In analysing the American and Canadian federal systems it is possible to stress the trends common to both systems or, alternately, to emphasize the differences that distinguish the Canadian from the American experience with federal institutions. Both political systems have persisted with recognizable federal features even while substantial nationalizing developments have occurred in the economies and cultures of the two nations. One leading authority characterizes the kind of federalism that results as “co-operative” in contrast to the older “classical” variety. Others, while noting common trends, stress the greater degree of resistance to centralization found in Canada by use of such labels as “pluralistic federalism,” “double-image federalism,” and “peri-pheralized federalism.” While briefs can be made for affixing one or another label to a system, it seems more useful at this stage to study some of the array of differences between the Canadian and American federal systems. One way to get a rough measure of differences and similarities is to pose a set of questions on federalism to comparable groups of Canadians and Americans. These questions can be designed to determine the respective orientations to their federal systems and their opinions on various provincial (state)-federal problems. In this study the questions were put to members of the Ontario Legislative Assembly and the Michigan Senate.

The tradition of presidential addresses before this Association is a varied and extremely democratic one, offering no set pattern for the guidance of a president-elect. My immediate predecessor in the presidency, who has honoured me by agreeing to take the chair tonight, last year offered us his reflections on one of the fundamental concepts in his field of sociology, the myth. His predecessor applied the tools of his trade as a political theorist to a dissection of the political assumptions of contemporary economics—not entirely, it must be confessed, to the comfort and satisfaction of the economists present in the audience. Previous presidents have frequently employed the occasion to collect in one intellectual basket the fruits of a lifetime of serious scholarship in their own particular vineyard. For my own address tonight, I have chosen to speak on the contemporary position, prospects, and problems of the social sciences. This choice reflects in part a feeling that an address on the kind of professional subject to which I have been devoting my attention in recent years—a topic in the pure theory of international trade—would be of such limited general interest as to strain even the tolerance of this audience. My main reason, however, for choosing to talk about our profession, rather than to exemplify its work in one specific area of economics, is that I think that I can contribute most usefully to fulfilling the purposes of this Association by attempting to place the manifold problems with which its members are currently confronted in a broader historical perspective.