One should say at the outset what one means by democracy. I shall keep close to historical usage by excluding the economic, social, cultural and other extended meanings, and stipulate that democracy is a type of political system. A political system in turn is composed of methods of making public policies, those policies embodied in laws, orders, agreements, understandings and “conventions,” at varying levels of generality, related to government and binding upon all within the system. The approach taken here is thus to classify political systems according to how public policies are made, the assumption being that different systems use different methods or, as we may say, operate on characteristic principles.

It is now 30 years since Mr. Felix Frankfurter, then law teacher, called upon the political scientists for help. I propose to consider in what manner we might respond to his appeal.

In a review of the first book by one of our now distinguished colleagues, Mr. Frankfurter urged political scientists and economists to quit trying to be lawyers and to act more like specialists in the study of human relationships. “What we have a right to expect from economists and political scientists,” he said, “is an analysis of what true governmental problems are, in the light of what actually goes on in the world and wholly apart from the technicalities of American constitutional law …. Until the economists and political scientists attend to their special tasks and we lawyers to ours and each has awareness of the other's problems, we shall continue to have … crosssterilization of the social disciplines.”

… we must take, so far as we can, a picture of the world into our minds. Is it not a startling circumstance for one thing that the great discoveries of science, that the quiet study of men in laboratories, that the thoughtful developments which have taken place in quiet lecture rooms, have now been turned to the destruction of civilization? … The enemy whom we have just overcome had at its seats of learning some of the principal centres of scientific study and discovery, and used them in order to make destruction sudden and complete; and only the watchful, continuous cooperation of men can see to it that science, as well as armed men, is kept within the harness of civilization.

These words were spoken in Paris in January 1919 by Woodrow Wilson, addressing the second Plenary Session of the Peace Conference. Wilson believed he had found a watchdog for civilization in the League of Nations. In this he was sadly mistaken. Science and armed men have indeed been harnessed, but in order to promote and maintain the goals of conflicting polities. Whether in the pursuit of these ends the cause of civilization will yet be served remains, we may hope, an open question.

This essay is a comparative study in the dynamics of doctrinal conflicts. It deals with two organized international movements overtly committed to spreading and carrying out a doctrinal program of action, theological or ideological, on the basis of both the individual commitment of their respective members and their collective goals as organized bodies. Its purpose is to generalize from the experience of these organizations in handling deviations involving a unit of the movement differing or clashing either with the acknowledged center, or with another unit of the movement—in both cases over theological or ideological issues, but within the common doctrine, and accompanied by mutual doctrinal recriminations. A brief and selective analysis of the historical experience of one such movement, Catholicism, might contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of some recent developments within a contemporary international movement, Communism.

Britain and the United States have long taken an intense mutual interest in the methods by which they arrive at a defense policy and the two countries have frequently borrowed from each other's experience. In the last few years the British scene has been worthy of special attention because Britain has faced, in a peculiarly acute form, the universal military problem of limited resources and extensive commitments. Recently Conservative governments have tried to resolve this dilemma by plunging heavily for certain strategies and weapons: as a Minister of Defence told the Commons, “We have to pick the winners out of the stable.”

To set a crude financial ceiling and leave the selection of strategy and design of forces wholly to bargaining among the services is frequently regarded as an invitation to aimlessness. An obvious and tempting remedy is to compel the services to conform to a single, coherent and supposedly economical strategic doctrine. This solution carries its own risks of neglecting important aspects of the total problem and of discouraging flexible response to experience. Such a risk is especially serious in a field, such as military policy in peacetime, where there can rarely be conclusive practical tests of policy. Thus the more one searches for comprehensive strategic answers, the more important it is to enquire whether strategic ideas are debated in a market wide and open enough to offer every possible assurance of conceiving and evaluating alternatives. The recent course of British policy is of interest in this respect.

Of the seeming and real innovations which the modern age has introduced into the practice of foreign policy, none has proven more baffling to both understanding and action than foreign aid. The very assumption that foreign aid is an instrument of foreign policy is a subject of controversy. For, on the one hand, the opinion is widely held that foreign aid is an end in itself, carrying its own justification, both transcending, and independent of, foreign policy. In this view, foreign aid is the fulfillment of an obligation of the few rich nations toward the many poor ones. On the other hand, many see no justification for a policy of foreign aid at all. They look at it as a gigantic boon-doggle, a wasteful and indefensible operation which serves neither the interests of the United States nor those of the recipient nations.

