Few forms of explanation of political phenomena are more common than the assertion that the success of some group was facilitated by the “apathy” of other groups with opposing interests. If apathy is not an observable phenomenon in a political context because it connotes an individual's mental state, quiescence is observable. It is the purpose of this paper to specify some conditions associated with political quiescence in the formation of business regulation policies. Although the same general conditions are apparently applicable to the formation of public policies in any area, the argument and the examples used here focus upon the field of government regulation of business in order to make the paper manageable and to permit more intensive treatment.

Political quiescence toward a policy area can be assumed to be a function either of lack of interest—whether it is simple indifference or stems rather from a sense of futility about the practical prospects of securing obviously desirable changes—or of the satisfaction of whatever interest the quiescent group may have in the policy in question. Our concern here is with the forms of satisfaction. In analyzing the various means by which it can come to pass, the following discussion distinguishes between interests in resources (whether goods or freedoms to act) and interests in symbols connoting the suppression of threats to the group in question. Few political scientists would doubt, on the basis of common sense evidence, that public policies have value to interested groups both as symbols and as instruments for the allocation of more tangible values. The political process has been much less thoroughly studied as a purveyor of symbols, however; and there is a good deal of evidence, to be presented below, that symbols are a more central component of the process than is commonly recognized in political scientists' explicit or implicit models.

Society's training of the young, including formal and informal citizenship instruction, character training, and the processes which lead to the development of different personality types, has been seen as an important determinant of adult political behavior by theorists since Plato. In addition, much of our traditional folklore, not to mention much twentieth century literature on personality development, national character, authoritarianism, and electoral preference, points to the utility of examining the individual's early years as one means of illuminating his mature actions.

The present paper considers one aspect of the child's political development—the genesis of his attitudes toward political leaders and the possible ways that this developmental process may affect his adult responses to the formal wielders of power. Citizens' orientations to political authority have a complex and imperfectly understood, but obviously important, bearing on the equilibrium of a body politic.

Two classes of data will be considered: survey literature giving some indication of how adults respond to political leaders, and results of a study of 659 New Haven public and private school children of widely varying socio-economic status, ranging from fourth- through eighth-graders (about nine to thirteen years of age). Paper-and-pencil questionnaires were administered to this sample between January and March of 1958. Findings from these sources are supplemented by a smaller collection of prolonged interviews with individual children and many informal encounters with groups of school children and teachers over a period of about two years.

The North Atlantic Treaty is unique among alliances in embodying a degree of peacetime military integration, strategic collaboration, and political cooperation that few wartime coalitions have achieved. This unprecedented degree of interdependence constitutes a great part of NATO's strength but also a great part of NATO's problems—especially those that spring from the dual task of combining the external security with the internal collaboration of its members. Certain military and political developments that were not foreseen when the alliance was created have seriously aggravated these problems. The prospect of several allies acquiring independent nuclear capabilities challenges the basic foundation of the alliance and calls for a reappraisal of its underlying assumptions.

Basic concepts in political science have been used in a purely classificatory way ever since Aristotle established the sixfold classification of the forms of government: monarchy, aristocracy, constitutional government, and their respective “perversions”: tyranny, oligarchy, democracy. Similarly, a modern writer distinguishes among four types of political systems: the Anglo-American, the Continental European, the pre-industrial (or partially industrial), and the totalitarian. All these are categorical concepts; a political system is either monarchical or not, either of the Anglo-American or of another type. Such key terms as influence, control, authority, power, and freedom also tend to function categorically: one actor either has or lacks power over some activity of another actor; with respect to one actor, another is either free or unfree to act in a certain way.

However, concrete political situations exhibit such characteristics to different degrees. Just as the substances we encounter in nature have varying degrees of hardness (rather than being either hard or soft), so a given political system is more, or less, totalitarian (or of the Anglo-American or of the pre-industrial type) than another. The United States and Soviet Russia have at present more power than any other country, and both are perhaps about equally powerful. Soldiers in general have less freedom than civilians, but they have more than prisoners. There can (or there cannot) be equal freedom for all.

Since we do make such assertions, the question arises whether it is possible to give them precise empirical meaning. To do so, we must replace such categorical concepts as power and freedom by the corresponding comparative concepts, e.g., “more power than,” “as much freedom as,” and provide operational definitions for these expressions.

