The purpose of this report is to examine, on an international scale, the current trends in political science research.

The initial intention was to base the survey on the available information about researches being carried on by institutions, but it soon became apparent that such a survey could not give an adequate picture of current work or trends. In the first place, systematic information about research by institutions was, at the time of writing, available on a comparable basis only for a few countries and areas. In the second place, even if information on research by institutions were available for all countries, an analysis of it would give a very one-sided picture of the main trends in political science research. For it would leave out of account all the work being done by individual scholars, and even groups of scholars, in the ordinary course of their academic work. To single out the work being done by research institutes (whether they are attached to universities or established independently) and to call this “research,” would be putting a narrrow interpretation on the word. It is, of course, tempting to do so. It is possible to canvass institutions and compile a comparative register of their researches; it is much more difficult, if not impossible, to compile a register that would list all the significant thinking being done in political science, including the theoretical work being done by individual academic political scientists in all the universities.

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.

The period starting November 5, 1952 has been called “The Time of the Jitters” for the middle and upper levels of the federal bureaucracy. Political change is usually disruptive and always accompanied by uncertainty and insecurity. Intellectual acceptance of this truism does not insulate one from the effects any more than death and taxes, for all their recognized inevitability, cease to be sources of distress.

There were many reasons to anticipate that the 1952 election might result in a greater than usual degree of change, or at least of uncertainty. In many ways there were no real American precedents for the situation. The period of executive control by the outgoing party had been characterized by the unusual duration of 20 years, by highly controversial political policy, and by profound social change. This was the first change of administration under conditions of modern Big Government—the first since the American government found itself with accepted broad welfare and economic responsibility on the domestic scene and with major power responsibilities in a divided and warring world. Since the last full change, the size of the federal civil service had increased over 400 per cent, governmental expenditures over 16 fold. This was also to be the first full change of administration to show the effects of the 20th Amendment.

An immediate and important insight into the significance of Greek political philosophy may be gained by examining an observation made upon it by Karl Marx. The fact that Marx's observation is fundamentally erroneous does not prevent it from being profoundly suggestive. Marx observed, in the course of his doctoral dissertation, On the Differences between the Natural Philosophy of Democritus and Epicurus, that the character of the philosophical world after the death of Aristotle in the Fourth Century B.C. was similar to that of the philosophical world after the death of Hegel in the Nineteenth Century. What was this similarity of which Marx speaks? We may best understand it if we know that Marx had considered that his own achievement had been to break through the “completed, total world” of Hegel's “pure theory, theology, philosophy, ethics etc.,” and to have resolved the “absolute metaphysical spirit into the real man standing on the foundation of nature.”

Who handles American foreign relations?

The question has been answered and discussed in terms of the Executive and the Congress in several recent books. We shall attempt here to answer the question in terms of the people who occupy the higher, or policy-making, positions in the Department of State and Foreign Service. Biographical data is published for individuals in this group in the Biographic Register of the Department of State and its supplements.

This type of “Who's Who” sketch is limited, of course, to the bare skeletons of men's lives and is worthless as a test of faith and gumption. One of the tragedies, indeed, in the public service since the loyalty program began in 1947 is the fact that loyalty and security risk cannot be proved by social analysis in a time when loyalty and safeness in matters of security are the great questions that overshadow other concerns in any consideration of public personnel. Of the main reasons for finding an employee a poor security risk—wrong political association, bad character, sexual deviation, excessive drinking, or talking too much—none can be measured by any objective standard. Guilt is a matter of degree, and the degree is a matter of opinion among security officers and others who are urged by their climate to be as suspicious as possible.

Recently two new and important proposals have been made concerning the character of the needed basin organization for the development and proper utilization of the resources of the Missouri Valley. A Missouri Basin Survey Commission was appointed by President Truman in 1952 to make a “thorough re-evaluation of the whole problem.” In its 1953 report this survey group recommended the establishment of a federal Missouri Basin Commission with authority to “direct and coordinate the activities of all federal agencies relating to resource development.” In December, 1952 the Missouri River States Committee, composed of the governors of the ten basin states, accepted a Council of State Governments' draft of a federal-interstate compact as the desirable framework for basin organization. Each of these proposals would create a new commission to integrate basin planning and secure coordination among all governmental agencies in the operation of water facilities.

