Let us transport ourselves for a moment on the magic carpet of fancy to the year 1783 that saw the formal close of the war for independence, and listen to a few passages from an imaginary lecture delivered by a prescient professor of moral and natural philosophy in an unnamed American college to a group of boys preparing themselves for labor, achievement, and destiny in the republic so recently ushered into a chilly and doubting world.

“Young gentlemen: You who hear my voice, if you cross the normal span of life, will be living when the first quarter of the nineteenth century has turned. Those among you who are blessed with the four score years of the Scriptures will approach the borders of the mid-century before the long night falls upon your path. Your children, who will learn their early lessons and derive their bias from your instruction, will be among the citizens who govern the country in 1850, and your grandchildren will face with dimming eyes the dawn of the twentieth century. These facts, we might say, to anticipate the language of a coming philosopher in this ancient college, are ‘stubborn and irreducible.’

The political party, etymologically and logically, can embrace only a part of the citizenry, politically organized. The party is a fraction; it is pars pro toto. Let us endeavor briefly to analyze its causal origin and its behavior.

According to Max Weber, the political party has a dual teleology. It is a spontaneous society of propaganda and of agitation seeking to acquire power, in order to procure thereby for its active militant adherents chances, ideal and material, for the realization either of objective aims or of personal advantages, or of both. Consequently, the general orientation of the political party, whether in its personal or impersonal aspect, is that of Machtstreben (striving to power).

In the personal aspect, parties are often based on the protection accorded inferiors by a strong man. In the Prussian diet of 1855, which was composed of a large number of political groups, each was given the name of its leader.

Political science is not a sociological science of everything, a psychological study of all human behavior in all aspects, an anthropological inquiry into miscellaneous human customs, or a philosophy of history. Still less is it a study only of the state, which is a form of social organization resulting from one species of political action, or a study only of governments and the stage properties of law and administration.

Politics is concerned with a field of human behavior characterized by the recurrence of specific behavior patterns. These peculiarly political patterns, however, must not be treated simply as a series of incidents in mere temporal juxtaposition. Human history must be studied as natural history and physical phenomena have been studied, that is to say, with a view to the detection of a recurrence in these patterns, and, hence, of a process in accordance with which, in given total situations, given detailed behavior patterns recur. These patterns are “lines of conduct” of an individual or group character, pursued in relation to other individuals or groups, as a matter of human method in dealing with such situations, which situations arise partly from the nature of the non-human environment, partly from the historical combination of human factors. The resultant specific action or behavior recurs with the recurrence of the stimuli of the approximately recurrent situation; for example, a certain general situation known as “the outbreak of hostilities” has certain specific consequences in changes of individual conduct toward members of a given nation, and the need of putting through a domestic policy against opposition brings into play the ever similar methods of party organization.

The post of Chief Whip is characteristically English. It is an undefined offshoot of the constitution. It is not mentioned in Sir Erskine May's “Parliamentary Practice.” It has a sporting origin—“whipper-in of foxhounds.”

Formerly, when a division was taken in the House of Commons, members on one side remained and were counted in the House. The other side went into the lobby and were counted on their return into the House. But in 1836 the present system was adopted. Members divide into Aye and No lobbies and are counted by tellers. These tellers were, and are, appointed by the Speaker, from men identified with each side of the question at issue.

Obviously, the Government of the day was primarily concerned in the result of divisions on critical or important occasions. Before going to a division it was essential to know as accurately as possible what was the general sense of their supporters. The flock had to be herded in the fullest strength possible.

The most significant political phenomena of post-war Britain are the emergence of the Labor party and the slow extinction of the Liberal party. The Labor party has emerged as the expression of a demand on the part of the wage-earners for an alteration of the basis of property. The Liberal party has suffered an eclipse because its historic mission has been achieved. The rising industrial classes which it represented for a century have now arrived. Whatever difference may still exist between the interests that were heretofore represented primarily by the Liberal party and those that were represented by the Tory party shrinks into insignificance as compared with the common interests of all the dominant elements against the radical demands of Labor. Thus Toryism and Labor alone will apparently share between them the future destinies of Britain. One will offer largely a brief for the claims of the past; the other will present in the main the demands of the future. The traditional British two-party alignment promises henceforth to be a struggle between Toryism and Labor, and to be marked by the intensity and animosity characteristic of a political division that comes dangerously near to being a clash of economic classes.