An outstanding advance in one field of human endeavor will often inspire workers in others to try to transfer its conceptions or techniques into their own less successful fields, for obvious reasons. And so political theorists who have long been discontented with the state of politics when compared with that of certain other sciences have, in consequence, sought to advance their field by adopting the ideas or techniques of their scientific contemporaries. The impressive application of physics will probably increase both political tension and the political scientists' interest in methodology.

The last hundred years of political science have seen attempts at the introduction of various exotica, Darwinism, Economism, Freudianism, even Statisticism; but what I shall here discuss is the centuries-old attempt to appropriate the success of dynamics or mechanics to politics, an attempt which found its first great exponent in Hobbes but which has been carried on in this century by men like Bentley and Catlin. The success of dynamics, such men seem to have thought, is evidently the result of its method, which they took to be the reduction of phenomena to the primary qualities of matter and motion. We who are interested in politics, accordingly, will do well to copy the method of the successful scientists and reduce all political phenomena to similar primary entities. Just as Newtonian physicists speak of material bodies or particles, and the forces they exert upon each other, so we must confine ourselves to the description of the motions of atomic political bodies and the forces they exert upon each other. Thus we need only speak with Hobbes of men and their desires, or with Catlin of political men and their wills, or with Bentley of groups and their pressures, in order to succeed. We know that, in the early chapters of Leviathan, Hobbes announced this as his programme; but it is doubtful whether, as he moved from methodology to political theory, he did as he said he would do and whether he had not worked out his political theory before he “deduced” it from his primary entities of matter and motion. In what follows I shall try to show a similar history in the work of A. F. Bentley and D. B. Truman. I shall try to show that Bentley announced a methodological programme and that Truman's “development” of it has been quite external and could, in fact, have been undertaken without any reference to Bentley at all. I shall try to show, that is, that Bentley's contribution to political science has been of a psychological rather than a logical kind, and that the references made to him by contemporary pressure group theorists are similar to those which a Russian physicist might make to dialectical materialism.

In the world of today the existence of a common humanity has been established, negatively at least, by a common fear of a common extinction. Only rational beings fear thermonuclear annihilation; only rational beings can create such means of annihilation. An unprecedented danger supplies a new kind of evidence for the oldest thesis in political philosophy: man is by nature a rational and political animal. The roots of man's humanity, as of his inhumanity, are in the political community, and in the political community's capacity for making war or peace. As the growth from the roots reaches what were once the heavens, the problem of reconciling the origins with the ends attains an acute proportion. Can the new awareness of the commonness of our common humanity cause the fashioning of institutions and men equal to the problem that that very humanity has created? Can the particularity that characterizes individual races, nations, creeds—the particularity that has, from the known origins of political life until the present, provided the substance of political life both in its misery and in its glory—can that particularity transform itself into universality, as the finest and ultimate fruit of human reason? Or may the consummation of rationality, as it is given us to know it, be found in its own self-extinction?

In pondering these ever new questions we turn again to the oldest wisdom of our kind. We have too long neglected the understanding of Shakespeare, perhaps because the brilliance of his art has blinded us to his political genius. Shakespeare lived through a decisive period in the emergence of modern society and thought; and he presented in living tableaux the human problems created by the new world opening before him. That he does not offer solutions nor formulas does not justify ignoring him. Before political scientists can proceed to the suggestion of policies, they must perceive the problems in the fullness of their complexity. In Shakespeare's works is to be found as complete a range of human types as any man is likely to meet in his lifetime, and they are viewed with an eye that penetrates more deeply than that of any common observer. The art of the poet brings to consciousness psychological depths that have not been fathomed by any other method.

If there is practice without theory, perhaps there is theory without practice. We have fairly fixed notions of practice without theory—action without reflection, hand-to-mouth existence, meeting problems as they arise, disdain of plans or strategy, and so on. Of theory without practice there seems but one common idea—theory that because of abstraction or irrelevance cannot be applied. Plato told us the story of Thales of Miletus who, gazing at the stars, fell into a well. A little maid laughed to see such sport. Her laughter still rings in our ears, reminding us to practice navigating the earth rather than contemplate the stars.

Theory without practice, then, seems to be theory that cannot be applied. Applied to what? Applied to problems. Which problems? Problems that arise among men or in the community. Who there defines a problem? Not to get bogged down at the start, let us say merely that some men do or that some part of the community does.