At one point in its report the Missouri Basin Survey Commission describes the course of the Missouri as “a crude but large question mark across the surface of one-sixth of the nation” and uses the description to symbolize “the great array of problems which await satisfactory solution in the Basin.” Certainly the physical, planning, and policy problems of Missouri Basin conservation and development are difficult enough.

A significant result of the report “Toward A More Responsible Two-Party System” has been the marked growth of interest in the American party system. It is nevertheless true that our knowledge about the way in which party systems function is far from complete. An area promising fruitful research and presenting many hypotheses susceptible of systematic inquiry is that of the role of party organizations in the legislative process.

It is the purpose of this article to examine the legislative role of political parties in the Pennsylvania General Assembly; more precisely, to measure their influence in the formation of the state's public policies in one session of the legislature. The most recent completed session at the time of this study was that of 1951—the longest session in state history.

In order to evaluate the impact of party upon legislation, the concept of a “party vote” has been used. This is merely an operating definition by which to measure differences in party attitudes on questions subjected to roll-call votes on the floor. The assumption was made that the interests of the parties can be established best by analyzing the voting behavior of their membership. Questions to which partisan significance is attached will find the parties aligned against each other.

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.

Although there is a voluminous literature on the organization and procedure of state legislatures, material on their politics is relatively sparse. The classic work of A. Lawrence Lowell, now more than a half-century old, still appears to be the chief reliance of scholars in the field. Lowell's thesis was that parties were relatively insignificant in state legislatures; virtually the whole of the subsequent literature agrees with this. In the case of the Connecticut legislature, it would seem that parties, far from being relatively insignificant, play a dominating role.

The study of party influence in a legislature necessitates a two-level approach: analysis of the role of the party leadership and of the voting behavior of the party membership. Several questions must be answered with regard to the party leadership. Are the party leaders an identifiable and cohesive group? Do they develop a definite program for legislative consideration? Is their authority shared with factional leaders capable of frequent disruption of the party program? Are committee chairmen or party leaders in the stronger position for actually forming legislative policy? Do pressure group leaders work through the formal party leaders or do they attempt to build ad hoc legislative majorities for their bills through independent action?

Efforts by various states to regulate effectively the use of money in political campaigns have heretofore left ample loopholes for determined politicians. Florida has attempted to plug the loopholes with a revised election code which has become popularly known as “The Who Gave It—Who Got It Law.” Informed political observers in the Sunshine State are in agreement that in the 1952 Democratic gubernatorial primaries the new law gave an accurate accounting of monies.

Florida, like other states, has a number of economic interests which in the past have been associated with unreported contributions and expenditures in political campaigns, notably racing (both horse and dog), liquor, and corporations holding public utility franchises. By early 1951, Floridians, having had more than a fair share of adverse publicity concerning tie-ins between gangsters and politicians, were eager to guard against such tie-ins in the future. The Florida voter felt that the existing law did not effectively regulate campaign financing, and demanded effective regulation.

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.

The term charisma—miraculously-given power—was transferred by Max Weber from its original religious meaning to politics. He described it as “the absolutely personal devotion and personal confidence in revelation, heroism, or other qualities of individual leadership.” He contrasts charisma with leadership based on custom and tradition or on competence related to “rationally created rules” of law. The charismatic leader is thus the one whose claim to rule is neither as a perpetuator of traditional values nor as one who resolves conflicting interests by reasonable and just means but as one endowed with superhuman powers to solve political problems. In the abstract, pure case he is seen by his followers as being all-powerful, all-wise, and morally perfect.

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.

Distributing “raw” data among types or classes is a necessary and illuminating part of the process of research and discovery in any science, particularly in the early stages of the latter's development. But it produces fruitful results only if the types or classes make sense, which they will just to the extent that, inter alia, the variables we fix upon in defining them are the significant ones (for the purpose in view, of course), and that the classes (a) exhaust the phenomena under consideration, and (b) do not overlap.

