The study of comparative politics has been primarily concerned thus far with the study of the formal institutions of governments—particularly the governments of Western Europe. It has been in this sense not only parochial but also primarily descriptive and formalistic. Its place in the field of political science, while suffering from all the ambiguities and methodological inadequacies of the field in general, has been ill-defined. Is the student of comparative politics primarily concerned with the meticulous description of the formal institutions of various polities or is it his role to undertake comparison? If the latter, what is the meaning of comparison? Is it confined simply to the description of differences among various institutional arrangements? Does comparison stop when we note that England has had a two-party system whereas France has had a multi-party system? Does a description of the institutional arrangements of the Soviet Union reveal in any sense the most relevant factors that account for the differences between it and Western democracies? If comparison is to be something more than the descriptive portrait of formal institutional differences, what should be its aim, scope, and method? Should the student of comparative politics attempt to compare total configurations? If not, then he has to develop a precise notion of what can be isolated from the total configuration of a system or systems and compared, i.e., understood and explained with reference to similar patterns wrenched from the total configuration of another system.

Contemporary political science assumes that the representative system, in addition to its influence on the formal structure of government, is functionally related to the internal cohesiveness and equilibrium of society itself. This fact takes on the greatest significance in the modern democratic state, in which the size of the population requires that the representation be indirect. For the political scientist, therefore, a challenging situation arises out of the following question: how can the modern democratic state insure the most adequate and accurate political expression of the elements and currents within it, while still maintaining a government which can function and a safe margin of stability for the society?

That there are no simple formulae for resolving this problem is attested by the many theories of representation which have been propounded and tried during the last century. That a formula is almost desperately needed is demonstrated by postwar European experience. Italy is one of several countries in which the question of representation not only is significant but threatens to divide important segments of the society. The recent Italian elections point up this danger. But the elections, and the parliamentary experience which preceded them, also offer the political scientist a rich store of analytical raw material concerning the process of government and the group behavior which characterizes it.

The emergence in full flower, during the past twenty years, of the “positive state” has meant a great extension of administrative activity. This activity has been attacked as undemocratic by some persons whose concern was primarily with the programs carried out rather than with the means used to execute the programs. But the friends and even the originators of the programs have sometimes had an uncomfortable feeling that the traditional administrative mechanism has undemocratic tendencies. They have sought some means of democratizing the administrative process.

The most ambitious—indeed, the only thoroughgoing—attempt has been the use by the United States Department of Agriculture of the farmer committee system for the field service administration of agricultural price and income support programs, begun in 1933, and, since 1936, of the Agricultural Conservation Programs. This farmer committee system comprises over 100,000 farmers elected or appointed to serve on approximately 48 state, 3,000 county, and 29,000 community committees. The champions of this system believe that it decentralizes administration, putting authority and responsibility in the hands of those immediately affected by the programs. Further, it supplies new vitality to administration by drawing the clientele into the administrative processes. These objectives have imposed a significant structural requirement upon decentralized administration—the use of the committee system, a plural executive, in preference to a single administrator.

Both political scientists and lawyers are in quest of better understanding of the same problems about the same processes of the same administrative agencies carrying out the same programs. Yet the two professional groups characteristically work quite independently of each other. Acting in the belief that both lawyers and political scientists should benefit by increased mutual criticism, I propose to record my impressions of that area of political science which overlaps with and is contiguous to administrative law. The point of view will be that of one who is concerned primarily with law and legal education.

This paper is designed (1) to evaluate the case studies edited by Harold Stein, entitled Public Administration and Policy Development, (2) to contrast with the case studies the basic method of instruction marked out by some of the conventional texts on public administration, (3) to criticize the undue emphasis upon broad perspective at the expense of detailed facts in the literature of public administration, (4) to call attention to the inordinate amount of misinformation about administrative law in some of the texts on public administration, (5) to express doubts about the choice of subject matter for some of the texts on public administration, and (6) to attempt constructive suggestions for further research on political science aspects of administrative law problems.

From one standpoint it is a truism to say that collective security is something new under the sun. In past eras and especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, war was conceived of as a duel in which contestants should be isolated and restrained by the rest of international society. When nations engaged in armed conflict their neighbors sought to localize the struggle and alleviate its poisonous effects. However short-sighted their actions in not meeting the conflict directly and turning back aggression at its source, the nations pursuing these policies were sometimes successful for varying periods of time in preserving islands of peace in a warring world.