We can also conceive of a theory not being applied because it seems farfetched or too costly or immoral, or because the moment for its need is not yet at hand. These are not the main objections, even though they all have a bearing in one way or another on the ideas we are about to discuss. The main objections are usually the ones already mentioned—theory irrelevant or too abstract. Abstractness, for our purposes, can be dismissed. It means either that the theory cannot be understood—a matter of communication, we assume—or that steps are lacking to bring the theory down to the applied level. We are really back to the question of application. Either a theory has relevance but for one reason or another cannot be put into practice, or it has no relevance at all and that is the end of that.

However careful one ought to be not to indulge in exaggerated conceptualism—an approach which easily degenerates into mere terminological exercise—a number of political terms in constant use have meanings which call for clarification. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to two such terms: election and appointment. We use them regularly in teaching, observation and summing-up of institutions as if they were antonyms, without really bothering to determine wherein the supposed antithesis lies. Of course, neither term denotes an a priori category; both are names for historically evolved procedures, with many variations resulting from attempts to adjust them to preconceived ideas or to environmental factors. But even with full allowance for these variations, and with due regard for every-day common usage, certain discrepancies remain in our use of them which make for unclear thinking.

To give a few instances: a chairman of a company (in the United States, the chairman of the board) is “elected” by the board's members. The same group of persons, sitting in the same capacity, may go through exactly the same motions when selecting a branch manager, and yet we think of him as “appointed.” And is the company's managing director (in American parlance, the corporation president) “appointed” or “elected”? Or to turn to the field which is nearer to reader and writer alike, the field of assigning people to functions of a public, more particularly of a political, nature: is a cabinet in France under the fourth Republic or in Israel “elected” because it does not assume its functions unless and until the legislature has confirmed it by vote? Is a non-political public office to be considered “elective,” if the assignment of the office-holder is made in the final count by a group of persons deciding by unanimous concurrence or by vote? No one will question this statement in the case of judges elected by popular vote; but what about certain judges as well as the General commanding-in-chief in Switzerland, who are “elected” by the Swiss Federal Assembly? And what about civil servants or holders of other public offices whose selection was decided upon, in whole or in part, by a selection board or by some similar collective group? Somehow we think of such office-holders as appointive, despite the procedure of election which took place in their cases.

Recently the Review has extended its hospitality to studies which are not, technically, within the discipline it serves. A new school of Shakespeare criticism may be in the making; and since everyone deplores departmentalization, one should like to welcome, without misgivings, APSR publication of two Shakespeare interpretations. But I, for one, do have misgivings. It may be that the views of the authors are useful and needful for political theory; of that I am no judge. But I am sure that to present these views as Shakespeare's can serve neither political theory nor Shakespeare criticism. The study of Shakespeare can profit from a knowledge of the history of political theory; and we on the belletristic side of the quad like to think that we are not the sole beneficiaries of the exchange. But the two articles in question go beyond this simple form of barter; they are interpretations of dramatic poetry. They do not accept and retail what Shakespeare criticism has concluded about the poet's political philosophy; they are ambitious attempts to discover this philosophy by taking a direct and novel look at some Shakespearean texts. That is a praiseworthy ambition; but it demands something the authors do not have nor even know they lack: an adequate concept of the specificity of literature as a mode of discourse different from other modes. They have a worthy aim: to give a great poet a voice in the great concerns of practical life. But they have not yet learned to distinguish between the poet's voice and their own—so that, though I greet the aim, I must withhold the applause.

“Realism” in systematic political science in this country began to emerge, in a reaction against the inadequacies of legal and institutional description, early in this century. David Easton, remarking the change, cites in evidence Arthur F. Bentley's attempt “to fashion a tool.” By midcentury, it may be said, Bentleyism is tooling the fashion. A recent commentator, deploring the current emphasis on methods and measurements, declares the new orthodoxy has left its mark on the profession no less than on the world and is partially responsible for our failure to identify and solve social problems. Yet, for all the talk about Bentley's influence, and despite the social significance of his ideas, there has been too little study of his theory of politics. I propose to examine his writings as those of a “realist” and to show how his search for both “realism” and a “science of politics” may lead to a surreptitious sanctification of the actual. In short, in this paper I shall argue that the implications of Bentley's cosmology are conservative.

Bentley's political work had an ulterior end; it was not pure curiosity. “My interest in politics,” he said, “is not primary, but derived from my interest in the economic life, and … I hope from this point of approach ultimately to gain a better understanding of the economic life than I have succeeded in gaining hitherto.” The terms of his solution, expressed first in The Process of Government, reflected his understanding of the early twentieth-century midwestern social and economic structure. Influenced by social Darwinism and sociological realism, and rejecting legal and judicial formalism, Bentley advanced what could be called a “functional” theory, based upon what he later called the “transactional approach.”

