Constitutional amendments were proposed in 33 states in 1932. In 23, one or more were adopted. This note attempts to outline the changes made. Footnotes indicate the sections of the respective constitutions which were affected. A topical arrangement would be of value, but it is felt that the reader's convenience is better served by an arrangement by states. Space does not permit notice of defeated proposals.

The presidential campaigns of 1928 and 1932 are a study in contrasts. In 1928, the United States was at the peak of the boom period; the incumbent Republicans were confident of victory; and the result was a Republican victory which “broke” the Solid South and swept all but two states outside that section into the Republican column. The 1932 campaign was fought in the midst of depression and disaster; confidence was with the Democrats for the first time in many years; and the result was a Democratic victory which put the party securely in control of both houses of Congress, as well as of the presidency. What effect did the changed economic and political outlook have upon the financing of the campaign?

A valuable source of materials for the study of political behavior exists in the election returns that are lodged and compiled in the offices of state, county, and municipal authorities. An increasing number of studies have shown how fruitfully these materials can be used with a variety of types of correlations. The difficulties attendant upon anything like a complete collection of all of the electoral information for the entire country, however, have discouraged more extensive utilization of this valuable source of research data. The investigator who attempts to study political phenomena over a considerable area is now handicapped by having to devote much time and energy to the mere physical accumulation of statistical materials from a number of more or less adequate sources. The purpose of this note is primarily to show the present situation in regard to the collection and publication of election returns, and incidentally what can be obtained from each state. Secondarily, suggestions are offered regarding the urgent need for improvement in the situation and lines along which it may be sought.

On November 8, 1932, Minnesota, for the first time in her history, chose Democratic presidential electors. The breach in the ranks of the Solid South in 1928 was hardly more of a break with tradition. That, however, was not the only interesting feature of the recent election. In the first place, all nine of the state's representatives in Congress were elected at large. That alone would not confer any great distinction, but the importance of an election at large was magnified in the present case by the fact that Minnesota is the only state in the Union in which a genuine three-party system prevails. The third party, or Farmer-Labor party is in this instance not only a factor in state politics, but at present the dominant one.

An earlier note in the Review indicated the desirability of minority party activity in the interval between campaigns and appraised the organization and functioning of the publicity bureau of the Democratic national committee from June 1, 1929, until September 1,1930. During the period from September, 1930, to the convening of the Democratic national convention on June 27, 1932, the bureau continued, as a party agency, to criticise the policies of the Hoover administration and to assume, in a limited degree, the educational function of the minority party. In addition, it was necessary during the first session of the Seventy-second Congress to explain and justify the work of the Democratic House of Representatives.

“They asked me my party; I told them Republican. That's Sam Lit's party, ain't it?” The speaker was a small, dark-visaged young man. He had addressed his question to Mr. Lit's partner on the ward committee in the first ward. It was the night of registration day, and the young Italian had just registered. Not only were the genius of the Republican party, its traditional issues, and the great leaders from Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt to Herbert Hoover obliterated, or non-existent, to him, but the important local issues of the impending (1931) mayoralty and councilmanic campaigns as well. The one thing in the party process that mattered was the personality of Sam Lit, the ward committeeman. This potential voter is one of the thousands in America's third city that illustrate the general statement: “We cannot be much interested in, or moved by, the things we do not see. Of public affairs, each of us sees very little, and therefore they remain dull and unappetizing until somebody with the makings of an artist has translated them into a moving picture. …Being flesh and blood, we will not feed on words and names and grey theory.”

The two revenue-collecting services of the United States government offer interesting contrasts in the methods used for the administrative control of their respective field services. This arises in large part from the fact that the Bureau of Customs has been the more decentralized service. Ever since its establishment in 1789, and in the course of a long and continuous existence, it has built up a background of traditional decentralization which contrasts with the policy of centralization characterizing the Bureau of Internal Revenue. The latter service has a much shorter history, really beginning in 1862, although internal taxes were levied by the federal government from 1791 to 1802, and from 1813 to 1817. By virtue of the fact that Congress conferred administrative powers directly upon the commissioner of internal revenue, rather than upon the Secretary of the Treasury (as was done in the case of the customs service), a more integrated and centralized system of control has been used in the internal revenue service since the beginning of its existence.

Some forty years ago, the German Empire was described as “a compact between a lion, half a dozen foxes, and a score of mice.” Although the “lion” has lost his special prerogatives and some of the “mice” have since vanished, the problem of the “political menagerie” is still largely unsolved. Shall Germany become a unitary state, or shall it retain certain federal characteristics? What shall be the territorial organization and powers of the states and their relations to the Reich? The framers of the Weimar constitution of 1919 wrestled with these questions, but were able to reach no permanent answers. The present article is an attempt to summarize recent developments bearing upon the problem of Reichsreform, particularly the federal aspects thereof, and to link these developments with Verwaltungsreform in Prussia.

Previous surveys of trends in public administration in this Review recorded developments in an era of prosperity and easy expansion. The present summary of the events of 1931 and 1932 discloses an abrupt and fundamental change in the underlying conditions affecting public activities, the effects of which have deeply influenced every aspect of governmental operations.

The depression places American government in an awkward dilemma. On the one hand is the tremendous shrinkage in productivity of taxes, proceeding far more rapidly than the corresponding reduction of expenditures; the resulting outcry against waste and extravagance in public expenditures and the rapid development of organized demands for retrenchment; the appearance of tax strikes in many communities, embarrassing public treasuries still more, and threatening the actual collapse of essential government services—eventually leading in some cases to a thoughtless and ill-advised attack on government itself, often by the very elements in the community who most violently deprecate “radical” criticism of our institutions. Faced with these situations, administrative expenditures have been substantially curtailed in the last two years in many directions, although few administrative services have been abandoned.

