The Need for Factually Defined Concepts. Most political utterance is necessarily normative in import since it occurs in the process of motivating human behavior. Popularly employed political concepts, appropriately, are frequently of the ideal type in that they tend to denote an hypothetical situation toward conformance with which actual human institutions are being impelled. Ask any student to define a state or a government and he is almost certain to bring in some such notion as “operation in the public interest,” which might or might not be judged applicable to an actual situation. It is safe to say that ninety per cent of the time such concepts as state, government, court, law, administration, political party, and many others are used in this normative sense, not only popularly but in learned circles.

Without desiring the exclusion of the normative from the social sciences, the writer believes that rigid conceptual clarity in distinguishing norm and fact is necessary for the progress of these disciplines. To attain this goal, the technical requisite is a system of concepts having an understood reference of a purely factual character. The absence of such factually defined concepts is noteworthy in political science, and largely unrecognized. Although most of our studies are factual in nature and the intended reference of concepts is usually factual, definition is largely subconscious and when brought to the surface is likely to have normative form, particularly a form borrowed from legal norms.

True definition is appropriate in such disciplines as logic and mathematics and in physics, which has attained since the seventeenth century to the explanation of phenomena by hypothetical systems employing purely postulated entities like electrons and atoms. A set of pure definitions gives postulates from which theorems are derived by rigid deduction. What is put into the definitions comes out in the theorems.

The government corporation has become a familiar device of public administration all over the world; and yet in some countries, and especially in the United States, uncertainty as to its distinctive purpose and underlying principles seems to grow, rather than to diminish, as the public corporation becomes older and more extensively used. Lack of interest and research cannot be blamed, because in recent years the degree of concentration in this area has probably been relatively as great as in any other sphere of political science. The basic explanation is that administrative formulas and management principles are rarely, if ever, capable of immunization against group pressures and public policy controls, which bend administration to their own designs, sometimes in conformity with what the impartial experts consider sound principle and practice, but just as often in knowing disregard of such considerations and in a determined effort to support their own interests and economic viewpoints.

“Anybody we like is efficient. Anybody we do not like is a bureaucrat.” This good-natured comment on legislative attitudes toward the executive branch was made recently in Congress by an experienced lawmaker, speaking as chairman of a subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations. The epigram may be relished for its knowing humor, but its greater significance lies in the light it sheds on one of the most important problems of modern government—the problem of insuring responsible administration in the framework of democratic society.

For, of course, one way of getting nowhere in attempting a solution of this problem is to reduce it to a matter of personal preference. In the broader context, it is plainly irrelevant whether or not “we,” as citizens or as lawmakers, happen to “like” the individual administrative official we confront, or the particular public agency, or the functions that have to be performed under the laws, or the general direction in which things are moving in response to the policies of those elected to exercise political control. Nor do our likes and dislikes furnish a trustworthy criterion to mark the border line between “efficient” public service and “bureaucracy.”

And yet, for the administrative official it is a familiar experience to encounter sharp animosity on the part of some legislators, as well as some elements of the public, precisely for doing his statutory duty. In a party system like ours, which puts only a small premium on political solidarity, the frequency of such experience is increased because lawmakers exercise great freedom of dissent from legislative measures passed with the support of their own party.

The hectic sequence of Germany's constitutional history led that unhappy country, following the final liquidation by Napoleon of the last remnants of medieval constitutionalism, through the confusion of Austro-Prussian rivalry, Empire, democratic Republic, and Fascist dictatorship, to the total vacuum of unconditional surrender in May, 1945. The pretense of a four-power (quadripartite) condominium by means of the Allied Control Council, which at first looked to many responsible people like a feasible stop-gap, has been revealed in this sequence as an empty façade. During the years 1945–49, Germany has been governed by a bewildering maze of conflicting and competing authorities whose legitimacy, beyond the reach of their immediate power, has been in considerable doubt. Authority, power, legitimacy; unless these are effectively combined and balanced, the existence of a true government may well be doubted. Continental Europeans, who prefer to talk about the “state” in discussing problems of government, have therefore been wondering whether the German state has continued to exist—a problem in higher semantics which is briefly discussed below.