In the 19th century what was meant by the term “constitution” was reasonably definite and clear. Paradoxically enough, if the word retained some ambiguity, this was because of the British constitution; that is, because the mother country of modern constitutionalism appeared to have an obscure constitution, or even—according to some of the standards that seemed very important elsewhere—no constitution at all.

Most political scientists concern themselves in one way or another with values and interests. References to values are ubiquitous in the literature, and one need only cite such terms as interest groups, the public interest, the common interest, and the national interest to recall the frequent reference to interests.

The two words have already been discussed a great deal. Even so, there is considerable confusion about their meaning and about the interrelationships of their meaning. Rather than serve as effective tools for incisive analyses, they frequently lead into intellectual traps; and rather than serve as clear symbols for communication, they frequently lead to misunderstanding. These difficulties have been especially great in the field of foreign affairs, where so much has been made of the concept the national interest.

This is a tentative outline of a systematic and comprehensive approach to the study of politics. Part I gives the method. Part II indicates some advantages of the approach. Part III anticipates likely objections to it. And Part IV suggests some applications. My purpose in presenting the paper in its present form is to encourage my colleagues to consider this approach and, if they find it potentially useful, to contribute to its refinement through criticism. As David Easton said in his “Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems,” I know “I run the definite risk that the meaning and implications of this point of view may be only superficially communicated; but it is a risk I shall have to undertake since I do not know how to avoid it sensibly.”

Studies of Congress by political scientists have produced a time-tested consensus on the very considerable power and autonomy of Congressional committees. Because of these two related characteristics, it makes empirical and analytical sense to treat the Congressional committee as a discrete unit for analysis. This paper conceives of the committee as a political system (or, more accurately as a political subsystem) faced with a number of basic problems which it must solve in order to achieve its goals and maintain itself. Generally speaking these functional problems pertain to the environmental and the internal relations of the committee. This study is concerned almost exclusively with the internal problems of the committee and particularly with the problem of self-integration. It describes how one congressional committee—The Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives—has dealt with this problem in the period 1947–1961. Its purpose is to add to our understanding of appropriations politics in Congress and to suggest the usefulness of this type of analysis for studying the activities of any congressional committee.

Students of congressional-executive relations have long recognized the weakness of legislative oversight of the Executive, and in few areas of public policy has this weakness been more pronounced than in national defense. A recent and significant change in this relationship was made when the 86th Congress in 1959 imposed upon a reluctant executive and military establishment a major innovation in the established processes of making defense policy. The innovation was deliberately intended to alter the balance in executive-congressional controls over some strategic decisions, and was in the form of a new requirement for legislative authorization of the principal weapons programs of the military services.

The threat of violence, and the occasional outbreak of real violence—which gives the threat credibility—are essential elements in peaceful social change not only in international, but also in national communities. Individuals and groups, no less than nations, exploit the threat as an everyday matter. This induces flexibility and stability in democratic institutions.

I refer not only to the police power of the state and the recognized right of self-defense, but also to private individual or group violence, whether purposive or futile, deliberate or desperate. Violence and the threat of violence, far from being meaningful only in international politics, are underlying, tacit, recognized, and omnipresent facts of domestic life, in the shadow of which democratic politics are carried on. They instil dynamism into the structure and growth of the law, the settlement of disputes, the processes of accomodating interests, and they induce general respect for the verdict of the polls.

Reinhold Niebuhr has profoundly affected American thought in theology, on society, and about politics. He has puzzled more than one of his many critics and commentators, especially by the veritable panorama of doctrines which, at one time or another, he has appeared to advocate: several varieties of socialism, liberalism, and what seems to be a sort of mellow conservatism. The confusion engendered by this ideological medley has not been alleviated either by the voluminous extent of his writings, or by his teutonic, yet highly personal style. But Niebuhr's policy suggestions have been shaped in response to changing conditions in the political world. Deeper analysis reveals a remarkably consistent teaching, present in all essential respects at least as early as his Moral Man and Immoral Society, which if not a philosophy, is at least a theology of politics. The scope of this paper prevents any examination of the entire intellectual pilgrimage of Reinhold Niebuhr; I shall confine my attention to the main lines of his political teaching.

Woodrow Wilson spoke of the “little legislatures of Congress,” in referring to House and Senate standing committees. Perhaps it is not out of place, then, to call subcommittees the “miniature legislatures.” Little systematic academic attention has been given them since Burton French's discussion in this Review in 1915. They are worth understanding, however, for subcommittees often leave an indelible mark on legislation. As one Congressional staff member stated, “Given an active subcommittee chairman working in a specialized field with a staff of his own, the parent committee can do no more than change the grammar of a subcommittee report.” This article deals with the reasons for the existence and growth of subcommittees, with the variety of ways in which they are organized, and with the issues and methods involved in their control. Conference committees are outside the scope of this study.

