The publication of an English translation of Friedrich Meinecke's Die Idee der Staatsraeson has stimulated a renewal of interest in the political ideas of Germany's most eminent twentieth-century historian. Particularly in the United States, newly emerged from isolation and suddenly finding itself at the centre of world power and world conflict, thinking people have been seeking a more satisfying approach to the intellectual and moral dilemmas posed by the possession of great power and great responsibility. The old confidence in an inevitable progress and in an uncomplicated harmony between reason, power, and morality has vanished with the elimination of the geographic and strategic barriers which once insulated America from the harsher realities of world politics.

In such a situation, the reflections of a scholar who probed more deeply than any of his contemporaries into the ethical problems of foreign policy are peculiarly appropriate. Meinecke's sense of the tragic conflict between political necessity and moral principle can now find an understanding response in a country which has borne the terrible responsibility of making the crucial decisions in the long series of crises since 1945–Hiroshima, Berlin, Korea, Hungary, Suez, and again Berlin. Each of these crises has harboured complex ethical as well as expediential challenges. All have demonstrated the ambiguity of both moral and political standards of conduct. It was precisely this ambiguity of standards to which Meinecke addressed his thought. His reflections have, if anything, more significance today than when they first found expression.

In the new states of Southeast Asia the idea of parliamentary government has usually been closely linked with the struggle for national independence, yet with the latter a reality in most of the area, there has come a curious disillusionment with the actual values of the former. Thus, during the 1920's and 1930's in what was then called the Netherlands East Indies, nationalists agitated on behalf of “Indonesia berparlemèn” (a parliament for Indonesia), but today we find leading Indonesian public figures, such as President Sukarno, declaring that Western-style parliamentary government has failed in Indonesia, and that what the country needs is a governmental system “in harmony with the Indonesian soul,” that is, a “democracy with leadership,” or a “guided democracy.” The following pages will seek to suggest some of the causes of this disenchantment with the principle of representative government in Indonesia, by focusing on its historic origins and functions during these, Indonesia's first, years of national independence.

When on August 17, 1945, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta, acting on behalf of “the people of Indonesia,” formally proclaimed the independence of their nation, they confronted a condition of widespread popular inexperience in the art of representative government. It was not until 1918 that a rudimentary parliamentary body for all of Indonesia (the so-called Volksraad, or People's Council) had been established, in line with the plans, in great variety and often confusingly contradictory, of the Dutch colonial policy-makers to give their East Indian possessions a greater degree of autonomy.

The iron and steel industry of the United Kingdom is unique in at least three respects which are important in any examination of its present condition and prospects. It is the world's oldest capitalistic iron and steel industry. It is widely dispersed geographically—a factor which distinguishes it particularly from the steel industries of other western European countries with which it is most in competition. Finally it has experienced what must surely be the most extended period of changing economic and political circumstances to which any industry in a predominantly private enterprise nation has been subjected in modern times.

While the intention here is to concentrate upon the political economy of the industry in recent years, it is useful to begin with some review of relevant geographical, structural, and historical factors. The structure of the industry is summarized in Table I.

The geographical dispersion of the industry contrasts rather sharply with the concentration of German steel in the Ruhr and of the French industry in Lorraine. It is, however, not difficult to explain in terms of the original wide-spread occurrence of coal and iron in Great Britain and of the specialized steel-making and steel-using skills which have developed in various parts of the country since 1850, even earlier in the instance of Sheffield. In Scotland and to some extent on the northeast coast and around Sheffield the industry has continued strong mainly because of the market for steel and the supply of specialized labour and knowledge, which has survived the exhaustion of coal or iron ore in these districts. In fact both the northeast coast and Yorkshire retain important reserves of coal, and other more recent considerations have helped to sustain and expand production in these sectors.

The external economic relations of a country over time can be most effectively examined by a historical study of the balance of payments and, accordingly, economists studying countries whose growth has been fundamentally influenced by their international economic relations have evinced a growing interest in such studies. This interest is not new. Albert Gallatin, Adam Seybert, and Ezra Seaman recognized the importance of America's external relations in the early nineteenth century and attempted to estimate the components of a balance of payments. Better known are the studies of Robert Giffen and C. K. Hobson on British international economic relations. Giffen's and Hobson's works were pioneering efforts at constructing estimates of the various service items and have served as a point of departure for more recent efforts. For the United States, the early essays by Worthy P. Sterns and the classic study of Charles Bullock, John H. Williams, and Rufus Tucker which followed were landmarks in the analysis of the balance of payments just as the studies by J. Viner of Canada and H. D. White of France were for those countries. As a result of these studies, the techniques of estimating the separate components of the balance of payments have been refined and significantly improved. In almost every case the transport account has been the most important service item and has received a great deal of attention. Yet not one of the studies mentioned above is satisfactory on this account, and the error in the estimate of shipping earnings in most of them has been of significant proportions. The errors in these studies stem from two sources, an inadequate understanding of the determinants of shipping debits and credits over time and inadequate data. This paper will analyse the determinants of shipping earnings in the context of the two general methods of estimating earnings, and examine critically the estimate of shipping earnings in existing studies.

