Centralization and decentralization have been applied in Germany not only to geographical relationships between levels of government and to hierarchical relationships within levels of government but also to hierarchical relationships between levels of government. American-style dual federalism is not a part of the German administrative tradition. Subnational units in Germany have traditionally been responsible for implementing the laws of larger units. With the creation of a German federal state in 1871, the Prussian system became in large part the German system of administration. Today there are five levels of administration in the Federal Republic, and strong parallels can be drawn to the earlier Prussian traditions. In spite of the institutional arrangements for decentralized administration and local self-government, there are complaints about the alleged lack of opportunities for popular participation and overcentralized decision-making. These complaints raise difficult questions concerning the requirements for national standards and equality on the one hand and local citizen demands on the other.

In this essay Montesquieu's reflections on international politics are interpreted as a more-or-less coherent whole rooted in his understanding of the structural changes in European history from antiquity to the eighteenth century. Montesquieu's study of history led him to recognize a new context for European politics—a regular system of relations among independent states dependent upon the development of commerce. The expansion of commerce engendered a mutual dependence among European states which opened new possibilities for international politics. A cosmopolitan vision of mutuality, embodied in principles of international law and justice, could replace the power politics of drives for universal monarchy. Furthermore, commerce implied the possibility of a revival of republics, although based not on the political virtue of classical republics (unattainable by modern Europeans in Montesquieu's view), but on the formal justice of fairness and contract.

Ancient traditions have stressed the intervention of the gods and contemporary moralists picture God as being on their side in international conflicts. Pharisaism, Manichaeism and the morality of progress are other distortions of political ethics. The first step in a more profound understanding of the ethical dimension of diplomacy is a clear-eyed view of the good and evil in human nature informed by philosophy and history. However, differences exist among political realists and international lawyers who have examined human nature in these terms. Some emphasize the relevance of ethics for international politics while others question it. Democratic foreign policy poses special problems for those who discuss international morality. Such issues are resolved at least partly within the tradition of practical morality which the article considers in conclusion.

Two months before the Bolshevik Revolution, Felix Cole, a 29-year-old clerk at the American Embassy at Petrograd was promoted to vice-consul at frigid and remote Archangel. As the Allies, in the spring of 1918, began to advocate military intervention in North Russia, Cole came to a far different conclusion. In his view economic aid to the North, especially in foodstuffs, would do far more to maintain Allied influence than the use of force. However, Ambassador David R. Francis and his foreign service colleagues abruptly dismissed Cole's warnings against military intervention as being unworthy of serious consideration. Tragically for the 222 Americans who died in the resulting Anglo-American military expedition to Archangel, Cole was ignored when he predicted: “Intervention will begin on a small scale but with each step forward will grow in its demands for ships, men, money and materials.”

Ironically shortly before and after Lincoln proclaimed emancipation, the Great Emancipator received as much criticism as praise for what he did or did not do. This article examines how the 1861 award-winning L'Abolition de l'esclavage by Augustin Cochin helped persuade Americans and his fellow Frenchmen that the abolition of slavery was both morally and practically right. Cochin, the empirical moralist, had a deeper appreciation of Lincoln than many of the President's critics—on both sides of the Atlantic. The article also offers new material and insights on the relationship between French and American liberal thinkers during the Civil War.

While this century has witnessed large-scale attempts to actualize political Utopias, the study of such regimes is as old as political philosophy. The most famous of such imaginary republics is More's Utopia. In the form of a dialogue, Utopia presents the best regime of a philosophic character, Raphael Hythlodaeus. In constructing a regime based on the belief that happiness consists in the acquisition of pleasure, Utopia presents one of the first proposals for political hedonism. While the Utopian understanding of happiness restricts their pursuit of pleasure to those austere pleasures which are natural, their hedonism nevertheless causes problems which require strict political control. More important, an analysis of the text reveals that the Utopian understanding of the requirements of human nature is simplistic. Thus, the proper understanding of the dialogue reveals that More's purpose is not to recommend such radical change but to show the dangers of such idealistic proposals.