In some recent discussions of roll calls in Congress a model of interacting blocs has often been adopted and to a considerable degree verified. This model assumes the existence of several fairly cohesive blocs along with, perhaps, some unattached members. Furthermore, it is assumed that some of these blocs are fairly consistently opposed on roll calls, while others ally now with one side, now with the other. This model is attractive, not only because it accords with the usage of journalists, but also because it seems to provide a rational explanation of what sometimes appears to be the almost random confusion of Congressional voting behavior. As the evidence here presented suggests, however, this model is somewhat too neat and requires modification to account for shifting alliances over (often relatively short periods of) time. In a trial, reasoning from the assumptions of this model, we attempted to pick out those blocs and members who shifted from side to side. We were, however, unable to do so except in a few instances, largely, we believe, because the model as heretofore developed is static.

The United States Supreme Court is often guided by rules of law which make the disposition of cases depend upon singular combinations of circumstances. It is a relatively simple procedure to go through the cases in a subject matter area and compile a list of the facts the justices seem to have considered material to their solution of the issue at hand. But the identification of the peculiar combinations of events which push the decisions in one direction or the other is more difficult. The number of possible combinations is almost endless: with as few as twenty specified circumstances there are more than one million possible combinations. And the weight of a particular circumstance may depend on the combination of factors in which it appears.

Fred Kort has pointed to the “concrete differentiation of factual elements” which seem decisive in cases involving such procedural civil rights as protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, coerced confessions, and unfair trial procedures.

Many liberals of the nineteenth century, and their predecessors of the middle eighteenth, thought the natural condition of men to be one of harmony. Dissension and strife do not inhere in man and society; they arise instead from mistaken belief, inadequate knowledge, and defective governance. With the evils defined, the remedies become clear: educate men and their governors, strip away political abuses. This is one theme in the history of liberal thought. Urged by humane philosophers and supported by pacifistic economists, its appeal in Western society is immense and enduring.

There is in liberal thought another theme as well, which is often obscured though it goes back to the earliest philosophers who can fairly be called liberal. Montesquieu, Adam Smith, and Kant made no easy assumptions about the rationality and goodness of man. Among men in nature and states in a world of states, they found not harmony and peace but hostility and war to be the natural condition.

A standard approach to American politics, national, state, or local, distinguishes the two-party and one-party systems, with a range of modifications in between. Florida has long been described as a one-party state, part of the “solid south.” Since Reconstruction days, and until very recently, the Republican party there has had virtually no state and local organization, virtually no public office seekers nor office holders, virtually no registered voters, and virtually no supporters at the polls. In recent years this state of affairs has been in perceptible change. Traditionally Democratic Florida went Republican in the last three presidential elections. Indeed, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman are the only Democratic presidential nominees to have won Florida's electoral support since 1924. In the past decade there has been a marked increase in registered Republican voters, in Republican candidates and votes for them; and the state and local Republican organizations have expanded and otherwise appeared to be viable. These political changes seem to be related to other changes—industrialization, urbanization, growing wealth and a population explosion whose principal cause has been immigration from other states, mostly northern.

In the apocalyptic visions of Marx, the world revolution which was to destroy capitalist society was also to sweep away the entire system of nation-states, and in its place to substitute a world proletarian society, a new supra-national community ruled over by the victorious working class.

Of all the prophecies of early Marxism, none proved more ill-founded than this belief in an international socialist order. The revolution, when it came, was confined to Russia. Only after the victories of the Soviet armies in World War II did it become possible to extend Communist rule beyond the borders of the Soviet Union. After less than two decades, this new international Communist community of nations has become divided into blocs of quarrelling states, and the goal of international Communism seems still distant. The Communists, like other universalistic movements of the past, have apparently proved incapable of surmounting the limits of the nation-state system they set out to destroy. Why?

The extent of religious influence on the closely contested presidential election of 1960 has been much debated. Many have claimed that the Wisconsin primary revealed a religious split which then became one of the main issues of the campaign. This paper reports the results of an analysis of religious influence on voting in that state for several elections since the campaign of 1928, when Alfred E. Smith was the first major-party presidential candidate of the Roman Catholic faith. The thesis which will be defended is that religious influences on voting in Wisconsin, although much reduced from 1928, were still considerable enough to have been critical in an election as close as that of 1960. Several independent types of evidence from voting returns will be presented to bolster this argument.