Sigurd Burckhardt has rendered a service in providing the occasion for a thematic presentation of the principles underlying the interpretations of Shakespearean drama by Jaffa and me, to which he has taken such exception. The issue does not primarily concern literary criticism but rather has to do with the relation of art to political philosophy and, in turn, with their relation to life. Burckhardt, however, has not joined the debate on the level of the issues. He does not argue against the substance of our interpretations, and does not say wherein and why they are in error. Characteristic of his method is his offer of three statements “admittedly out of context” from my article for which he then proposes the following test: “Choose,” he says, “a jury of widely read, intelligent men, show them these statements (with the information that they are meant to describe two main characters in a play known to all of them), and then make them guess who is being talked about.” Burckhardt thinks he is “safe in claiming that there will not be a single correct identification.” The moment seems somewhat inappropriately chosen for suggesting the method of a quiz program for deciding a matter of validity. But seriously, does any scholar, however he may wish for public acceptance, make this his standard? Agreement may produce peace, but it can never by itself be a criterion of truth. In presenting my conclusions, I have a right to ask that they be tested in the light of my evidence and my arguments. In the court of scholarly judgment it is a weak argument that rests on the number of witnesses who can be summoned to support an opinion.

Academics who make scholarly book on trends in the literature must heed “the group theory of politics.” For there is much evidence that the approach is being de-emphasized for a third time. Arthur Bentley's The Process of Government is, of course, the most prominent of the contributions apparently headed for disciplinary oblivion.

This paper attempts to blunt the recent criticism by directing students to the unfinished (and largely untouched) business of exploiting “the group approach.” The prime vehicle for this effort will be Bentley's The Process of Government rather than the corpus of his work or that of his interpreters.

A three-fold rationale supports this analytical visit to the tap-root of “the group approach.” Primarily, critics have avoided the issues posed by Bentley. Moreover, pleas for abandonment of his approach often reflect an important misconception. Consider Rothman's conclusion that “there is certainly room for studies of the kind which rely upon the mature judgment of their authors, rather than being bound by conceptual schemes which appear to be simple keys to reality, but which only serve to blind students to the obvious facts of politics.”

There was one change in the personnel of the Supreme Court during the 1958 Term. Justice Harold H. Burton of Ohio, who had been appointed by President Truman late in 1945, retired on October 13, 1958. For his place President Eisenhower selected 44-year-old Potter Stewart, a Cincinnati Republican whom he had appointed to the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in 1954. A graduate of Yale College and the Yale Law School (1941), Justice Stewart was given a recess appointment on October 14, 1958, but it was not confirmed by the Senate until May 5, 1959. The vote was 70 to 17, all Senators voting against confirmation being Southern Democrats. This experience underscored once more, as in the case of Justice Brennan, the risks involved in recess appointments to the Court, since Justice Stewart sat there for most of the Term before confirmation was had. Whether this affected his votes on cases is a matter of sheer speculation, but the occasion for it is highly regrettable. A new Justice should be as independent as an old one, from the very beginning his service.

Public controversy over the Court's recent decisions, particularly in the security field, continued during the 1958 Term. Pressure for legislation designed to overturn specific Court decisions or to curb the Court's powers continued in the First Session of the 86th Congress, but was less intense than in the previous Congress.

A little over 100 years ago John Stuart Mill wrote in his essay On Liberty that “… there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.” The sentence from which this is taken is not obiter: Chapter Two of his book is devoted to arguments, putatively philosophical in character, which if they were sound would warrant precisely such a conclusion; we have therefore every reason to assume that Mill meant by the sentence just what it says. The topic of Chapter Two is the entire “communications” process in civilized society (“advanced” society, as Mill puts it); and the question he raises is whether there should be limitations on that process. He treats that problem as the central problem of all civilized societies, the one to which all other problems are subordinate, because of the consequences, good or ill, that a society must bring upon itself according as it adopts this or that solution to it. And he has supreme confidence in the Tightness of the solution he offers. Presumably to avoid all possible misunderstanding, he provides several alternative statements of it, each of which makes his intention abundantly clear, namely, that society must be so organized as to make that solution its supreme law. “Fullest,” that is, absolute freedom of thought and speech, he asserts by clear implication in the entire argument of the chapter, is not to be one of several competing goods society is to foster, one that on occasion might reasonably be sacrificed, in part at least, to the preservation of other goods; i.e., he refuses to recognize any competing good in the name of which it can be limited.