American political scientists are still teaching courses labeled “Comparative Government” with little or no attention to the government and politics of the largest states of the world today, and they are still teaching something called “Political Theory” or “History of Political Thought” with no more than casual reference to the ideas underlying non-Western civilizations. The neglect of Indian polity is particularly striking and particularly serious, for apart from Western political thought it comprises probably the most extensive and most important body of political philosophy. Moreover, it is an integral part of the Hindu civilization of the past and the present. That civilization, as Radha-krishnan and Toynbee, among others, have pointed out, is alien to Western civilization, although there are many similarities; and the present encounter between the two civilizations comes at a time when both are in a period of crisis and transition. Such considerations are basic to an understanding of the stresses and strains in the relations of India with the Western world. Behind the tensions that arise between the United States and India, for example, lie differences in views of life and modes of thought and conduct, complicated by uncertainty, inner struggle, sensitivity, misunderstanding, and inexperience in playing new and difficult roles.

At a great crisis in the history of the American Commonwealth, Abraham Lincoln in a speech delivered in June, 1858, used these words: “If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it.” The British Commonwealth has reached a crisis in its affairs, but the nature of the crisis escapes the diagnosis of most students and many are inclined, therefore, to echo the words which Lincoln used nearly a hundred years ago. It seems worth while, accordingly, to set down as simply as possible some of the changes that have occurred in the structure and composition of the Commonwealth in recent years, in the hope that, on this basis, some judgment may be hazarded about “where we are and whither we are tending.”

When the War ended in 1945 the British Commonwealth could still be described in the terms adopted almost twenty years before, at the Imperial Conference of 1926, as a group of “autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations.”

The joint standing committees of the Swedish Parliament are unique institutions of particular interest to the political analyst. They are the very linchpin of the legislative process in Sweden; they mediate in the event of intercameral disputes; and they even arrogate to themselves quasi-governmental powers when the government cannot muster a majority in the legislature.

Far and away the most powerful force in the political life of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is the Popular Democratic party (Partido Popular Democrático, or PPD). Since 1945 elected representatives of the party have held the office of Resident Commissioner in Washington and more than two-thirds of the seats in both houses of the insular legislature. Since the election of 1948 the president of the party, Luis Muñoz Marín, has been Governor of the island. Inasmuch as there are no other elective officials in the executive branch, gubernatorial appointees loyal to the party and its program fill all the top policy-making and administrative posts. And because the Governor also appoints all judges, the percentage of Populares on the Commonwealth bench is understandably high.

The party's control over the insular government is a direct result of its extraordinary showing at the polls. Its island-wide candidates have never received less than 60 per cent of the total vote in any election save that of 1940, the first in which a Popular Democratic ticket was on the ballot. In the most recent election, that of November 4, 1952, the Popular candidate for Governor received a record 65 per cent of the votes cast.

The postwar record of collective bargaining in the steel industry is both important and unique. It is important because steel is a traditional “patternsetter” for large segments of American industry. The key bargains which are negotiated in this industry establish the benchmarks for the negotiations among thousands of employers and their unions, and the relationships between “Big Steel” and the United Steelworkers of America have a profound influence on the whole industrial relations climate of America. Everyone is concerned with the outcome of steel's bargains—unions, employees, companies, the public, and particularly the government.

The record is unique by virtue of the extent of government involvement in collective bargaining matters in this industry. Since the end of the war, there have been three nation-wide steel strikes. The first, in 1946, lasted about three weeks; the second, in 1949, went on for over a month; and the third, in 1952, kept the industry at a standstill for fifty-five days. In all three cases the government was a principal party in the dispute.

The government corporation, by reason of its use as an instrument for administering commercial and emergency programs in two world wars and one depression, has become a familiar device in American government. A recent census turned up some 115 federal corporate agencies, with over 20 billion dollars in assets. Admittedly, not all of these were government corporations “in the strictest sense of the term,” and some have since been liquidated with the ending of the war. More than half of the total of 115, moreover, are attributable to the fact that the federal land banks, intermediate credit banks, banks for coöperatives, production-credit corporations, and home loan banks are organized on a regional basis, with twelve individual corporations in each category. Nevertheless, the list is an impressive one, including such permanent major federal agencies as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Panama Railroad Company, the Inland Waterways Corporation, the Export-Import Bank, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Public Housing Authority, and the Farm Credit Administration system.