In one of Hans Andersen's fairy-tales, the emperor was exhibiting himself in splendid new raiment. But it was a hoax: the swindling tailors had provided no clothes at all; they had succeeded by black magic in imposing a belief that whoever should fail to see and adore the imperial robes was thereby betraying his own stupidity and unworthiness. All, all were taken in, by their fear and ambition, until a little child, ignoring the beauty of holiness, the sacredness of majesty, the inviolability of sovereignty, blurted out the simple truth—”the emperor is entirely without robes.” So I invite you to look with fearless candor at sundry sacred cows. They may be nothing but cunning contraptions of lath and plaster and camouflage paint. Let us candidly and naively say what we see.

As we look back 45 years to the origin of our Association, there are striking changes to be observed. The atom, then regarded as the ultimate indissoluble unit, has turned out to be complex like a solar system; its fission, whether for useful power or for the destruction of us all, has become a defiant challenge to our generation, the $64 question: Has our inventiveness in engines of destruction perilously outdistanced our power of moral growth?

Our kind of scientist observes that in our parlous political position new pathological factors are coming to light, symptoms that call for clear identification, conditions that require treatment if one is to hope for amelioration of health, peradventure for cure. We see about us not only blood, sweat, and tears—they might well inspire us to unwonted effort and more effective toil—but also corruption, gangrene.

In The Politics of Equality, Leslie Lipson points out that modern party organization has “exorcised some of the old devils from the body politic but has invoked others that are new and, as yet, untamed.” Applying to parties John Dewey's statement that

“Individuals can find the security and protection that are prerequisites for freedom only in association with others—and then the organization these associations take on, as a measure of securing their efficiency, limits the freedom of those who have entered into them…. We have now a kind of molluscan organization, soft individuals within and a hard constrictive shell without.…,”

Lipson adds: “How to harden the individuals and to soften the shell, both to the right degree, remains one of the outstanding political problems of our century.”

American parties are extremely soft-shelled mollusks—if, indeed, they have any shell at all. In contrast, the Australian Labor party has as hard a shell as any mollusk in the political zoo.

Literature which has accumulated during three years since the surrender of Japan has not yet encompassed a consideration of the administrative process of military government at the local level. That the function of local military government units as the field service of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) has been overlooked is to be explained principally by the dramatic character and impressive scope of the functions of MacArthur's headquarters and the resulting eclipse of local activities necessarily of a more prosaic nature. Moreover, in neglecting the local levels of administration, analysts have reflected a prevalent American conception of central-field relationships, a conception which implies that the importance of administrative activity diminishes as it descends from level to level.

The presence of nearly two thousand military government personnel in the 46 prefectures makes evident the inadequacy of a critique of the occupation based solely on the functions of SCAP. It is this group of field service administrators who, living close to the citizenry, have daily contact with native government officials and are in an unparalleled position to impress the Japanese with the quality of American administration. The close relationship which inheres at this level subjects American administration to careful scrutiny and will be of no little importance in judging the final success of the occupation. Poor official performance or disreputable personal conduct is not as easily concealed by small detachments in the field as by large headquarters in metropolitan areas. Neither the headquarters personnel living in large Americanized compounds and working in modern office buildings nor tactical forces isolated in cantonment areas have the same intimate responsibility and contact with Japanese officialdom.

