John F. Kennedy's narrow popular vote margin in 1960 has already insured this presidential election a classic position in the roll call of close American elections. Whatever more substantial judgments historical perspective may bring, we can be sure that the 1960 election will do heavy duty in demonstrations to a reluctant public that after all is said and done, every vote does count. And the margin translated into “votes per precinct” will become standard fare in exhortations to party workers that no stone be left unturned.

The 1960 election is a classic as well in the license it allows for “explanations” of the final outcome. Any event or campaign strategem that might plausibly have changed the thinnest sprinkling of votes across the nation may, more persuasively than is usual, be called “critical.” Viewed in this manner, the 1960 presidential election hung on such a manifold of factors that reasonable men might despair of cataloguing them.

Nevertheless, it is possible to put together an account of the election in terms of the broadest currents influencing the American electorate in 1960. We speak of the gross lines of motivation which gave the election its unique shape, motivations involving millions rather than thousands of votes. Analysis of these broad currents is not intended to explain the hairline differences in popular vote, state by state, which edged the balance in favor of Kennedy rather than Nixon. But it can indicate quite clearly the broad forces which reduced the popular vote to a virtual stalemate, rather than any of the other reasonable outcomes between a 60-40 or a 40–60 vote division.

Those who specialize in the study of Soviet government and politics are beginning to feel and acknowledge the need for a more effective theoretical apparatus. The post-war years of expanded research in this field have been fruitful in empirical studies of Soviet political history and institutions, but the theoretical development has not kept pace; and now the lag is beginning to inhibit the further fruitful progress of empirical research itself. Instead of a gradually developing body of theory, we still have a mélange of “ten theories in search of reality,” as Daniel Bell has summed it up in the title of a recent article.

The purpose of the present paper is not to propound an eleventh theory. It is only an exploratory effort, a consideration of a somewhat different approach to the problem than has been customary in the field of Soviet studies. In presenting it, I shall try to shed the blinkers of a Russian specialist and take a look at the whole political galaxy in which Russia is only the biggest star and probably no longer the brightest one.

The best way out of the theoretical difficulty may lie in making the study of Soviet government and politics more comparative than it has generally been so far, thus bringing it into much closer working relations with political science as a whole and particularly with the slowly growing body of theory in comparative politics. As this statement implies, our work on Soviet government and politics has been characterized by a certain theoretical isolationism.

In this paper I propose to examine the tendency towards single-party systems in West Africa, particularly in relation to the social structure and the historical circumstances in which the parties emerged. I shall therefore point up the distinction between “mass” and “patron” parties, and then consider the new single-party governments, most of them based on mass parties, in relation to the prospects of of democracy in West Africa. My argument is that mass parties are created by African leaders out of the very liberating and egalitarian forces we in this country generally associate with democracy. Some of the mass parties encourage the growth of forces and institutions which may ultimately make possible the machinery of democratic systems familiar to us: as, for instance, competition for every citizen's vote by more than one organized team of candidates. At this stage of West African party history, it seems to me, the number of parties is far too simple a criterion upon which to decide whether or not a system is democratic.

General statements about parties in the new West African states can be made only tentatively. Significant rights to vote and organize parties came to West Africa only after the Second World War. Since then formal institutional change has taken place at a rapid pace. The constitutional framework in which the parties grew changed continuously. The franchise expanded until it became universal, the powers of African elected representatives grew by stages from consultative to legislative and eventually to executive, and the locus of political power shifted from London or Paris to Africa.

Mexico's political experience over the last fifty years—since the Revolution of 1910—is highly significant, not only for the rest of Latin America, but for much of the rest of the world. For Mexico has accomplished the exceedingly difficult feat of breaking out of the vicious circle of dictatorship, misery, and revolution, and finding a way to a regime that is at once increasingly democratic, stable, and progressive. Despite a relative lack of many of the social, economic, and cultural characteristics which are often treated as prerequisites of stable democracy, Mexico seems to have solved the problem of assuring peaceful succession to leadership positions, while at the same time permitting wide participation in policy formation and allowing full civil freedom.

This type of end-result is almost always the conscious goal of political leaders throughout Latin America, Africa, and Asia. While the Mexican road is hardly likely to be followed exactly elsewhere, other countries, to reach the same goal, will have to find equivalents for the solutions that Mexico has devised, for the obstacles in their paths are much the same. A study of the difficulties which Mexico has faced and how they were overcome may therefore have a generic interest, as being suggestive of some broader hypotheses about political development.

In their search for nationhood since World War II, many peoples of Asia and Africa have discovered that independence from western rule is only the first and perhaps the easiest step. Once the foreigner has gone, the larger problem looms of creating a viable political society. Divisions and competitive strivings held in check when outsiders controlled affairs are suddenly released. Ethnic, religious and regional differences, that seemed less important so long as colonial administrators ruled, boil up after independence and more often than not come to dominate the loyalties and inspire the ambitions that move men in politics. To their dismay, responsible leaders find themselves heading not the homogeneous, modern nation state they dreamed of before independence, but a congeries of separate groups. The simple, unifying purpose of the independence struggle fades away, leaving a host of contradictions and cleavages.

Indonesia is wracked by repeated resistance to Jakarta. Burma has been beset by periodic insurrection, supported in part by regional and ethnic hostility to Rangoon. The nightmare of India's Nehru is the growth of regional and linguistic differences. Imminent disintegration of the ex-Belgan Congo dramatizes the extreme case.

