Ten months after President Eisenhower's inaugural, an article in Fortune extolled a presidential aide in terms which would have seemed familiar ten months before; the picture of his role in Eisenhower's entourage might easily have been drawn in President Truman's time. The subject of this piece was Roger W. Jones, an Assistant Director of the Bureau of the Budget and chief of its Office of Legislative Reference. In Fortune's terms, here was a confidential, if “non-political,” member of the White House circle performing tasks of great importance to the President, trusted, respected, and relied upon by all of his associates. As an analysis of governmental functions and relationships, this testimonial was scarcely definitive, but its mere publication testifies to the continuation of the Budget Bureau's so-called legislative clearance operations, handily surviving the Great Transition of 1953.

What are these clearance operations? Essentially they amount to central coordination and review of stands taken by the various federal agencies at three successive stages of the legislative process.

The organized interest group does not make the laws of the land. It must devise means for gaining access to and influencing those who are constitutionally empowered to make, administer, or otherwise define the law. This study deals with the efforts of one organized group, the Associated Industries of Vermont, to secure its objectives in the 1951 session of the Vermont legislature. The study is correlatively concerned with the legislator's view of the AIV activities and, more broadly, of the legislative process.

The Associated Industries of Vermont is a “peak” association; an organized business group which acts as spokesman for many diverse business interests in the state. The membership, which ranges from small manufacturers to the National Life Insurance Company, totaled some 450 concerns in 1951, the year in which the events to be described took place. Membership is by individuals, firms, and a few trade associations. Included were almost all the textile, the granite and marble, and the machine-tool companies in the state—representing three of the state's important industries. A rough estimate of the total payroll of the member concerns was about half of the total payroll of the state. A few retailing and other non-manufacturing members had recently been added.

American political parties have long been the victims of a peculiarly ambivalent public attitude—an attitude which on the one hand views them as perverters of the democratic spirit while on the other hand it gives them a vital role in the political process. Much of the regulation imposed on the parties in this spirit of distrust makes it all the more difficult for them to carry out their political role. To operate successfully, they have been forced to adapt their organization and functions to rigorous legal climates.

The vagueness and flexibility of political organization in the states reflect this constant struggle the parties wage to maintain their vitality and integrity against what are frequently severe legal odds. Parties have learned to create informal organs which will be effective and practical. Consequently, the real centers of political power rarely parallel the orderly, pyramided party organzations that the states create. The state or local party leader who holds no formal party office and the extra-legal organization or “machine” are commonplaces in American politics.

The postwar record of collective bargaining in the steel industry is both important and unique. It is important because steel is a traditional “patternsetter” for large segments of American industry. The key bargains which are negotiated in this industry establish the benchmarks for the negotiations among thousands of employers and their unions, and the relationships between “Big Steel” and the United Steelworkers of America have a profound influence on the whole industrial relations climate of America. Everyone is concerned with the outcome of steel's bargains—unions, employees, companies, the public, and particularly the government.

The record is unique by virtue of the extent of government involvement in collective bargaining matters in this industry. Since the end of the war, there have been three nation-wide steel strikes. The first, in 1946, lasted about three weeks; the second, in 1949, went on for over a month; and the third, in 1952, kept the industry at a standstill for fifty-five days. In all three cases the government was a principal party in the dispute.

Our history affords numerous examples of efforts to secure state cooperation in the enforcement of federal laws, especially those marking abrupt changes in national policy. In practice, state cooperation has been most readily forthcoming in the administration of benefactory legislation. Most notably, federal grants-in-aid have been effective in helping to lift the standards of state services in such functional areas as highways, airports, public health, and agricultural technology. In another area, Selective Service has successfully employed local boards to enforce national policy. On the other hand, the Fugitive Slave law, the Civil Rights laws, National Prohibition, and the Emergency Price Control acts are reminders of the difficulties federal authorities have encountered in trying to enlist state aid in enforcement of national regulatory policies uncongenial to local sentiment. This article examines the experience under a permissive provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act, section 11(b), which authorizes the national government to reimburse state agencies aiding in enforcement.

