Authority is a subject indispensable to politics. No other word carries its basic sense of legitimate power, power exercised over those who have willed its exercise. Cut off from the vocabulary of political theorists it comes back in other guises. Playing hide-and-seek with words would not in itself be so important were it not that it takes time merely to recognize that a game is being played and to realign the new words, each bearing a fraction of the old meaning, into the framework of facts and ideas with which the original concept was associated. It can be urged, on the positive side, that a re-shuffling of words, breaking them up and giving them slightly different connotations, might stir up not only clouds of dust but also some original thinking. This has not happened with the principle of authority. Rather it has been forgotten and is now remembered. The interval has seen little gain. Perhaps “power” has profited in attention, but at the expense of being confused with authority and thus of giving new life to the Thrasymachian conception of politics and its study. Instead, the subject matter of the political scientist is earthly authority and its relation to the divine.

The crucial feature of the period 1946–1958 in France, in many respects, has been the contrast between the changes which have occurred in French society and the performance of a political system which seemed to repeat and to magnify the vices of the Third Republic's last years. On the one hand, the image of a static France obstinately clinging to protectionism, to a pastoral or artisanal ideal, to the security afforded by restrictive practices and state favors, was becoming obsolete. On the other hand, the political system appeared unable either to deal with the tensions, economic growth and change created in society, or to define a coherent policy for overseas affairs.

Like any important institutional change, the new French constitution owes its parentage to an established doctrinal tradition, the particular ideas and experiences of its authors, and the combination of immediate political circumstances. The complexity of this process in the summer of 1958 and the failure of the French government to publish the records of the drafting, make it difficult even a year later to describe the birth of the document. Yet the fact that the drafting closely followed a short though dangerous crise du régime, and that it was primarily the work of the new Ministry rather than a constituent assembly, presents a meager advantage to the student of the new constitution. For the haste with which General de Gaulle's government prepared the initial draft—while at the same time preoccupied with many other pressing matters— strongly suggests that the drafters simply cast into legal text the program of the familiar opposition movement, formed by the General over a decade before, specifically to accomplish constitutional reform.

Ever since the constitutional improvisations of February 1, 1944, one of the enigmatic and obscure aspects of Soviet diplomacy has been the precise role of the Union Republics in its execution, administration and procedures. Aside from the participation of the Ukraine and Byelorussia in the work of the United Nations and its affiliated bodies and conferences, little attention has been paid to the role or potential of the Union Republics in Soviet foreign policy. Their apparent diplomatic inertia, however, is misleading, for in marked contrast to their meager formal participation in external affairs is their increasing implication in the quasi-diplomatic maneuvers of the Soviet Government. Furthermore, the juridical capacity of the Republics to embark on diplomatic adventures meets the formal canons of internal and international law, and remains intact in spite of the past dormancy of their diplomatic organs. At opportune moments it may be transmuted into concrete diplomatic benefits.

The seniority system ordinarily rates no more than two or three pages in books devoted to Congress. There is likely to be a brief description and a weighing of the arguments, pro and con, followed generally by the conclusion that the system is a poor one; occasionally an author will defend it stoutly. Regardless of the conclusions, the analyses are rarely thorough. This article attempts to fill a gap in the literature on Congress by describing and analyzing various aspects of its seniority system.

It is well to remember at the outset that very few human institutions ignore seniority entirely. Champ Clark, in his autobiography, noted that it is observed in all the affairs of life:

No sane man would for one moment think of making a graduate from West Point a full general, or one from Annapolis an admiral, or one from any university or college chief of a great newspaper, magazine or business house. A priest or a preacher who has just taken orders is not immediately made a bishop, archbishop or cardinal. In every walk of life “men must tarry at Jericho till their beards are grown.”

The emergence of American labor unions to positions of actual or potential power as organized forces in election campaigns has stirred a great deal of controversy over the limits and propriety of union political activity. A decade and more after the Taft-Hartley Act provisions on that subject, argument continues as vigorously as ever about the need for, and if a need, then the nature and extent of, legal controls over the power of union leaders to enlist and commit their membership to electioneering goals. Underlying many of these debates is the complex question of union membership solidarity in political affairs. For if, to some, solidarity suggests dangers, it also indicates difficulties in the way of making controls effective. Yet we have only begun to explore the solidarity of rank-and-file attitudes toward union political activity.

Dwight Waldo, Stephen Bailey, and I, among others who have from time to time expressed admiration for certain litterateurs as sources of wisdom and understanding of the art and science of public administration, will undoubtedly ponder at length a statement in W. Somerset Maugham's latest collection of imponderabilia, Points of View. Maugham says:

Only the very ingenuous can suppose that a work of fiction can give us reliable information on the topics which it is important to us for the conduct of our lives to be apprised of. By the nature of his creative gifts the novelist is incompetent to deal with such matters; his not to reason why, but to feel, to imagine, and to invent. He is biased. The subjects the writer chooses, the characters he creates, and his attitude toward them are conditioned by his bias. What he writes is the expression of his personality and the manifestation of his instincts, his emotions, his intuitions, and his experience. He loads his dice, sometimes not knowing what he is up to, but sometimes knowing very well; and then he uses such skill as he has to prevent the reader from finding him out. Henry James insisted that the writer of fiction should dramatize. That is a telling, though perhaps not very lucid, way of saying that he must so arrange his facts as to capture and hold his reader's attention. This, as everyone knows, is what Henry James consistently did, but, of course, it is not the way a work of scientific or informative value is written. If readers are concerned with the pressing problems of the day, they will do well to read, as Chekhov advised them to do, not novels or short stories, but the works that specifically deal with them.

Writers on foreign aid policy today generally agree that technical and capital assistance from the United States government can contribute effectively to economic growth in underdeveloped areas. There is much less agreement among them, however, on the ability of the foreign aid program to contribute positively to democratic processes of political and social change. There is still less agreement on the proposal that the United States should, wherever necessary and possible, intentionally attempt to stimulate social change within the context of an aid program. Nevertheless, some general considerations not heretofore presented in juxtaposition, and a case history to illustrate them, tend to support this proposal.