During the last decade and more there has appeared a vast literature on economic growth, especially with reference to underdeveloped countries. This literature ranges from the sophisticated models of the mathematically inclined to the very practical down-to-earth reflections of the less erudite technical assistance expert with experience in the field. The literature demonstrates that there are many approaches to the problem of economic development and also that there are still areas of controversy to be resolved. In fact, while we have learned much about economic growth and much more about underdeveloped countries it seems that we are still feeling our way towards devising a satisfactory analytical framework for economic growth.

There has been waste of manpower and capital not only because the processes of economic growth are imperfectly understood, but also because governments of recipient countries have a propensity to ask either for the wrong things or the right things in the wrong order of priority. Waste also results from the failure of assistance agencies, even within the framework of the United Nations, to co-ordinate their activities, from competition amongst the departments of government in the recipient countries for preferred treatment in the matter of aid, and competition amongst assisting countries, agencies, and organizations in giving aid for political and prestige reasons.

Be he economist, educator, or politician, the man who will say of any industrially advanced country today that it provides an excess of education is rare indeed. It is not that education is viewed as a good thing in itself, so good that it is virtually impossible to have too much of it. The pronouncements in favour of ever more education are supported above all by assertions concerning the economic value of education. Never before has there been so much education. Yet never before has there been so much talk of the shortages of trained people or of the need to expand education as an investment in the formation of human capital. In an Alice-in-Wonderland sort of way it seems that the more we have the greater the shortage. Shortage is “in,” along with the “affluent society.”

Problems of economic development have inevitably stimulated interest in human motivation as it pertains to economic action. In this regard, frequent allusion has been made to Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. This paper argues that understanding of Weber's thesis concerning both the Protestant ethic and capitalism has been frequently erroneous or incomplete, and that when his thought concerning the metaphysical foundations of economic rationality is seen in an adequate context its implications for economic motivation and development problems are more important than has been generally acknowledged. More specifically, the present analysis holds that Weber's basic ideas concerning the practical economic effects of the economic actor's value orientation are valid within the framework of any given economic system.

The first two sections attempt to clarify Weber's thought concerning the nature of the Protestant ethic and its relation to capitalism. The remainder of the article deals with the contemporary significance of Weber's insight for economic development in Soviet Russia and in the newly-developing countries.

The world is still a closed economy, but its regions and countries are becoming increasingly open. The trend, which has been manifested in both freer movement of goods and increased mobility of capital, has been stimulated by the dismantling of trade and exchange controls in Europe, the gradual erosion of the real burden of tariff protection, and the stability, unparalleled since 1914, of the exchange rates. The international economic climate has changed in the direction of financial integration and this has important implications for economic policy.

My paper concerns the theoretical and practical implications of the increased mobility of capital. In order to present my conclusions in the simplest possible way, and to bring the implications for policy into sharpest relief, I assume the extreme degree of mobility that prevails when a country cannot maintain an interest rate different from the general level prevailing abroad. This assumption will overstate the case but it has the merit of posing a stereotype towards which international financial relations seem to be heading. At the same time it might be argued that the assumption is not far from the truth in those financial centres, of which Zurich, Amsterdam, and Brussels may be taken as examples, where the authorities already recognize their lessening ability to dominate money market conditions and insulate them from foreign influences. It should also have a high degree of relevance to a country like Canada whose financial markets are dominated to a great degree by the vast New York market.

An amending procedure is integral to a scheme of free and responsible government. Liberal constitutions are not formed on the naive assumption that they are immune from obsolescence. Their architects, unlike the Emperor Justinian, are never confident that their legal handiwork can endure for all time. They accept the necessity for change as self-evident and provide the means for achieving it.

In a liberal federation, however, the devising of a satisfactory procedure for amendment is rarely easy and seldom gives satisfaction, mainly because in such a state constitutional rigidity no less than flexibility has a raison d'être. The communities associated in the federation want a measure of security, a guarantee that their individual identity and integrity will never be lightly sacrificed in the process of change. This was illustrated long ago in the most influential federal union in history. The men who deliberated at Philadelphia in 1787 agreed that amendments must be sanctioned by a special majority in Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the states. They were confident that they had thus made change difficult, but not difficult enough to prevent it when necessary. Actually, for many reasons, it proved more difficult than they could have envisaged. Since the first ten amendments were little more than supplements to an unfinished document, there remain only twelve effected in 170 years, and of these three were obtained under very abnormal circumstances when the South was under the heel of the North. Important as some of them have been, most of the crucial adjustments and changes in the federation have been achieved in other ways, by judicial interpretation, usages, conventions, and a network of agreements.

Même si la plupart des manuels de science politique parlent du déclin des chambres hautes à notre époque, elles n'en continuent pas moins à poser un problème « classique » et «crucial». Ce sont les deux épithètes qu'emploie Georges Burdeau dans son volumineux et inégal Traité de science politique en précisant qu’ « il n'est guère de problèmes d'organisation constitutionnelle qui n'aient donné lieu, dans les milieux politiques, à des discussions plus âpres, et dans la doctrine, à une littérature plus abondante que celui de savoir si l'organe législatif doit être constitué par une assemblée unique ou par deux chambres». Dès l'antiquité, sous forme de ce qu'on appelait alors le régime mixte-la combinaison de la royauté, l'aristocratie, et la démocratie-le problème a passionné les esprits et Platon en a esquissé la théorie dans Les Lois. Aristote a précisé les idées de son maître dans sa Politique et a inspiré au Moyen Age Thomas d'Aquin qui, dans son régime politique idéal, veut combiner royauté, aristocratie, et démocratie. On ne possédait tout de même pas une idée très précise de la chambre haute qui ne s'incarna vraiment qu'avec la naissance et le développement de la Chambre des Lords en Angleterre. Mais ce n'est évidemment qu'avec l'avènement des idées démocratiques au dix-huitième siècle et surtout leur mise en pratique au dix-neuvième que se posa vraiment la question de la dualité des chambres. Après un débat fameux, en septembre, 1789, la Révolution française fut d'abord favorable à une assemblée unique mais dans la constitution de l'an III, le bicaméralisme triompha comme il devait triompher dans la plupart des constitutions pour servir de frein aux assemblées populaires. Il fut cependant, en 1830, l'objet d'une brillante attaque de la part de Jeremy Bentham dans sa lettre «to his fellow citizens of France on Houses of Peers and Senates».