An important innovation in the method of filling elective offices in multiple-member districts, applicable to the federal, state, and local governments alike, was inaugurated in Oregon in 1893 by an act providing that the several judges of the circuit court for Multnomah county should be elected by “departments,” consecutively numbered. Similar action was taken in the casé of the district court for Multnomah county in 1913. Likewise, an act of 1929 provides that the offices of the seven judges of the supreme court shall constitute seven “positions” and be so indicated on the ballot. The charter of the city of Portland was amended in 1934 to apply the “position” principle to the four city commissioners. Next, the three circuit judges of the second district became elective by “positions” in 1935, and so, in 1941, did the two circuit judges of Linn county. At the 1941 session of the legislature, a futile attempt was made to do the same thing for the thirteen members of the state house of representatives from Multnomah county.

When the voters of any district are limited to the selection of a single officer, the “short ballot” simplifies the voters' task in choosing from among candidates at the election, prevents the “single-shotting” more or less prevalent in multiple districts, and discourages small pluralities. But in reducing these difficulties, it at the same time promotes others. In case of any office, the narrow range of choice is likely to reduce the quality of the officers. When the office is legislative, the incumbent is likely to be “district-minded” and “machine-controlled,” and so to neglect the general interests for those of the district or those of the local politicians. Such considerations were urged in favor of the compromise involved in the “position” method employed for the Portland commissioners and the representatives from Multnomah county; and they are, of course, applicable, in a degree, to the judges.

The essence of Hacker's construction is the theory of the ruling class. Immediately, one thinks of Marx, Mosca, Michels, Pareto, and several Americans who have espoused, in one form or another, oligarchic doctrines. What most sharply distinguishes Hacker from most theorists of this persuasion is the absence of presuppositions of historical inevitability. Seeking only to describe sequences and relations of the past and present, he makes no claims of omniscience, of knowing what the social process must unfold. Neither is his theory normative.

Yet, apart from details and variations, there is a crucial framework of meaning which discloses Hacker's close affinity with the essence of conventional oligarchic doctrines: the few rule, the many simply obey; the governors, in substance if not in form, are free from compulsion to answer to the governed. Historically, and indeed currently, Hacker asserts, genuine power has been and is the exclusive or, at least, the primary possession of a privileged few. True, the composition and foundation of the governing class have changed, but this change, he continues, did not bring in its wake a widening or deepening of the structure of power in American culture. It merely means the substitution of one set of masters or controllers for another. After all, a monopoly of power is a monopoly, whether its source be deference or manipulation. Both, he avers, “permit a few men to rule many men.” Neither system of power allows the personnel and the general policies of government to be the product of voluntary and active consent. In both contexts, the ruled, not the rulers, are the object of control. “Both deference and manipulation are similar in that they are control.” Such, then, is Hacker's relation to the essence of oligarchic thought. What can be said of the validity of his formulation?

In controlling nationalized industries parliament plays the role of the traditional lion under the throne. It lies quietly most of the time but can rise suddenly and wrathfully to smite offenders. It has little day-to-day influence, the major decisions being made by the managers of the industries, or by the government; but occasionally its importance is capital. This conclusion emerges from a study of the methods used by parliament to control the nationalized industries. Since these industries are fundamental to the French economy, in reality this is a study of the ways and means by which parliament controls major segments of the national economy—in every industrial state a controversial and highly significant issue.

Although two general elections were held in Germany during 1924, the political situation remained confused. The election of May resulted in gains for both the extreme right and the extreme left; the one of December registered a reaction against both extremes. However, neither of these contests was sufficiently conclusive to indicate clearly the direction in which the currents of public opinion were moving. The result has been a remarkable series of cabinet crises, the latest of which it took more than a month to settle.