In the wake of the Hoover Commission reports, a great majority of the states authorized special inquiries into the organization and operation of their executive institutions. With very few exceptions, the numerous postwar movements for state reorganization appear to have resulted in only moderate or negligible legislative acceptance of the reorganization proposals. The spectacle of such meager accomplishment from so much effort invites reflection on the politics of management improvement in the states.

Through the generous cooperation of professional colleagues about the country, data were assembled on the successes and failures of these reorganization movements, upon the initiation, organization, and scope of the surveys, and upon the methods of presenting the survey reports to the legislatures and to the public. The data cover thirty states, in twenty-four of which the state legislature has had at least one chance to consider commission recommendations. In the remaining six states the reports are still in the process of preparation, or await legislative consideration. Included in the twenty-four are four states in which the study group has made some reports but continues in existence to make further reports, so that the success of the efforts in these states must be, tentatively judged on the basis of legislative reception of reports so far received.

In times of crisis and transition the common man is a political philosopher. An example of how, as part of the widespread concern with the basic problems of our politics, the learned world and the world of practical politics today find themselves close neighbors, was the Tenth International Congress of Philosophy. That this Congress, meeting in Amsterdam in August, 1948, has been described by Professor F. H. Heinemann of Oxford in an article entitled “The West in Search of a Metaphysics,” may also indicate how those who think in terms of practical political leadership for the West and those concerned with wider inquiries concerning life and nature have not yet found acceptable common answers. On the one hand at the meeting were the Thomists, or Neo-Thomists, who had already at their disposal some twenty-five Thomist periodicals and who were, in general, “the best organized contemporary philosophical school.” There were also the Marxists and socialists, who, although they had recently gained some professorships in the French and Italian universities, aroused no very great interest. A third organized element was that of Unesco, the leadership of which achieved for itself an organizational control to extend over future Congresses and their affiliated activities; yet Unesco, with its attempted promotion of a scientific humanism, failed to make progress toward either the integration of a western outlook or the building of a bridge between East and West. The speech of its director-general, Julian Huxley, advocating his well-known evolutionary humanism, “fell flat,” evincing, as Dr. Heinemann put it, that “this sort of naturalism … is totally inadequate for the solution of the spiritual crisis of our time.” It appeared also that a spiritual regeneration probably cannot be achieved by means which are largely political.

The extent of religious influence on the closely contested presidential election of 1960 has been much debated. Many have claimed that the Wisconsin primary revealed a religious split which then became one of the main issues of the campaign. This paper reports the results of an analysis of religious influence on voting in that state for several elections since the campaign of 1928, when Alfred E. Smith was the first major-party presidential candidate of the Roman Catholic faith. The thesis which will be defended is that religious influences on voting in Wisconsin, although much reduced from 1928, were still considerable enough to have been critical in an election as close as that of 1960. Several independent types of evidence from voting returns will be presented to bolster this argument.

“On jongle trop avec la structure d'un Pays qui a été, dans le monde, le défenseur de l'individu, de la liberté, du sens de la mesure. Un petit paysan sur sa terre, n'est-il pas humainement autre chose que le chômeur de demain ou l'ouvrier qui sera condamné à fabriquer toute sa vie des boulons?”

Le Betteravier Français, September 1956, page 1.

Large-scale state intervention in the alcohol market in France dates from World War I, when the government committed itself to encourage the production of alcohol. Two chief reasons then lay back of this decision: a huge supply of alcohol was needed for the manufacture of gunpowder, and the devastation of the beet-growing regions of the north had severely limited production of beet alcohol, thereby throwing the domestic market out of balance. A law of 30 June 1916, adopted under emergency procedure, established a state agency empowered to purchase alcohol. At the end of the war, a decree of 1919 accorded the government the right “provisionally” to maintain the state monopoly. In 1922 the beetgrowers and winegrowers gave their support to the principle of a state monopoly which, in effect, reserved the industrial market for beet alcohol and the domestic market for viticulture. In 1931 the state was authorized to purchase alcohol distilled from surplus wine.