In the course of the nineteenth century the breach between the Russian government and the intelligentsia grew steadily wider, until it would scarcely have been credible that the relations between them had once been those of patron and client. This had been in the brighter and more hopeful days of enlightened despotism, under Catherine II, and in some measure also under Alexander I. Now, however, other men were ruling, still despotic but no longer enlightened. The consequence was that the less tractable of the intellectuals became either voluntary or compulsory exiles. Much of nineteenth-century Russian history centers about these exiles, who huddled together in colonies wherever they were tolerated: in Zurich, in Paris, and in London. They constituted the principal bond, both physical and cultural, between Russia and the western world.

By tradition and training these exiles possessed a bent for cosmopolitan living; in their mental equipment they were decidedly eclectic. Now more than ever they were exposed to the diversity of intellectual influences in which western Europe was more than commonly rich in this post-revolutionary period. Detached from their own foundations, they yielded themselves the more readily to the new currents of thought. Hegelianism, Darwinism, positivism, socialism—wave after wave of “isms” passed over them. They absorbed something of each and tried to make a blending of all.

The tendency of all government is toward bureaucracy. The government official is inclined to exaggerate the importance of his office. He is constantly tempted to expand its scope. He is properly jealous of his authority. He looks askance upon the activities of other officials who seem to be trespassing upon his ground. In his construction of the law he is prone to insist upon the letter which killeth but to overlook the spirit which giveth life.

I think that this tendency is inevitable. It is inseparable from zeal and pride, and these qualities are essential to successful administration. Where, however, the enterprise is a vast one, as in government, or as in a great business organization, these tendencies, if left uncontrolled, are likely to inflict serious injury upon the service. There will be constant friction among the various subdivisions of the particular department. At times the activities of one will neutralize the activities of the other. A set of arbitrary rules is likely to be evolved which will vex everyone who comes in contact with the particular bureau. The original purpose of the creation of the bureau is finally lost sight of, and it is likely to seem to those who direct it an end and not a means.

Political science is at the parting of the ways. Its foundations have been undermined by the claims of law and jurisprudence, into whose hands it has been deliberately surrendering itself for the past half-century or more, and now its chief strongholds are under fire from the neighboring fields of sociology, economics, and ethics. So severe and so persistent have these attacks become that the time has arrived when the political scientist must decide whether he will allow his subject to be absorbed in any one or all of these various fields, or will attempt to reëstablish it as a distinctive discipline.

The reasons for this state of things are not difficult to discover. They quite obviously lie in the fact that in the pursuit of their basic problem—the search, namely, for the nature and source of sovereignty—political philosophers have so generally followed two equally futile and fruitless paths: either the path of pure speculation leading to a supernatural or metaphysical theory, or the path of legal analysis, leading ultimately to the juristic theory of the state. Indeed, during these recent years political theory has been so increasingly “under bondage to the lawyers” that it is little wonder that a reaction has come, and that thinkers in their determination to find the reality behind the formal juristic conception, are now repudiating not only the legal, but even the political, character of the state.

The American viewing present-day European governments is more than ordinarily perplexed. He knew that states, great and small, had adopted nineteenth-century constitutions in conscious imitation of free British parliamentary self-government. The four ancient governmental systems associated with the names Romanoff, Hapsburg, Hohenzollern, and Othman, which were based on autocracy, with or without a claim of divine sanction, with or without a record of efficient service—these he had seen the Great War bring down to cataclysmic ruin. Perhaps he had thought of that war as democracy's righteous, forceful defense of itself against the aggression of imperialism. He had seen, if not shared, high hopes of a reconstruction, wherein free states should cooperate in a league of peace, and rival each other only peacefully, in perfecting democratic constitutions and the mechanisms of individual liberty and social order.

All living organisms, no matter how minute or insignificant, when examined through the microscope, appear enormous, intricate, and extraordinarily active. Similarly, the world at large, when considered through the microscope of contemporary analysis, has no doubt, at all historical periods, struck its immediate witnesses as being infinitely complex and eventful. Is it, then, a mere delusion if the flow of recent and current happenings impresses us as being exceptionally uneven and rapid in its course, as resembling indeed a swollen Alpine torrent at the melting of the snow in the spring?

I believe not. I believe that, even viewed in the perspective of centuries, the last ten years will be characterized by the future historian as an epoch of extraordinarily numerous and radical changes.