How to bring managerial independence and public accountability into a working accord, so that neither efficiency nor necessary controls will be neglected, is the fundamental problem arising out of the operation of government corporations. Having dealt with managerial independence in the first instalment of this article, we now are faced with the problem of explaining how such independence can be reconciled with the controls necessary to assure public accountability. Experience everywhere has shown that governments can carry on a business enterprise efficiently only, when it possesses sufficient autonomy and flexibility to call forth managerial skills that are self-reliant and inventive as well as prudent. It has been argued that the corporate device, when faithfully followed, is superior to departmentalism in at least three major respects: it is potentially less subject to injurious political considerations; it is more autonomous in organization and capable of a greater degree of unity in its management, both of which are essential to efficient operation; and it has more flexibility with regard to its financial operations and is designed to stand on its own financial feet, as a business-operated enterprise should. The competent manager of a government corporation must be free within his own sphere, but he must also be externally accountable in important respects as regards both policy and administration, and to both Congress and the President. To effect such an equilibrium is difficult, at best, but it is particularly difficult and uncertain when the political climate is hostile toward the social purposes for which government corporations are created.

In the decline of his life, a disappointed man might well ask himself what destiny would have held in store for him if at some crucial juncture of his maturity he had accepted the earnest advice of a solicitous friend or even of a keen-sighted foe. Today liberalism is confronted with a similar question. It is on the defensive in all parts of the Western world except in the United States. Even there its position is deceptive. Perhaps it survives tenuously under the artificial protective canvas of postwar inflation. Today one can hardly question this threatened eclipse of liberalism. Because of this foreboding, disturbing questions haunt the liberal. What deficiency in liberalism is leading to the abandonment of its tenets throughout Europe? Was there counsel offered and ignored in the past which might have retarded the infirmities of age?

The answer to the first question has long been apparent. Yet in practice contemporary liberalism, both of the progressive and nineteenth-century varieties, has never assimilated its essential meaning. Following the French Revolution and the English Reform Act, liberalism began its long history of divorcing theory from practice. In the splendor of Victorian industrial success, this separation was not driven into the consciousness either of the intellectual leaders or of the people. But with the tension, domestic and international, of the eighties, liberals themselves, like T. H. Green and then Hobhouse, undertook the task of correcting some of the glaring discrepancies between the doctrine and the reality. In the light of the basically abstract character of liberalism, these collectivist renovations now appear like amateurish tinkering with a vastly complex apparatus.

Liberal doctrine had indeed long been suffering from a negative attitude toward the state. But this was simply a diagnostic symptom of an even deeper defect: liberalism's unconscionable indifference to the material conditions of society, and its ensuing failure to put its theories to the test of the social reality.

On May 8, 1949—the fourth anniversary of unconditional surrender—the Parliamentary Council adopted at Bonn the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. This date was chosen intentionally to remind the German people that this provisional constitution is a way-station on the road out of the chaos which the collapsing Hitler régime left behind it. Any consideration of this Basic Law should start from the fact that the charter is not the creation of a free people, and that it will have to function within limits, both territorial and functional, which severely handicap its chance of becoming a genuine constitution, securely anchored in the basic convictions of the people. Its limits territorially are imposed by the refusal of the Soviet Union to permit the Germans living in their Zone of Occupation to express themselves freely concerning the charter. This raises the presumption, confirmed by other evidence, that these Germans would, by a considerable majority, accept the Basic Law if given a chance to do so. The charter's functional limits are imposed by the Western Allies, who decreed three basic limitations upon the German people's autonomy and independence: (1) the Occupation Statute, (2) the Ruhr Statute, and (3) the Inter-Allied Security Board. Of these, the Occupation Statute is much the most important, and encompasses the other two by its provisions. This is shown by the fact that the Letter of Approval, issued by the Military Governors on May 12, 1949, notes that acceptance of the constitution is premised upon the understanding that all governmental power in Germany, federal, state, and local, is “subject to the provisions of the Occupation Statute.”

The second session of the Eightieth Congress was convened under unusual circumstances: the Republicans controlled the Congress, the Democrats the presidency and administration, and both the President and Congress faced a national election.

