The enactment by the Imperial Parliament at Westminster of the British North America (No. 2) Act, 1949, raises again the complex and difficult problem of the nature of the amending process in the eldest of the British dominions. From the beginning this process has been surrounded with a certain mysterious imprecision, deriving from the fact that Canada's basic constitutional statute—the British North America Act, 1867—contained no provision for its own amendment. In other words, until 1949 there was no clause in the constitution setting out a procedure whereby its own provisions might be legally changed. Hence through the long years all amendments have had to be made by the Parliament at Westminster which enacted the original statute—a necessity that has produced all sorts of difficult problems for students of constitutional law in both Canada and the United Kingdom. It has long been settled practice that the Imperial Parliament will enact whatever amendments are requested by the appropriate authorities in Canada, but a question remains as to which are the appropriate authorities. It seems now to be settled, after considerable controversy, that the executive government, acting alone, may not make such a request; practice requires a joint address by the two houses of Parliament. But is it necessary for the Dominion authorities to consult with the provinces before going to London with this request or may the Dominion do this by itself? If consultation is conceived to be necessary, must all the provinces be consulted? And if so, is it necessary that they all consent to the amendment before it is requested? If all need not consent, what part is necessary? These questions and other similar ones have plagued Canadians for years, and there is not yet any accepted solution either in precedent or in law.

What social conditions are prerequisite for given forms of community-wide political behavior (“democracy,” “dictatorship,” etc.)? What transitions are possible between one such form of power exertion and another? What social conditions are necessary to, or determinate of, a given type of transition? Working hypotheses for the exploration of these problems are presented in this article.

An understanding of the factual limits on the effectiveness of political aspiration and exhortation has suddenly become essential in the struggle for survival of the free areas of the world against totalitarian domination. The discussion and appraisal of foreign policy is dangerously confused because of the failure of political knowledge authoritatively to define the real areas of choice. We no longer have time to embark upon policies merely because they are sentimentally acceptable, if it is possible to determine in advance their probable failure. With the accelerated transformation of age-old social structures caused by industrialism and by the spreading specialization of tasks, a similar necessity for political knowledge is bound to arise in domestic policy as well. The time is here when the broader policy choices must be confined within a practicable range by established theories correlating power behavior with social conditions.

The importance to an enemy's intelligence services of information regarding such targets vital to the United States as important installations, plant locations and shipping routes is generally recognized. Although the methods for withholding such information from the enemy are not foolproof, they are at least clear and unclouded by conflicting values. What is not so generally recognized is the importance, in connection with an enemy's plans for the destruction of targets, of detailed economic data. One of the few writers in this field expresses it this way:

Several years ago the Supreme Court of the United States touched off a flood of controversy when it made two attempts to breathe life and meaning into the constitutional injunction that “Congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion.” In the first case, Everson v. Board of Education, a bare majority decided that a New Jersey township did not violate the injunction when it permitted the use of public funds to pay the transportation charges on common carriers for children attending public and Catholic schools. But in the second case, McCollum v. Board of Education, a majority of eight decided that the Constitution was violated when the Board of Education of Champaign, Illinois, made provisions for a short weekly period of religious instruction to be given during school hours to children whose parents requested that they be permitted to attend these classes. The instruction available during the school year 1945–1946 was either Roman Catholic, Jewish, Protestant or Interdenominational, the instructors being provided at no expense to the Board of Education by the religious groups concerned.

The venerable city of Strasbourg has long been famed for its stately Cathedral, its University, its baroque palaces, the quaint houses of its medieval quarter known as La Petite France—and for its greatest single gift to European culture: the invention of printing by Johann Gutenberg five centuries ago. During the past year its people have proudly displayed a new edifice symbolizing what many regard as the greatest single step toward European unity. La Maison de l'Europe, built in five months on land given by the municipality, was formally opened on August 7, 1950. It stands in the northeast quarter of the city at Place Lenôtre, facing the pleasant park of l'Orangerie across the tree-lined Allée de la Robertsau. The long white structure, with fifteen flags floating in the breeze before its central portal, is strictly functional, having been planned, with a view toward efficiency and economy, as a temporary headquarters to last ten years.

The battleground of administrative theory has witnessed the rise of functional-institutionalism, under the banners of Gulick and others, and the yielding, in part, of its “principles” to the hordes of the iconoclastic “pragmatic revolt” (or the cult of “administrationism” as Waldo labeled it). But just as legal realism has been interpreted by some observers as law's acid bath, so, too, this new “administrative realism” is considered by many a catharsis, not a cure.