One of the most elementary procedures used in dealing with the raw data of political conflict is that which, taking its departure from the notion of “party systems,” seeks to assign each observed instance to one or another of three types: the “one-party system,” the “two-party system,” and the “multiple-party system.” All party systems, it is assumed, belong as a matter of course to one of the three, so that one of the researcher's first tasks in studying the phenomena of party conflict in a given political situation is to find out with which one of the three types he is dealing. Until he has done this—so runs the tacit premise—he does not have his problem in manageable shape.

Teachers of public administration will welcome the challenging and provocative article of Professor Kenneth Culp Davis, “Reflections of a Law Professor on Instruction and Research in Public Administration,” which appeared in the September issue of the Review. It is my purpose to reply to some of his criticisms, to agree with him in some regards, and to discuss some of the issues which he raises. I am in entire agreement with him about the merits of the case method in teaching public administration, and I imagine that there would be little disagreement by other teachers of the subject, though as yet the collection and publication of cases suitable for undergraduate instruction has not reached the point where the use of texts of the conventional type may be discontinued. One of the first efforts to prepare and publish cases on public administration was undertaken fifteen years ago by the Committee on Public Administration of the Social Science Research Council when I was a member of its staff, and resulted in three volumes which were published in 1940 and the following years. The Stein collection is a vast improvement over the earlier case studies, and is being widely used, particularly in graduate courses. The cases were produced by the cooperative efforts of teachers of public administration at a number of leading universities.

There are two aspects of the relation between government and interest groups which are of primary significance for the political scientist. One is the realistic approach to the study of interest groups, which gives attention to the demands of groups, their pressure on government, and the ways government yields to or tries to accommodate their conflicting demands. The other is the idealist tradition that the purpose of the state is the common weal, which has been expressed diversely, as for example, in the concepts of salus populi suprema lex and “public office is a public trust.” If these two were necessarily in conflict, we should have to choose between ethical nihilism and utopianism. This paper moves from the assumptions that realism and idealism both have a place in the study of political science, today as in ancient tradition, and that in the study of the particular problem of government control of the economy, analysis of the upward impact of interest pressures and their accommodation through government policies should be supplemented by a search for the best means of strengthening the impact of the concept of the common weal in the decision-making process.

When the Labour Government began to nationalize industries in Great Britain, swarms of social scientists descended upon that island. They wanted to study this “great experiment,” which many of them viewed as the trail-blazer for an inevitable trend in all modern industrial societies. That was nine years ago. Now it seems that the nationalization dogma has lost most of its force even in Labour circles. But another great experiment has been in progress on the Continent, in West Germany: Mitbestimmung, the scheme under which labor participates in the management of private industrial corporations. In part it was born out of British disillusionment with socialism's erstwhile cure-all. Because of its novelty and uniqueness, it is attracting increasing attention from social scientists. But this time, the different disciplines are unevenly represented. Economists, and especially experts in labor relations, have shown the most interest. When they run across a student of politics in pursuit of the same quarry, they often express surprise. And the Germans, who are being visited, interviewed, questioned, polled, and subjected to every conceivable form of social scientific scrutiny, react even more strongly. They are positively puzzled: “You are not a Nationaloekonom? But then surely an Industrie- or Betriebssoziologe, or perhaps a Jurist ….” The political scientist is an animal of which few of them have heard. And fewer still can imagine off-hand why he would want to concern himself with co-determination.

One of the keys to an understanding of the Communist movement is a knowledge of the nature of its leadership. The idea of the professional conspiratorial elite is one of the unique Russian contributions to Communist dogma and practice. After the professional revolutionaries in Russia had successfully engineered the Bolshevik Revolution, they became models for the leaders of the new Communist parties that were established in the West. Scholars and statesmen alike have had cause to mention some of their unique qualities—their uncompromising discipline, their complete and intransigent dedication to their cause, their ruthlessness and capacity for self-sacrifice. In this paper an attempt will be made to develop and investigate hypotheses about some of the characteristics of those who have attained positions of high leadership in the Communist parties in Italy and France. Some information on the leaders of the party in the United States has been included for purposes of comparison. It is impossible in this study, of course, to attack the problem from the point of view of the motivations and personality structures that differentiate the Communist leaders from those lower in the hierarchy.

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.