Three decades have elapsed since the first president of the American Political Science Association at its inaugural meeting described the objects and purposes that it should pursue. Some of his successors have discussed various details of this program and others have reviewed the results achieved. Due recognition has been accorded to the significance of historical backgrounds, legal systems, and political theory. In addition, emphasis has been placed upon the importance of an understanding of the government as it actually functions. Hence, much of the work of this Association and its members has been devoted to the investigation and exposition of those customs, procedures, and institutions which, with or without any recognition by constitution or statute, exercise a profound influence over governmental organization and function.

It is natural that during this period significant changes should have appeared in the scope of Political Science and in the character of the techniques employed, with resulting differences in data and conclusions.

With astounding profusion, the presses are pouring out books, pamphlets, and articles on the New Deal. Economists, publicists, politicians, statesmen, editors, and prognosticators are “describing,” “interpreting,” and “forecasting” the outcome and results of the legislative and executive actions coming within the scope of the New Deal since March 4, 1933. This is proper and natural enough. It is inevitable.

But few of the writers guilty of publication have prefaced their reflections with due notice to the readers respecting the assumptions, methods of reasoning, hopes, fears, and desires actuating their thought at the beginning of their thinking about the description, interpretation, and forecasting operations. Most of them, probably, would say that it is academic to stop to think about what one is doing when one begins to think about social phenomena such as are embraced within the field of the New Deal; but the saying would be an escape, a dodge, or a trick. Why? Because nothing can be described in itself.

We are witnessing today in both Europe and America the breakdown of what may be called the nineteenth-century equilibrium, and at the same time the effort to work out a new equilibrium as a basis of life for the twentieth century. The New Deal is the American phase of this movement. We can understand it better if we view it with the search-light of the movements in other countries, and if we make clear to ourselves what is driving them, how they are being driven, and what problems are in their path.

The key to recent social developments seems to me to lie in the resurgence of the middle classes. This is a development of the last decade or so, and is largely the result of the failure of the two other major social groups—the capitalists and the workers—to give Western society, especially Western European society, leadership and direction. On the one hand, the capitalistic groups, while concentrating industrial and financial resources, showed a sad incapacity to establish a leadership based on social needs and moral values.

The principle of “no taxation without representation,” so dearly prized in European constitutional systems, finds its counterpart in the Japanese régime. In the ornate language of Prince Ito: “It is one of the most beautiful features of constitutional government and a direct safeguard to the happiness of the subjects that the consent of the Diet is required for the imposition of a new tax and that such matters are not left to the arbitrary action of the Government.“ The enactment of this rule, so far as the Japanese constitution is concerned, is found in Article LXII, which reads:

The imposition of a new tax or the modification of the rates [of an existing one] shall be determined by law. However, all such administrative fees or other revenue having the nature of compensation shall not fall within the category of the above clause. The raising of national loans with the contracting of other liabilities to the charge of the national treasury, except those that are provided in the budget, shall require the consent of the Imperial Diet.

In their commentaries on this article, the jurists of the new school emphasize the requirement of the consent (kyosan) of the Diet for taxation, while the jurists of the old school emphasize the duty of the subject to submit to taxation.

The Supreme Court has at last passed squarely upon the broad powers of the Federal Radio Commission over the business of broadcasting and has upheld them in a sweeping manner in the case of Federal Radio Commission v. Nelson Bros. Bond & Mortgage Co. The general authority conferred on the Commission by the act of 1927 was enlarged in 1928 by provisions directing the Commission to maintain as great equality as possible in the allocating of broadcasting licenses among the zones created and further to distribute such licenses fairly and reasonably to the states within each zone according to population. In 1930, it appeared that Illinois had 55 per cent more than its quota of stations, while Indiana had 22 per cent under its quota. The Commission assigned to station WJKS at Gary, Indiana, operating rights on a frequency theretofore used by two Chicago stations. One of these, operated commercially by the respondent, used much National Broadcasting Company program material; the other, operated by the North Shore Church of Chicago, broadcast only religious programs. The effect of the order was to rule these stations off the air. It appeared that the Gary station had suffered from interference, and was furthermore equipped to serve its audiences with programs of unique interest.

The meeting of the Seventy-third Congress five days after President Roosevelt's inauguration marked the twenty-fifth time in our history that a special session has been called. Critical times have been faced before and remedial measures found, but the hundred days of this session are unparalleled for the speed and discipline with which Congress was brought to face and finish its task, for the political adroitness and firmness of the presidential leadership, and for the extraordinary importance and far-reaching effects of the legislation enacted. With the substantive merits and contents of the measures passed we are not concerned here, but in this session the legislative process is as worthy of consideration as the legislative product.

The present confusion in British parliamentary life results from three irreconcilable elements. In the first place, the House of Commons resembles the typical Continental legislative chamber in its division into groups, with an only provisional coalition of some of them into what might be called indifferently a union sacree, or a “government of concentration.” In the second place, the active political life of the electorate, being based on the traditional political parties, seems to have very little relation to parliamentary groupings. In the third place, the government shows a tendency to borrow its policies from the program of the opposition. Examination in turn of each of the three elements may reveal whatever coherence exists.

In no part of the world is there greater devotion to the principle of representative government than in the Scandinavian countries. Nowhere, too, are there more homogeneous, intelligent, and literate electorates. And in none of the three are party lines more sharply drawn or issues more clearly defined and presented than in Norway, where, as in all Scandinavia, there is complete freedom of discussion. Probably there is no better example in recent years of a bitterly fought election over clear-cut issues, yet conducted in a most orderly fashion, than the triennial election of October 16,1933, in which were chosen 150 members of the Norwegian Storthing.