Exceptionally rapid and drastic changes in the functional and structural aspects of the executive branch of the national government of the United States since the advent of the Roosevelt administration tend to leave the observer in a condition of bewilderment, from which he may to some degree be rescued by the guide furnished below. The outline was prepared by the staff of the Institute for Government Research of the Brookings Institution of Washington, and covers all major units of the Executive Departments with the exception of those in the Department of Justice and in the Post Office Department and those supervising the military and naval activities in the War and Navy Departments. For the Department of Justice and the Post Office Department, the supervisory units headed by the assistant attorneys-general and the assistant postmasters-general are included in the terms “Legal Services” and “Postal Services.” For the War and Navy Departments, the designations “Military Services” and “Naval Services” include all of the units supervising these branches. The outline includes also the independent establishments, and in some cases subordinate units are listed. The emergency organizations listed include only units specifically authorized by law or established by the President under general authority vested in him. There are also boards, corporations, and committees which operate with or are advisory to many of the units listed, and in addition some duties have been delegated to existing agencies which have not created separate units for extra work.

Due to the necessities of post-war reconstruction, and owing also in no small part to the deflation of public confidence in the, private-initiative-in-industry presumption, it seems clear that greater nationalization and municipalization will occur in those countries where such a development is not already well-advanced. Where, as a result of revolution and dictatorship, extensive economic services are already publicly owned and operated, the problems of public administration have become enormous and disconcerting. Satisfactory bureaucracies are not built in a decade.

Among the experiments in government which have taken place in post-war Germany, one of the most varied in form is to be found in the theory and practice of direct legislation. The referendum, initiative, and a type of recall exist in national, state, and local governments. The experience of the German people with these constitutional practices has been treated occasionally in studies of the national and municipal governments, and this note is designed to perform a similar service with regard to the German states.

Studies of the constitutional convention at Weimar seem to indicate that direct legislation was adopted for the national constitution without a great deal of study. The Germans had, however, been acquainted with the idea of direct legislation for some time, and a proposal for its use had found expression in the Erfurter Program of the Social Democratic party. The provisional arrangements for the national government during the revolutionary period included machinery for an appeal to the electorate in cases of disagreement between the ordinary organs of government. But the widest use of the various forms of direct legislation is first to be found in the provisional constitutions of the states.

The recommendations embodied in this report are not sufficiently unlike the Curzon proposals to have any strong claim to novelty. All the arguments against upper houses in general and the 1922 Resolutions in particular are equally applicable to these proposals. They differ from previous Tory reports mainly in their livelier apprehension of the implications of a Labor majority in the Commons. Since the Labor party first came within sight of power, every large Tory majority has produced its demand for reform of the House of Lords. “Reform from the Right” has hitherto been urged as the safeguard against “dangerous innovations,” a term which has widened in significance as the Labor party has increased in strength. The Cave proposals were content to save the constitution of the reformed House of Lords from further attack by the Commons and to render the Parliament Act immune from alterations without the consent of the Lords.

The guarantee clause of the Polish Minorities Treaty, which is the model for the treaties signed by eight other states, is as follows: “Poland agrees that the stipulations in the foregoing articles, so far as they affect persons belonging to racial, religious, or linguistic minorities, constitute obligations of international concern and shall be placed under the guarantee of the League of Nations. They shall not be modified without the assent of a majority of the Council of the League of Nations. The United States, British Empire, France, Italy, and Japan agree not to withhold their assent from any modification in these articles which is in due form assented to by a majority of the Council of the League of Nations. Poland agrees that any member of the Council of the League of Nations shall have the right to bring to the attention of the Council any infraction, or danger of infraction, of any of these obligations, and the Council may thereupon take such action and give such direction as it may deem proper and effective in the circumstances. Poland further agrees that any difference of opinion as to questions of law or fact arising out of these articles between the Polish government and any one of the principal Allied and Associated Powers or any other Power, a member of the Council of the League of Nations, shall be held to be a dispute of an international character under Article 14 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The Polish government hereby consents that any such dispute shall, if the other party thereto demands, be referred to the Permanent Court of International Justice. The decisions of the Permanent Court shall be final, and shall have the same force and effect as an award under Article 13 of the Covenant.”

The war and the ensuing economic depression aroused divisive forces in Canadian life which only occasionally lie dormant–the forces of race, religion, occupation, and section. No patriotic speech delivered in English-speaking Canada from 1917 to 1922 was complete without a ringing declaration that the war had made Canada a nation. Actually, by the time of the conscription election of 1917, the war had made Canada two nations, one nation speaking English, the other speaking French. Nor did the English-speaking nation long remain united. The Ontario farmer had voted for conscription on the understanding that his sons would not be conscripted. His sons were conscripted, and the protests of his farm organization were met with contempt and derision. In revenge, he organized an agrarian political party. In western Canada, the causes which led the farm movement to enter politics were more deep-rooted than the mere emotionalism of Ontario, and consequently more obscure. The reciprocity campaigns of 1910 and 1911 had shown the farm movement its strength; the break of western Liberalism with Laurier in 1917 had laid the foundations of a third party; and the post-war depression provided the movement with its impetus and its objectives. The same depression strengthened, of course, the farm movement in Ontario and the nascent Labor movement in English-speaking Canada.