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The New Role of the Governor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

John M. Mathews
John M. Mathews
Affiliation:
University of Illinois
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Extract

About twenty years ago, Mr. Bryce, with microscopic vision, observed that the state governor was “not yet a nonentity.” On the other hand the state legislature was “so much the strongest force in the several states that we may almost call it the Government and ignore all other authorities.” The strangeness of sound with which these statements strike our ears at the present day is indicative of the length of the road which we have since traveled and of the change which has taken place within recent years in the relative positions of the governor and the legislature in our state governments. The unmistakable tendency which now prevails in many quarters towards an enlargement of the power of the governor directs attention anew to the administrative and political position which that officer occupies and to the manner in which his influence and prestige have been, and may be still further, increased.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , May 1912 , pp. 216 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1912

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References

1 American Commonwealth, 3rd ed., vol. I, p. 532Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., p. 534.

3 Elliot's Debates, vol. V, p. 327.

4 3 Ill., 79.

5 State v. Pritchard, 7 Vroom (N. J. L.), 101.

6 Thorpe, , Charters and Constitutions, vol. II, p. 1025.Google Scholar

7 Message of Governor Willson of Kentucky to the legislature of that state, January, 1908, quoted in Reports of American Bar Association, vol. XXXIV, p. 416.

8 See, for example, the Constitution of Oklahoma, Thorpe, op. cit., vol. VII, p. 4278, and the Constitution of Arizona, art. iv, sect. 1.

9 The New Stateism, by the present writer, in the North American Review for June, 1911.

10 Dealey, , Our State Constitutions, p. 31.Google Scholar

11 Ibid, p. 32.

12 Cf. Dealey, op. cit., p. 9.

13 Bill for a Law and Suggested Amendments to the Constitution of Oregon, pamphlet, Portland, Oregon, August 14, 1909.

14 The Promise of American Life, chap. XI.

15 Political Science Quarterly, vol. XVIII, p. 655.

16 These plans are summarized in Beard, , American Government and Politics, pp. 504–6.Google Scholar

17 Address before the Commercial Club of Portland, Oregon, May 18, 1911.

18 Address of Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey before the House of Governors, Frankfort, Kentucky, November 29, 1910.

19 Ibid.

20 Address delivered at the McKinley Day Banquet of the Tippecanoe Club of Cleveland, Ohio, January 28, 1911, pamphlet, p. 13.

21 In the Frankfort address.

22 A step has been taken in New Jersey towards granting the governor or candidate for governor in each party a greater influence over the formulation of the public policy which, as governor, he may have to carry into effect. By a recent enactment of that state it is provided that a state convention of each party shall be held annually for the purpose of adopting and promulgating a party platform, which convention shall be composed of the party candidates who have been nominated at the party primaries for the office of member of the Assembly or State Senator, together with hold-over Senators, members of the State Committee, and “the candidate of the party for Governor nominated at the said primaries in the year in which a Governor is elected, and in each year in which no Governor is elected, the Governor of the State shall be a member of the convention of the political party to which he belongs.” New Jersey Session Laws of 1911, Chap. 183, p. 276.

23 This passage is quoted from an article by the present writer on The New Stateism in the North American Review, June, 1911.

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