de Tocqueville by name, wrote as follows: “Je pense que dans les siècles démocratiques qui vont s'ouvrir l'indépendence individuelle et les libertés locales seront toujours un produit de l'art. La centralisation sera le gouvernement naturel.” Four score and five years later a distinguished compatriot documented the triumph of nature over art which de Tocqueville contemplated as a possibility, and analyzed at some length the instrumentality through which le gouvernement naturel has established its primacy over les libertés locales. Professor Jean Boulouis has recently pronounced a plaintive requiem for French local self-government culminating in these words: “On pourrait presque avancer, sans beaucoup d'exagération, qu'il n'existe plus de finances locales, mais tout au plus une localisation des finances nationales.”

The two most striking phenomena of local government finance in recent decades are, first, the absolute increase in the amount of money disbursed by local governments, and second, the substantial expansion in the proportion of local government disbursements financed from intergovernmental transfers of funds—grants-in-aid, shared taxes, and various other devices by which money is shifted from one level of government to another.

The role of public opinion in the political process is more often justified than explained by political theorists. Insofar as contemporary theory offers an explanation, it replaces the primitive democratic notion of “The People as Legislator” with a neo-idealistic conception of public opinion as the “sense of the community” (A. D. Lindsay), an emergent product of the process of public discussion that enfolds the struggle of private group leaders, public administrators, and political representatives to influence the substance and direction of governmental policy.

However, this is not the meaning of the term as used either by the man in the street or by the social scientist. In both popular and scientific language “public opinion” has come to refer to a sort of secular idol, and is a “god-term” to which citizens, scientists, and office-holders alike pay allegiance, partly as an act of faith, partly as a matter of observation, partly as a condition of sanity. The public opinion idol has its high priests, claiming to be expert translators of the oracles of the personified deity. The idol aIso has its heretics, divided like all protestants into many denominations. The least heretical sect, perhaps, consists of those who postulate a conceptual fiction somewhat resembling the legal relation of “principal-and-agent,” except that they recognize that political representatives possess the power to act as trustees as well as agents of their amorphous principal.

In the academic year 1939–40, it would have taken a hardy prophet to forecast that the field of international legal studies was destined soon to become a major growing point in American legal education. Yet, for that reason and because it was the last year before World War II registered its impact on law school faculties, students, and even curricula, it provides a useful baseline from which to measure the developments that have since been taking place in this field among American law schools.

The law school work offered in 1939–40 which could be fitted within the category of international legal studies was represented by courses and seminars in International Law, Comparative (and Roman) Law, and Conflict of Laws. A brief survey of these offerings will lay bare the grounds for pessimism as to the prospects for progress at that time.

Informed policy-making is the primary responsibility of any legislative body in a democracy. The policy-making task at all levels of government has become increasingly complex, technical and burdensome. This has been particularly evident in the years since the Great Depression. The demand for an increasing quantum of governmental services and functions at all levels and the competition among governmental units for revenue sources to finance public services have been chiefly responsible for magnifying the legislative burden. Hence it is surprising and disturbing that the people's policy-makers at the state level have been somewhat loath to reorganize their legislative processes and procedures to meet contemporary needs. Many “little Hoover” commissions have been busily engaged in recent years in attempting to modernize state administrative organization. No correspondingly vigorous effort has been made at legislative self-examination, although the need is at least equally pressing. Only ten states have annual legislative sessions, in spite of the fact that informed students of state government generally agree that the volume of legislative business in most states requires annual sessions.

The political theory implicit in social casework theory can be defined, for purposes of this discussion, as the theory of the relationship between man and society on which professional social casework is consciously predicated, or that theory of the relationship which is logically implied by social casework practice. This theory is not often consciously articulated and we must look for it, therefore, in those presuppositions underlying casework theory which are frequently accepted uncritically, if not wholly unconsciously. This practice obviously cannot be carried on without basic (although perhaps not entirely conscious) presuppositions about what man is like and consequently about what society can or ought to do for him.

The presuppositions underlying social casework theory, although important in any context, have acquired a new significance to the extent that social casework has increasingly become a government function. During the past twenty years literally millions of people in the United States have been brought into a new relationship with officials of their local, state, and national governments—namely, the relationship of client and social caseworker.

Americans differ in their views as to the proper role of the government in our economy. It is generally agreed, however, that government—state, local, and national—has become the most important single factor affecting the level of economic activity. The purpose here is not to discuss the arguments for or against a greater or lesser role to be played by government, but to outline the more significant ways in which this role manifests itself in our daily economic life.

The remarks which follow obviously cannot treat in detail the relationships between government and industry. They are intended rather to set forth in overall terms the importance of various governmental programs to the economy as reflected in governmental budgets at all levels. Examples and illustrations are drawn primarily from the federal budget, although the importance of governmental action upon the economy at the state and local level has been too frequently underestimated.

This paper discusses, first, the overall impact of the budget upon the economy; second, the effect of the changing emphasis in the budget upon national security programs in a peacetime period; and, third, the process through which more effective public understanding and control of governmental expenditure can be achieved.

