We are witnessing today in both Europe and America the breakdown of what may be called the nineteenth-century equilibrium, and at the same time the effort to work out a new equilibrium as a basis of life for the twentieth century. The New Deal is the American phase of this movement. We can understand it better if we view it with the search-light of the movements in other countries, and if we make clear to ourselves what is driving them, how they are being driven, and what problems are in their path.

The key to recent social developments seems to me to lie in the resurgence of the middle classes. This is a development of the last decade or so, and is largely the result of the failure of the two other major social groups—the capitalists and the workers—to give Western society, especially Western European society, leadership and direction. On the one hand, the capitalistic groups, while concentrating industrial and financial resources, showed a sad incapacity to establish a leadership based on social needs and moral values.

This essay has two complementary purposes. It seeks principally to clarify the basis of the political philosophy of Richard Hooker, the great Elizabethan divine, and, in so doing, to clarify as well certain of the limits of political speculation itself. We hear quite often now that reports of the death of political philosophy have been greatly exaggerated. If this is indeed a time of its resuscitation, it is important that its limits be recognized and that inquiry be liberated from doctrines which cannot be based on unassisted reason alone. The ancillary purpose of this study is a contribution to such a disentanglement.

Hooker's political thought itself also repays the attention of modern political scientists, if only as a remarkably comprehensive model of pre-modern or “traditional” society. Hooker wrestles with one of the difficulties which had much to do with ending “traditional” society in Europe and in those places Europe has influenced: the bitter and conflicting claims of church and state, and especially of various churches. Hooker's is a revealing endeavor to solve the political problems inherent in revealed religion, without abandoning—as his “enlightened” successors did—Christianity as a decisive constituent of politics or Aristotle as the secular guide of politics.

When speaking of freedom, La Bruyère's word comes to mind—that everything has been said and that we come too late to add anything. Yet an analysis of the concept of freedom may be warranted for the very reason that it is being used by everyone to refer to whatever he considers valuable, from obedience to law (positive or natural) to autonomy and economic abundance. I believe that it is possible to assign to “freedom” in its different aspects meanings which are emotively neutral and operationally testable, and thereby to rescue for the social sciences generally and for political science in particular an important set of concepts, closely related as they are to those of power and control.

One would have to start with disentangling the widely different senses in which “freedom” is being used indiscriminately. I shall deal with freedom in only two of its many meanings, interpersonal freedom and freedom of action. One of the difficulties will be to steer a middle course between the vagueness of conversational language and the awkwardness of a precise terminology; but I hope to demonstrate that such an endeavor is no idle exercise in semantics but a necessary prerequisite for the fruitful investigation of social and political phenomena.

The development of Anglo-American law has been greatly influenced by certain theories and doctrines which have directed and conditioned the evolution of administrative law. Foremost among these are the political and legal theory of the separation of governmental powers and a juridical doctrine relating to the nature and scope of law itself. Briefly, the theory of the separation of powers, which is commonly announced as a fundamental principle of American constitutional law, and is implicit in some phases of English law, is to the effect that laws are made by the legislature, executed by the executive, and interpreted and applied by the courts. As a correlative of this doctrine, it is understood as essential that none of these departments may delegate powers which properly belong to it to either of the other departments, in order that, as the Massachusetts constitution expresses it, “there shall be a government of laws and not of men.”

Since the Chinese invasion of India a good deal of effort has been devoted to a reappraisal of the policy of neutralism which has long been considered to constitute a cornerstone of India's foreign policy. As that policy and reappraisal is by no means confined to India, it might be of more than local interest to examine the concept of neutralism itself on which that policy is grounded. Indeed, the reappraisal has not been sufficiently intense or agonizing because the examination has been too long delayed and “neutralism” has been allowed to slumber undisturbed, tacitly assumed to be an unassailable term in the vocabulary of the foreign office. We shall deal with the related concept of non-alignment at a later stage in the discussion. In order to put both these concepts in proper perspective it will be necessary to say a few words on the logic of foreign policy formulation.

A salient feature of the Soviet order set up in Russia by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 is the provision for a single, mobilized political center, striving to organize all social processes to conform with its particular ideology and program. The Communist party is this political center of the Soviet Union, enjoying a monopoly of legality in respect of organization. Only an outline of the methods by which this political machine exercises its leadership is possible within the limits of the present note. The emphasis will be on the structure which the Communists have given to their party, in order more effectively to carry the responsibility of leadership assumed by them. The word “party” is used, but one has here an organization which differs sharply from political parties of parliamentary systems. Also in its relations to the formal governmental bodies the Communist party presents several features which differentiate it from the party systems of other countries.

The special methods of organization adopted and the peculiar position enjoyed by the Communist party in the Soviet Union permit of several theoretical interpretations. One of these is that the Revolution contemplated by the Communists has three distinct stages, of which only the second has as yet been reached. There was the successful seizure of power, finally consolidated after some three years of civil war. Then came the present period of transition, the length of which will depend upon the success of the party in the exercise of its leadership. Only the successful achievement of the present party leadership will bring the final triumph of the Revolution as the third and last period.

Need for achievement and strategic predispositions among political party elites are hypothesized to have an important impact on the success parties enjoy in elections and in coalitions. More specifically, this study develops and tests a model which suggests that parties whose leaders have high need for achievement and are predisposed to pursue a mixed competitive/cooperative strategy are more likely to do well in elections and in coalitions than are parties whose leaders are low in need for achievement and oriented to either cooperative or competitive strategies.

When the Indian political party system between 1967 and 1971 is used as the data base, the success or failure of political parties is correctly predicted by need for achievement for thirteen out of fourteen variables. By means of multiple regression analysis, as much as seventy-two per cent of the variance in the electoral success of Indian parties is explained by the model.

In this pathbreaking book, J. Eric Oliver proposes to answer an ambitious and important question: Has suburbanization brought about a decline of civic engagement in America? This question is, obviously, immensely important because more than half of all Americans live in suburbs. Whatever they think and how they vote and however much they participate in the civic life of their communities has enormous consequences, not only within the suburbs but also for the nation as a whole. The question is also consequential in light of the national debate that seems to have been provoked by the recent work on social capital. As Oliver notes, Robert Putnam has blamed suburbanization for part of the alleged loss in social capital in America. The general claim that suburbs have killed community and civic engagement is hardly new, and it has recently been amplified by (among others) advocates of the new urbanism. Oliver boldly states that “such claims are without any empirical basis” (p. 2), and he takes it as his task to supply the missing evidence that might answer the question. In doing so, he has produced a remarkable book, literally the first one ever published to present definitive evidence on the crucial issue of the impact of the suburbs on American democracy.