Does the concept of sovereignty under law necessarily involve a self-contradiction? That it does, has admittedly been held by the great majority of careful thinkers from the time of Hobbes to the present day. Nor has this been inconsequential. The belief that submission to an enforceable law would be a surrender of sovereignty has been a most potent obstacle to the substitution of the law court for the battlefield in the determination of international disputes. On the other hand, it is generally conceded that for the individual the only liberty worth seeking is liberty under law. It is the thesis of this article that sovereignty under law for the state is no more absurd than liberty under law for the individual.

The term “sovereignty” has been variously and elaborately defined, but for present purposes its essential elements may be listed as authority, equality, and liberty. The first-named attribute—authority—has its great importance in the field of constitutional law, which postulates that in every state there is some agency or combination of agencies possessed of the authority to control everything within the state. However, it is well known that the rise and spread of constitutionalism and federalism have rendered the concept of sovereign authority increasingly mystical. Even in Great Britain, the old simplicity of the sovereignty of “King in Parliament” has been complicated by the Parliament Act of 1911, and especially by the Statute of Westminster of 1931. To-be sure, it is easy enough to visualize sovereign authority in a dictatorial régime, but this arouses no envy on the part of those who enjoy other forms of government.

The problem created by the overlapping of county and city governments is not as acute in New York City as in many of the large cities of this country for the reason that—except in so far as the administration of justice is concerned, and except for the fact that certain separate county officers are expressly provided for by the constitution for purposes more or less directly connected with the administration of justice—the governments of the four counties within New York City have been almost wholly consolidated with, and merged in, that of the city.

In order that the provisions by which this result has been accomplished may be more clearly understood and the present position of the four counties more intelligently presented, it will be worth while to trace briefly the history of these counties, prior to the creation of the present city in 1896, and their relation to the cities which previously existed within the limits of Greater New York.

It is quite possible to accept absolutely the standpoint of Mr. Croly's paper, and yet to dissent from its principal conclusion. The standpoint is that of the evolutionist, who regards contemporary “progressive” policies not as finalities, but as transitional phenomena in the development of popular government. The conclusion is that these policies are nevertheless bound to acquire a certain relative finality, which will make them self-obstructive of their own purpose. And the answer is that the movement momentarily expressed in these policies is deeper than they are, and that its vitality can overcome their mechanical limitations.

Mr. Croly identifies the Progressive movement with the devices of direct popular government, which he says it proposes to substitute for representative government. He takes Oregon as the type and Senator Bourne's famous rhapsody as the gospel of the movement. He analyzes the natural evolution of direct government out of the failure of delegated government. The once omnipotent representative legislatures were limited first by those who distrusted the people, through constitutional checks and judicial aggressions, and then by the Jacksonian democracy, through executive and party aggrandizement. But the very constitutional limitation was itself operated by direct vote of the people. As representative legislation degenerated, this originally restraining device became by contrast the only moveable portion of the system, and was the ordinary resort when real law making was needed. Direct legislation under the guide of constitutional amendment transformed constitutions into codes of laws, and the more detailed they became, the more impossible it was to legislate by any other method.

The purpose of this research note was to determine whether Philippine politics could be characterized as fitting a “machine politics model” (James Scott, “Corruption, Machine Politics, and Political Development, APSR, 63 [December, 1969], 1142–1158). A province was selected which matched the criteria cited in Scott's model, and provincial political leaders and subleaders were asked to evaluate important considerations they used in deciding whom to support for public office.

Scott proposed that in electoral political systems, support moves from a dependence on deference to a dependence on particularistic rewards, and finally to dependence on ideology. Part of the study tested the three-phase model using factor analysis on ten variables generally thought to be crucial in Philippine politics. The factor analysis revealed six factors, three which matched Scott's three phases plus: the chance of winning, the use of threats, and party loyalty. Although Scott's three-phase model was rejected as inadequate, at the descriptive level the general attributes of machine politics (particularly as Philippine politics has moved from a reliance on deference and personal loyalty to a dependence on material reward) could be used to characterize Philippine politics.