On November 1, 1953 the Karachi correspondent of the New York Times filed a dispatch reporting that discussions of a military alliance between Pakistan and the United States were about to begin. On February 25,1954 President Eisenhower announced that the United States had decided to give military assistance to Pakistan for the purpose of “strengthening the defensive capabilities of the Middle East.” With the President's statement a new and powerful force entered the international politics of South Asia and another landmark of American foreign policy was set up. In the four months which intervened between the newspaper report and the official announcement, most of the important trends and issues in contemporary world politics had touched on or been touched by the U. S.-Pakistan proposal. Internal and external affairs of a dozen countries were affected. Most of the instruments of diplomacy and propaganda were employed to support or oppose agreement. Of primary importance to the United States was the clear and specific implementation of our established policy of supporting regional alliances of free nations to “contain” Soviet aggression and to prevent further expansion. Because of the novelty of the area into which the policy was extended, the speed with which it was implemented, and the precision of the reactions of all parties, American military assistance for Pakistan constitutes an almost ideal case study of international relations in a world in which the movement of events has been greatly accelerated.

One of the major causes of the success of the Chinese Communist party is its effective organization and indoctrination of the masses at the grass roots, primarily through a myriad of mass organizations. A study of these organizations in mainland China is significant for a number of reasons. First, in a country like Communist China where the degree of bureaucratization and centralization is high and where mass organizations serve in many respects as a principal medium between government and party policies and the people, the basic programs and policy shifts formulated by the leading organs of these organizations often indicate the direction of the political wind. Second, while details of decisions and deliberations made at meetings of government and party organs are painstakingly guarded, information regarding the programs, activities, and leadership of the mass organizations is more available. Third, by an examination of these mass organizations, we may, to some extent, evaluate the attitudes and reactions of different social classes and groups in present-day China and at the same time observe the techniques employed by the CCP in social communication and political indoctrination.

Over two years have passed since the Japanese peace treaty came into effect and Japan once again embarked on a relatively independent course. In view of the unprecedented scope and method of the Allied Occupation, many divergent postaudits can be expected to emerge in the near future dealing with the relative success or failure of Occupation reforms and with post-treaty revisions made by the Japanese government. Such studies can be valuable for the understanding both of Japanese domestic politics and of American policy toward Japan.

It is the purpose of this paper to analyze some results of a two-pronged voter and leadership survey of post-treaty Japanese political opinion made by the author between the fall of 1952 and the late summer of 1953. Few scholars would be bold enough to draw final conclusions on the Occupation from a one-year study of Japanese opinion, but history's verdict on the subject will be determined largely by native opinion rather than by the theorizing of foreign observers. And, in the first year after the treaty, certain patterns of Japanese opinion crystallized sufficiently to permit us to make tentative conclusions about Japanese revisionist attitudes.

Professor David Easton's widely discussed essay in academic psychoanalysis is indicative of the methodological trauma through which political science is now passing. Of particular interest is his chapter on political theory, which, according to his diagnosis, has suffered from a malady known as “decline into historicism.” His specific point of criticism is that the commentaries of Dunning, McIlwain, and Sabine have led students away from serious study of value theory. This kind of attack, however, does not get to the nub of the problem which surrounds political theory. For while political scientists seem to feel that political theory should be made the “heart” of their discipline, they will also have to acknowledge that the “heart” of political theory itself has been reading the “Great Books.” A far greater indictment than Easton's, then, is that it is an unquestioning reliance on the “Great Books” which has served to thwart any significant expansion of the scope and function of political theory—in terms of value theory or any other kind. Students are told to read the books with great care. But why they have to read them at all is a question which has seldom been squarely confronted. Hence both undergraduates and graduate students come away, perhaps somewhat pleased that they can now quote a few choice axioms from Burke, but nonethemore edified as to how the learned authors of yesteryear can aid them in understanding the science of politics.

In the following paper we offer a method for the a priori evaluation of the division of power among the various bodies and members of a legislature or committee system. The method is based on a technique of the mathematical theory of games, applied to what are known there as “simple games” and “weighted majority games.” We apply it here to a number of illustrative cases, including the United States Congress, and discuss some of its formal properties.

The designing of the size and type of a legislative body is a process that may continue for many years, with frequent revisions and modifications aimed at reflecting changes in the social structure of the country; we may cite the role of the House of Lords in England as an example. The effect of a revision usually cannot be gauged in advance except in the roughest terms; it can easily happen that the mathematical structure of a voting system conceals a bias in power distribution unsuspected and unintended by the authors of the revision. How, for example, is one to predict the degree of protection which a proposed system affords to minority interests? Can a consistent criterion for “fair representation” be found? It is difficult even to describe the net effect of a double representation system such as is found in the U. S. Congress (i.e., by states and by population), without attempting to deduce it a priori. The method of measuring “power” which we present in this paper is intended as a first step in the attack on these problems.