In response to this situation, the majority party at times conducted itself in both houses as if a congressional and presidential Republican victory in the approaching election were a certainty; particular members of the Democratic party in each house were frequently outspoken in their opposition to electing President Truman as the next president; both parties performed on occasions as if bidding against each other for votes in the coming election; and a number of representatives and senators were concerned with the outcome at the national conventions. This condition was evidenced when the spokesman of the Senate Democrats, Senator Barkley, on the closing night just prior to the Republican convention had the following to say:

“… I understand hope has been abandoned of getting a housing bill, but I have been told tonight that the Republican moguls in Philadelphia have sent word down here that we are not to adjourn until a housing bill is passed—just anything that has got a house in it.

Recent observers have offered evidence that social and economic change is coming to the South more rapidly than to other sections of the country. There can be little doubt in the minds of those who know the region that TVA has played a prominent part in effecting the transformation. The effect of the operations and activities of TVA has been quite as marked upon the governments as upon the society and economy of the region.

We should not lose sight of the fact that TVA has had substantial effect upon government throughout the country, and indeed throughout the world. This effect is not restricted to its power, engineering, and atomic energy achievements. TVA's resource-use activities, while designed primarily for the Valley region, are in many respects transferable to other areas. For present purposes, however, we are concerned only with the effect of TVA on Southern governments.

Much has been written about TVA, and especially about its “grass roots” approach to the problems entrusted to its stewardship. The writings of Clapp, Durisch, Lilienthal, and Satterfield have copiously documented this aspect of the Authority's influence upon the nation's governmental establishments. There yet remains, however, the task of a forthright assessment of the effect of TVA upon governmental institutions and processes. What changes have come to Valley governments which might not have come had there been no TVA? What are those governments now, in matters of structure, program, techniques, competence, vision, and relationships, that they might not have become if the great Valley experiment had never been undertaken?

The progressive movement developed for the campaign of 1924 into La Follette's Progressive party operating as a third party, with many of the progressive Republicans giving it active support and thereby bolting the Republican nominee, President Coolidge; and immediately following the election, won easily by the Republican party, the Republican leaders began to suggest punishing the bolters by treating them, in respect to committee assignments, as members of a third party and no longer as Republicans, and thus depriving them of their seniority on committees, a privilege which had put many of them in good positions. Senator Watson (Indiana), who became chairman of the Republican Committee on Committees in the Senate, indicated that “Senator La Follette and all those who read themselves out of the party” would lose their present committee places in the new (69th) Congress and would be given places according to their new party strength; Senator Moses (New Hampshire), slated for president pro tem. of the Senate, said: “Senator La Follette has gone out of the Republican party and has gone voluntarily. He has headed the national ticket of a new party which he undoubtedly hopes to perpetuate.

Somewhat more than a year has passed since James Forrestal took the oath of office as first Secretary of Defense on September 17, 1947. While it is still too early to pass final judgment on the effectiveness of the National Security Organization, sufficient time has elapsed to take some measure of the vast scope of problems it faces, and of the soundness of the foundations upon which it rests.

The National Security Act of 1947, under which the new organization was created, was one of the most thoroughly studied pieces of legislation to come out of the war. In that act, Congress indicated its purpose as being “to provide a comprehensive program of the future security of the United States.” The act did not merge the Army and Navy into a single Department of Defense as many had hoped, but it did provide administrative machinery for establishing integrated policies and procedures for those agencies of the federal government primarily concerned with the national security.

The most important single fact about the National Security Act was that it did much more than merely reorganize the Armed Forces. Indeed this was the essential difference between the two reorganization plans sponsored during 1945–47 by the Army and the Navy. The Army's plan, drafted by Lt. General J. Lawton Collins and his staff, and frequently referred to as the “Collins Plan,” proposed a single “Department of the Armed Forces” with a Secretary at its head. The Navy's proposal went much farther. A brief description of the two plans may not be amiss, since they explain some of the problems that the National Security Organization has encountered during its first year of operation.

There were no changes in the personnel of the Court during the 1947 term. The former Chief Justice, Charles Evans Hughes, Avho had retired from the Court on July 1, 1941, died on August 27, 1948. Justice Hughes had served on the Court from May 2, 1910, to June 10, 1916, and was appointed Chief Justice on February 13,1930, succeeding William Howard Taft. In characteristic fashion, the justices filed during the 1947 term a very large number of dissenting and concurring opinions liberally salted with spirited and often bitter judicial invective.