To consider the world in its political aspects only, what previous decade has witnessed as many momentous events as the last? The final, decisive struggle and the end of the greatest war that has ever taken place. In Europe alone, the crumbling of four of the most powerful monarchies. The setting up or resurrection of seven or eight new or reborn sovereign entities.

Complex as is the immediate situation of social theory, a general view reveals some significant continuities, both spatial and temporal. The attitude of the pluralists, whether in theory or in practice, to the sovereign nation-state has more common ground than at first appears with that of the states themselves toward the nascent organs of international government; and the dilemma underlying both controversies is in fact nothing less than a restatement, in modern ideology, of an issue fundamental to the history of the entire Christian era.

That issue, stated in the broadest terms, centers about the relation between de facto and de jure sovereignty; or, more broadly still, between political and ethical, secular and spiritual, authority; and its importance may be suggested by the generalization that security in social relations is attainable, and has in fact been attained, only when the de facto, or political, sovereign—whatsoever form it may take—has been substantially integrated with the immediate source of ethical or moral authority. The pre-modern period of history abounds in statements, both factual and doctrinal, of this issue.

Short sessions are short enough—sixty-seven days of actual meetings in that of the Sixty-ninth Congress—but the public's memory is even shorter. It thinks of the recent session almost wholly in terms of the colorful Senate filibuster at the end and forgets that such occurrences are the rule rather than the exception in the short sessions of Congress. When Senator Reed of Pennsylvania was chided by Senator Pittman for “putting your will against the rest of the Senate,” he replied: “As I have a right to do”; and he could point his rejoinder by recalling Mr. Pittman's own obstructive action at the termination of Congress two years before. The system itself invites congestion and obstruction. Rapping for order and snapping “sit down” (the printed proceedings do not record this but give the extinguished Pat Harrison's expiring lament, “Oh, it is a shame to spoil a good speech like this!”), Mr. Dawes snatched the last two minutes from the Senate in order to say that “the Chair regards the results of the present legislative session as primarily due to the defective rules of the Senate” (p. 5687) With equal logic, and perhaps more soundly, one may find in the situation on March 4 reasons for sharpening the question why the Norris constitutional amendment to change the scheme of congressional sessions, which passed the Senate on February 14, 1926, and which was favorably reported in the House within the same month, was not allowed to come to a vote.

In the winter and spring of 1923–24 a blizzard of congressional investigations swept the national capital. Party lines were tied up, statesmen were snowed under, and Washington officialdom was chilled by a storm of inquiries into the conduct of government departments. Scarcely a corner of the administration escaped inquisition. The subjects of inquiry ranged from the naval oil reserve leases at Teapot Dome and Elk Hill to the administration of the Veterans' Bureau under Director Forbes of dubious fame. Upwards of two-score inquests were instituted by Congress, through its committees, into the official behavior of the executive branch of the national government. In the end, and as a direct result, two cabinet members lost their portfolios.

Such wide and effective use by Congress of its committees for the purpose of inquiry and examination of administrative conduct raised certain questions in the minds of students of government. What were the constitutional limits of the investigative function of Congress? What was the relation of this function to the law-making function and to impeachment? Was punishment by impeachment a satisfactory remedy for official misconduct, or had it become obsolete as too cumbersome? Did the vote of the Senate calling for Secretary Denby's resignation usher in a new process in this country? Should cabinet officials be required to appear on the floor of Congress and answer questions? Would this be preferable to investigating their actions long after they have been performed? Does the steady increase of federal powers necessitate greater supervision by Congress over the President and administrative officers? Have students of politics overlooked a function of Congress frequently and forcibly exercised for the control of administration?

The Interparliamentary Union, an organization composed of delegates from some thirty legislatures scattered at large in the world, voted at its twenty-third conference, which was held at Washington and Ottawa during October, 1925, a striking resolution. A plenary session of the conference, having before it a carefully prepared report of a distinguished Swiss national councillor, debated this report and the resolution which it proposed; and at the end of the discussion, the conference unanimously adopted the resolution. The subject of the resolution was “the parliamentary system, the present crisis in that system, and its remedies”; and the resolution itself spoke of “the crisis through which the parliamentary system is now passing in almost every country, the criticism, and even the attacks, to which it is subjected from the most diverse quarters.”