The phenomenon of inter-establishment variation in occupational wage rates is of considerable significance not only to the economist concerned with wage theory but also to the unionist, the employer and those government agencies concerned with wage policy. In view of its importance it is unfortunate that in Canada there has been virtually no analysis of questions of inter-establishment wage diversity. In this vast and neglected field, it is difficult to choose a specific plot for cultivation or to know what size to make it. Since inter-regional differences are of great interest and significance to Canadians, it was decided, for a start, to attack the problem first by comparing the extent of dispersion in Ontario and Quebec. Further, the study is concerned with an examination of the factors which might explain the relatively greater dispersion found in Quebec. These factors include both inter- and intra-industry variation in rates, the “economic geography” of the two provinces, the effects of differences in plant size on plant wage rates, and the influence of unionism.

The data consist of more than 1,250 establishment rates for hourly rated male common labour in the manufacturing industries of Ontario and Quebec for the year 1957. Common labour was chosen as a measure for comparing wages in different plants not only because it is a fairly homogeneous occupational group but also because it is the one occupation for which extensive cross-industry rate data are presently available in Canada. There is no doubt that some variation in the rates for any occupation will arise because of differences in ability—and effort—within the occupational group. A perfectly homogeneous group of workers is a textbook abstraction which can only be approximated in the real world in a very crude fashion.

In nearly every recent commentary on Canadian political parties one observation has been repeatedly emphasized. It is that the Canadian electorate has shown an inclination to put in power at the provincial level parties which stand in opposition to the party which has been entrusted with power at Ottawa. The writers who have stressed this phenomenon have been impressed by the fact that during the latter years of their national ascendancy the Liberals were in control of only a few of the smaller provinces (by 1957 only Prince Edward Island, New Rrunswick, and, through a coalition, Manitoba), while in the other and larger provinces the Progressive Conservatives, C.C.F., Social Credit, or Union Nationale were firmly entrenched. From this observation three conclusions, either explicit or implicit, have generally been deduced. The first is that during the latter years of the Liberal régime the real opposition to the Government was not to be found at the Speaker's left in Ottawa, but rather in the provincial capitals. The second is that the individual Canadian voter has alternated his party choice at provincial and federal elections, and by so doing has demonstrated a type of voting behaviour which is not usually to be found in federations. The third conclusion is that in favouring one party provincially and another party nationally the Canadian voter is motivated by a calculated desire to balance the power of the one against the other. The purpose of this article is to examine the pattern of provincial and federal election results and to determine the extent to which these conclusions are supported by the available evidence.

Several investigations dealing with provincial-local relations in particular jurisdictions in Canada have been undertaken in recent years. The prevailing emphasis has been on the distribution of taxation sources and the revenues derived from these sources between the two levels of government and, to a lesser degree, on the related question of the allocation of responsibilities for particular services between the provincial and local governments. The clear implications of most of this discussion are that all would be well with our local authorities if they were assured of revenues commensurate with their responsibilities and that local officials and their representatives admit to few ailments which more generous subventions from the senior governments would not cure.

This paper attempts to focus attention on another aspect of central-local relations as strategic in determining the welfare of our local institutions as is the scale of central financial assistance. Characteristically, central governments not only provide a portion of the revenues expended by the local authorities within their boundaries but also engage in an extensive and varied range of activities to regulate, supervise, educate, and otherwise influence the conduct of elected and appointed local officials. Control, viewed broadly as any exercise of central influence, can take these forms: (1) legislative control, in which central influence is exerted through legislative enactments, and subordinate legislation issued under them, enjoining or requiring certain local activities or procedures; (2) judicial control, in which the central government requests a court of law to order particular local authorities or local officials to do or refrain from doing certain things as are allegedly required by law; (3) administrative control, in which elected or appointed officials of the central executive, acting within the authority conferred on. them by law, influence or attempt to influence the conduct of local governments.