West of the one hundredth meridian, the average annual rainfall is generally less than twenty inches except for higher mountainous areas and the humid area west of the Cascade range in western Washington and Oregon and an area west of the Coast range in northwestern California. With less than twenty inches of rainfall, irrigation and dry-farming methods are required to supplement and conserve the native moisture if successful crops are to be produced. At twenty inches of rainfall successful agriculture is subject to extreme hazards from frequent droughts that call to mind the tragedy of crop failure and dust storms. In the humid Pacific Northwest the dry summer climate introduces another variable limiting successful agricultural production without supplementary water.

American institutional arrangements, sustenance patterns and resource policies were conceived in humid England and developed in the humid regions of the United States. However, the general aridity of the West stands in marked contrast to the humidity that prevailed in the physical environment where American social institutions and traditions were formed. This alteration of the physical environment has caused an important shift in the balance of human ecology requiring significant modification in institutional arrangements and social policy, especially in regard to the control and development of natural resources.

The purpose of this paper is to inquire what contribution American political science can make to the easing of the shortage of competent manpower for assignments abroad.

The problem is, of course, not peculiar to the United States except in respect to its magnitude. Nearly every country with major responsibilities involving the assignment of personnel abroad is faced with it. On a world scale the United Nations, especially with respect to the Expanded Technical Assistance Program, is facing difficulties in searching out individuals who are competent, willing, and available. This was forcefully revealed by a study the author recently made for all the specialized agencies on behalf of the Technical Assistance Board. It appears to be a characteristic of our times that not enough men and women have been trained to deal competently with the kinds of problems with which we are faced in intensified intercultural relations. Thus, while this discussion will deal chiefly with the problem of increasing the American personnel potentially available for foreign assignments—something with which American political scientists need to be urgently concerned—we must avoid losing sight of the broader world setting of the problem.

A public administrative system is the product of its environment—particularly of its political environment. It is not discrete, but is an aspect of this same environment, affecting and affected by the tendencies of the society of which it is a part. In the rapidly changing present, the complex of social pressures and tensions have created over large areas of the globe an unsettled environment for public service. At a time when effective public administration is more than ever needed to reduce areas of social conflict by achieving generally acceptable solutions to accumulating social problems, the public service in many countries lacks the unity of purpose and technical skill to meet the challenge.

This is notably true where nations, undergoing rapid social transition and attempting uncertainly through democratic government to bring traditional values and practices into line with contemporary needs, must mediate amidst a variety of pressures and counter-pressures. Democratic administration is never easy, even in countries with long histories of democratic government and with well-developed techniques of organization and management. Where the spirit and practice of democratic self-government have not become a living part of the environment and where the political tendencies of the community are contradictory or obscure, the situation of the democratic public official is truly difficult.

On April 4, 1949, the representatives of twelve European and American nations, assembled in Washington, D. C., affixed their signatures to an instrument called the North Atlantic Treaty. This was the crucial step in the formation of one of the most impressive alliances ever entered into by sovereign states. The pact bore testimony to the rise of a new menace in the world, a menace spearheaded by a specious form of communism and powered by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, whose postwar activities left to the free nations no practicable alternative other than to seek safety in a regional collective security pact.

A challenging problem for both the student of political behavior and the practical politician is the self-labeled independent voter. Much of the research on what appears to be an increasingly larger segment of the American electorate has been either historically or sociologically oriented in the sense that it has focused on trend studies of the voting pattern of this group or has attempted to describe it in terms of its objective characteristics. Frequently, by inference at least, we are led to believe that the future political behavior of the independent can be anticipated if we have information of the above nature. The central purpose of this article is to present evidence favoring the hypothesis that the political behavior of the independent is more closely related to relevant psychological variables, such as his political perceptions, than to his past voting habits or his objective attributes.

During the period from April through November of 1952, the author directed a detailed study of the political opinions and behavior of the residents of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a city of approximately 53,000 people. The research methods employed in the project included a systematic historic analysis of the community, a series of four public opinion surveys, content analysis of some of the mass media of communication, and a panel study. The first poll took place late in the spring of 1952, the second in August, and the third and fourth were carried out just prior to and immediately following the November elections. The panel members, coming from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds, were interviewed periodically throughout the course of the project.

Perhaps no period of modern history has been more a victim of generalization than the Age of Enlightenment. The worship of reason and progress and belief in the essential goodness and perfectibility of human nature are most commonly associated with the 18th century climate of opinion. Many of the stereotypes which have been applied to it have automatically been transferred to Benjamin Franklin. Already to contemporaries of his old age, Franklin seemed the very personification of the Age of Reason. Condorcet, who had known Franklin personally, summed up his description of Franklin's political career as follows: “In a word, his politics were those of a man who believed in the power of reason and the reality of virtue.” In Germany, an admirer was even more enthusiastic: “Reason and virtue, made possible through reason alone, consequently again reason and nothing but reason, is the magic with which Benjamin Franklin conquered heaven and earth.” This is also the judgment of posterity. F. L. Mott and Chester E. Jorgensen, who have so far presented the most acute analysis of Franklin's thought and its relationship to the intellectual history of his time, do not hesitate to call him “the completest colonial representative” of the Age of Enlightenment. Unanimous agreement seems to exist that Franklin was “in tune with his time.”