In 1934, Harold J. Laski wrote of Charles A. Beard: “It is true that he has formulated no consistent or systematic philosophy of politics; none has been formulated in the America of our time. But it is clear that the day for such a formulation is rapidly approaching. When it comes, I believe it will be found that no one has made a more solid contribution than Charles Beard to the elements from which it will have to be fashioned.”

It is likely that most Americans of academic bent, whether they have actually read the book or not, are aware of the stir once created by An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. Certainly they could hardly have avoided some part of that flood of articles, books, and reviews which for decades has poured from the pen of Beard. Whether or not his writings have contributed to the building of an American “philosophy of politics,” it seems obvious that college youth in unknown number, scholars, and Americans in many walks of life must in some degree have been influenced by Beard in various subtle or indirect ways. The very bulk and range of his writings make it highly probable. For a check of the card catalog in a large university library, plus an examination of the Library of Congress bibliography and a few other sources, yields a total of about sixty first-edition volumes with Beard's name attached as author, co-author, or editor.

By contrast with the numerous membership problems confronting the Republican party in Congress, the Democrats have had relatively little difficulty, whether because of a more harmonious party, a higher sense of party loyalty, a stricter party discipline, a more tolerant attitude toward party rebels, or for whatever reason. The first case on record involved David Davis, that sturdy independent from Illinois, who was probably a member at one time or another of every political party that operated during his lifetime. After his election to the Senate in 1877, he was pointed out as the only Senator who did not attend either party caucus, and it was said that he “passed a rather lonesome hour on the floor of the Senate, in company with the door-keepers and pages, while the other Senators were talking politics to each other in well-guarded rooms.” The Democrats nevertheless considered Davis as one of their own number, or at any rate as one worth cultivating; and when in control of the Senate in 1881, they presented a committee slate with Davis as chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

The general problem of party membership in the United States was examined to some extent in an earlier article in this Review, and out of that study certain implications could be noted with respect to the nature and operation of our two-party system. It was assumed, to begin with, that it is important in any party system “to bring together those persons, and only those persons, who adhere to the respective party principles,” and particularly important to do that in a two-party system, “where the principles and issues are presumably sharply denned and clearly distinguishable.” The extended survey of the trends in legislation and in party practice led to the conclusion that there is still need for “some better definition or understanding of what is meant by a loyal Republican and a loyal Democrat,” that the lack of such definition is at least partially responsible for the loose and irresponsible nature of the party organizations, for the mass of glittering generalities in party platforms, and for the failure to offer the voter anything like clear alternative programs. “Somehow or other, it should be possible to have a party system which would make it clear whether Wendell Willkie or Senator Nye is the better Republican, whether Franklin D. Roosevelt or Senator Wheeler is the better Democrat.”

There is no subject on which all human beings agree; but in the political field in the United States an almost universal tendency exists to blame Congress for everything undesirable in the life of the nation. That is not so about the President; for always there is a large group who think of the current President as “that man” and another to whom he is a hero. As for the Supreme Court, whether it be made up of the “Nine Old Men” or the “Nine Young Men,” a certain veneration is attached to its activities which makes all-inclusive attack seem a little sacrilegious.

When Congress is discussed, party affiliations and liberal or conservative views are surmounted in the general condemnation. Oddly enough, this national whipping-boy happens to be the nearest thing to the voice of the American people in our country. Under the Constitution and by the almost untrammeled votes of our citizens, the men and women who sit under the dome of the Capitol have been assigned the function of interpreting the desires of those citizens and of making the policies which supposedly carry them to fruition.

My words must not be taken to indicate disagreement with or resentment of the popular attitude toward Congress. First, any Congress that fails to carry out the desires of the American people deserves all of the criticism it may receive.