On August 8, 1932, however, Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson proclaimed the revolutionary fact that the modern state system was entering a new era in which warring powers were no longer entitled to the same equally impartial and neutral treatment by the rest of society. He announced to the New York Council of Foreign Relations that in future conflicts one or more of the combatants must be designated as wrong-doer and added: “We no longer draw a circle about them and treat them with the punctilios of the duelist's code. Instead we denounce them as lawbreakers.”

One of the most interesting generalizations in the field of social science is Robert Michels' “iron law of oligarchy.” The commentary on this hypothesis has usually been motivated by a desire to attack or to support it; seldom has anyone made a serious attempt to understand it before passing judgment. This situation is partially Michels' responsibility, since his statement of the law of oligarchy is badly confused and quite incomplete. Nevertheless, the notion that “oligarchies prevail” has a high degree of general credibility, and even the realization that Michels' statement of it is inadequate and his evidence for it inconclusive does not destroy its intellectual appeal.

In this paper I shall be concerned exclusively with an attempt to make the law of oligarchy understandable. This involves formulating the generalization as precisely as possible, defining its important terms, and stating its sources of evidence. This is not an investigation into what Michels “really meant,” but an examination of what he said that is good political theory. I shall feel free to make any changes or additions which appear necessary to me. But such alterations will be primarily matters of definition and logical organization.

Informed policy-making is the primary responsibility of any legislative body in a democracy. The policy-making task at all levels of government has become increasingly complex, technical and burdensome. This has been particularly evident in the years since the Great Depression. The demand for an increasing quantum of governmental services and functions at all levels and the competition among governmental units for revenue sources to finance public services have been chiefly responsible for magnifying the legislative burden. Hence it is surprising and disturbing that the people's policy-makers at the state level have been somewhat loath to reorganize their legislative processes and procedures to meet contemporary needs. Many “little Hoover” commissions have been busily engaged in recent years in attempting to modernize state administrative organization. No correspondingly vigorous effort has been made at legislative self-examination, although the need is at least equally pressing. Only ten states have annual legislative sessions, in spite of the fact that informed students of state government generally agree that the volume of legislative business in most states requires annual sessions.

The purpose of this paper is to inquire what contribution American political science can make to the easing of the shortage of competent manpower for assignments abroad.

The problem is, of course, not peculiar to the United States except in respect to its magnitude. Nearly every country with major responsibilities involving the assignment of personnel abroad is faced with it. On a world scale the United Nations, especially with respect to the Expanded Technical Assistance Program, is facing difficulties in searching out individuals who are competent, willing, and available. This was forcefully revealed by a study the author recently made for all the specialized agencies on behalf of the Technical Assistance Board. It appears to be a characteristic of our times that not enough men and women have been trained to deal competently with the kinds of problems with which we are faced in intensified intercultural relations. Thus, while this discussion will deal chiefly with the problem of increasing the American personnel potentially available for foreign assignments—something with which American political scientists need to be urgently concerned—we must avoid losing sight of the broader world setting of the problem.

A challenging problem for both the student of political behavior and the practical politician is the self-labeled independent voter. Much of the research on what appears to be an increasingly larger segment of the American electorate has been either historically or sociologically oriented in the sense that it has focused on trend studies of the voting pattern of this group or has attempted to describe it in terms of its objective characteristics. Frequently, by inference at least, we are led to believe that the future political behavior of the independent can be anticipated if we have information of the above nature. The central purpose of this article is to present evidence favoring the hypothesis that the political behavior of the independent is more closely related to relevant psychological variables, such as his political perceptions, than to his past voting habits or his objective attributes.

During the period from April through November of 1952, the author directed a detailed study of the political opinions and behavior of the residents of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a city of approximately 53,000 people. The research methods employed in the project included a systematic historic analysis of the community, a series of four public opinion surveys, content analysis of some of the mass media of communication, and a panel study. The first poll took place late in the spring of 1952, the second in August, and the third and fourth were carried out just prior to and immediately following the November elections. The panel members, coming from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds, were interviewed periodically throughout the course of the project.