The study of political groups has been characterized by large areas of general agreement and a relatively small output of precise application. Political scientists seem convinced that groups larger than the family and smaller than a nation are necessary in the analysis of more advanced political systems. But what variables of group behavior in this intermediate range may be most useful in studying development in new nations is a question little explored. Systematically assembled data have only recently been brought to bear on the study of political groups in the United States; and still more recently a survey of pressure groups outside the United States has appeared. The purpose of this article is to examine the importance of several widely accepted and frequently used variables of group behavior in the light of survey data collected in a new nation, Morocco. Pursuing the suggestion of Professor Blanksten, data collected in Morocco in late 1958 will be used to see how a particular way of analyzing group data may contribute to the study of less developed countries.

One important distinction employed here needs to be noted at the outset. Political scientists have generally used groups to study administrative decision-making or more formal, institutional aspects of government. This essay will argue that a group focus is of more value in the study of new nations where group activity can be correlated with levels of social development.

Party leadership in Congress has been one focal point for the sustained attack on the structure and performance of the American party system that has gone on for a decade and a half. Academic critics and members of Congress, individually and in committees, supplemented by a wide array of interested citizens and groups, have laid out blueprints for institutional reorganization. While there is some variety in their prescriptions, it is not hard to construct a composite model of party leadership in legislation on which there has been a fairly wide consensus among the reformers.

The fount of party policy would be a reformed national convention, meeting biennially at the least. The obligation of the majority party in Congress, spurred by the president if he were of the same party, would be to carry out the platform put together by the convention. For this purpose frequent party conferences would be held in each house to consider specific measures. Some would be for the purpose of discussion and education, but on important party measures the members could be bound by a conference vote and penalized in committee assignments and other party perquisites for disregarding the will of the conference. Party strategy, legislative scheduling, and continuous leadership would be entrusted to a policy committee made up, in most schemes, of the elective officers of the house and the chairmen of the standing committees. Some have suggested a joint policy committee, made up of the policy committees of the respective houses, which might then meet with the president as a kind of legislative cabinet. The committee chairmen would not be exclusively, and perhaps not at all, the products of seniority.

Any attempt to understand the legislative process, or to reckon how well it fulfills its purported functions, calls for a careful consideration of the relationships among congressmen. The beginning weeks of the first session of every congress are dominated by the internal politics of one phase of those relationships, the assignment of members to committees. Since congressmen devote most of their energies—constituents' errands apart—to the committees on which they serve, the political stakes in securing a suitable assignment are high. Competition for the more coveted posts is intense in both houses; compromises and adjustments are necessary. Members contest with each other over particularly desirable assignments; less frequently, one member challenges the entire body, as when Senator Wayne Morse fought for his committee assignments in 1953.

The processes and patterns of committee assignments have been only generally discussed by political scientists and journalists. Perhaps the reason for this is too ready an acceptance of the supposition that these assignments are made primarily on the basis of seniority. Continuous service, it is true, insures a member of his place on a committee once he is assigned, but seniority may have very little to do with transfers to other committees, and it has virtually nothing to do with the assignment of freshman members. On what basis, then, are assignments made? Surely, not on the basis of simple random selection.

A recent student sees the committee assignment process as analogous to working out a “giant jig saw puzzle” in which the committees-on-committees observe certain limitations.

Students of American politics are told that our political system is fundamentally a representative democracy. Concepts of representaion, since Burke, have commonly employed his distinction between action taken in response to instructions from constituents and action based on an independent appraisal of the national interest. A very recent analysis has offered a refinement of this, by distinguishing three types: “delegate,” “trustee” and “politico.” Theory and history alike tell us, however, that a representative does not invariably act in only one of these roles. There have been a number of empirical studies of representatives, few of which concentrate on specific policy fields; and studies also of the play of interests in the enactment of specific legislation, but without a systematic account of the legislative committee members involved, acting in their representative capacities as they saw them. How then can we tell when to expect a representative to view his role in one way rather than another? The aim of this article is to shed a little light on some aspects of this broad question by means of a case study.

The subjects of the study were the members of the House Agriculture Committee and their action on the omnibus farm legislation (H. R. 12954 and S. 4071) in 1958 (85th Congress, second session). Most of the data were obtained from interviews with thirty of the thirty-four Committee members but, in addition, the specific stands of members in subcommittees, the full committee, and on the House floor were traced, through the printed hearings and the Congressional Record of floor debates. Finally, other interested and knowledgeable people were interviewed, newspaper accounts were studied, and the characteristics of constituencies were examined.

One of the major obstacles to the progress of political theory lies in the fact that people speak of rights without paying attention to the feasibility of their exercise. I propose to raise here some elementary problems relating to the right of speech. It is one of the basic tenets of our democratic political philosophy that all people (over a given age) have an equal right of speech. Making this right operational however gives rise to difficulties which have not been faced.

I shall start out with a very simple problem, which moreover has the advantage of evoking familiar pictures: this is the chairman's problem. I find myself chairman of an assembly, and regard all participants as formally equal, which commits me to treating them equally. Feeling bound by this principle, I decide as follows: the duration of the meeting is m, the number of participants n: I shall give the floor to each participant for a time m/n; thus the equal right of speech will receive practical application. Assume that the meeting is to be crowned by a vote (the time of actual voting not figuring in m): before the participants cast their equal votes, they will have had equal opportunities to influence the voting, i.e., they shall have had, insofar as depends upon me, equal voices.

Now if m the duration of the meeting (in speaking time) is three hours, and if n the number of participants is 12, my procedure is susceptible of being applied: it grants the floor to each participant for a quarter of an hour. This is not a long time but still it may be enough.