Some present-day theorists have attempted to throw normative life-lines to the administrator. Appleby has written of the socio-political role of the administrative process. Barnard and Friedrich have called upon the administrator to act under the rubric of his moral responsibility. Others on the organizational level—Stene for example—have attempted to derive a “pure theory of organization,” not based upon all-embracing, clearly predictive rules, but rather in the form of theories of “administrative statics” (another Waldoism) which may be cast over a framework of the concrete purposes of any specific administrative situation. The underlying continuum supporting both the social norms of Appleby, Barnard and Friedrich, and the organizational theoretics of Stene, is purpose. Indeed, defined purpose alone could make sensible Stene's axiom that “The degree to which any given organization approaches the full realization of its objectives tends to vary directly with the coordination of individual effort.” If the objectives are discoverable only by hindsight, a query may well be raised: Does coordination exist because the purpose was realized, or is the purpose realized because coordination existed? Clearly, a well-grounded theory of public administration must be based on a predictively refined approach to the concept of purpose.

Chile, along with Uruguay, is generally considered to have the most democratic of the present governments of Latin America, as well as one possessing a relatively high degree of political stability. Under a constitutional framework instituted in 1925 to remedy shortcomings of the preceding “parliamentary” government (1891-1925), Chile is now operating under a “presidential” type of government.

During the period prior to 1925, 138 ministries passed fleetingly across the governmental stage, including one whose role lasted less than twenty-four hours. More significant, however, than the rapid rotation of ministers during the parliamentary era were the insufficiency of executive power and the marked lack of legislative concern not only for cabinet stability but even for the performance of essential governmental functions. The most serious result of this congressional attitude was legislative stagnation, highlighted by the frequent failure of the Congress to approve the budget and enact other necessary measures. Accordingly, it was intended, in framing a new basic charter for Chile, to enhance the position of the chief executive, to increase ministerial stability, and to provide for greater legislative responsibility, at least to the extent of assuring a minimum law-making job. To what extent have these ends been achieved, and how does the presidential system operate in Chile?

The dominant belief among both teachers and graduate students of political science seems to be that political theory constitutes the heart of their subject; yet political theory is not, in practice, the core of political science teaching. Such is the schizoid condition of political science and political scientists that is revealed by the investigations of the Committee for the Advancement of Teaching of the American Political Science Association. The hypothesis advanced in this note presents a dual reason for the unfortunate situation: it is partly that political theorists have failed to keep up with the times and have not engaged in sufficient value-free theoretical study of the raw data of politics, and partly that vast numbers of political scientists have falsely concluded that one of the most important parts of the traditional study of political theory—political ethics—is not susceptible of scientific treatment and should rigorously be eschewed.

The French Constitution does not regulate the precise mode of election to its principal legislative chamber, the National Assembly, beyond stipulating (Art. 3) that it shall be elected on a territorial basis through direct and universal suffrage. This general provision was until recently implemented by a law which established a proportional list system based in general on the principal unit of French local government, the département.

The Assembly which enacted these electoral laws was completely dominated by the three big parties of the Left, the Communists, the Socialists, and the Popular Republican Movement (MRP). These groups favored proportional representation for a variety of reasons. First of all, devotion to proportionalism was part and parcel of left doctrine—an important point in a country in which political battles are carried out to a very large extent on the plane of ideas and doctrines. The Communists thought that PR would assure them a large representation in the dominant branch of goverment, i.e., the Assembly, while the MRP, an essentially new party without local organizations and experience with precinct work, considered it more favorable to its interests than a system in which its largely unknown candidates would have been hard-pressed in a struggle of personalities against older, and therefore better-known, men of such traditional parties as, for instance, the Radicals.

The joint standing committees of the Swedish Parliament are unique institutions of particular interest to the political analyst. They are the very linchpin of the legislative process in Sweden; they mediate in the event of intercameral disputes; and they even arrogate to themselves quasi-governmental powers when the government cannot muster a majority in the legislature.

The sacrifice of local autonomy and the subordination of individual rights to the implementation of public policy have long been prominent among the charges against planning writ large. Few would deny the existence of these potentials. While a generous optimism may assume that planners are motivated by public purpose alone, the experience of our time has too often demonstrated that power corrupts. And planning is uniquely power. On the other hand, though the vesting of authority commensurate with great ends necessarily provokes the threat of arbitrary decision, the crushing economic problems which face Britain today demand solution, and great power must be ventured. Happily, however, power is negotiable. A tradition of civil freedom and a responsible Parliament provide impressive sanctions against maladministration. Nor is authority inevitably the antagonist of liberty. Indeed, one may suggest, with Kant, that far from adversary, authority is the condition making liberty possible, for law is the foundation of freedom.

Since the hard-fought general election of February 23, 1950, the narrow margin of Labor's control of the British House of Commons has been tested at the polls on ten occasions. This number of by-elections to fill vacancies in the membership of the House is a normal post-World War II figure (the previous House saw fifty-two replacements in its four and one-half years of life), although it is somewhat under that of prewar averages. In terms of locale, however, these ten by-elections were atypical. Though the overall distribution within the various parts of the United Kingdom was not unrepresentative (six in England, one in Wales, actually Monmouthshire, two in Scotland, and one in Northern Ireland), all vacancies chanced to come in urban areas. Eight of the contests involved borough seats and the other two (West Dunbartonshire and Abertillery, Monmouthshire) were primarily urban in character.