The controversy which has arisen on the occasion of Ambassador Kennan's and my recent publications differs from the great historical debates on American foreign policy in two significant respects. It raises an issue more fundamental to the understanding of American foreign policy and of all politics than those with which the previous “great debates” were concerned, and it deals with the issue largely in terms which are not conducive to understanding.

The great debates of the past, such as the one over intervention vs. neutrality in 1793, expansion vs. the status quo before the Mexican and after the Spanish-American War, international cooperation vs. isolation in the 'twenties, intervention vs. abstention in the late 'thirties—all evolved around clear-cut issues of foreign policy. In 1793 you were in favor of going to war on the side of France or of remaining neutral. In the 1840's you approved of the annexation of Texas or you did not. At the turn of the century you supported overseas expansion or you were against it.

For two generations American political and economic life has been moving swiftly toward “bigness,” toward monolithic organization. We live by, in, and among bigger and bigger corporations, bigger and bigger unions, bigger and bigger governments. On all sides individual freedom and responsibility have shrunk. Absorbed into organizations bigger than himself, the American tends to be overpowered by these organizations, whether of industry, labor or agriculture. And whatever his orientation, he must operate in and under an ever-expanding multilateral network of occupational and governmental regulation.

In the shadow of such manifold giantism modern men—practically all of them employees who rate themselves “middle class”—seem but puny figures. Man's own handiwork has become a Frankenstein monster, destroying his initiative and individuality. In the grip of forces he has created, helpless single-handed to control, he suffers from loneliness, from not belonging, from impersonality. Millions who live in great cities, hundreds of thousands employed in assembly-line factories and organized in industrial unions, thousands of stockholders who can only endorse management's policies governing “their” billion dollar corporation —all these experience frustration, helplessness.

“The great advantage of the American,” Tocqueville once wrote, “is that he has arrived at a state of democracy without having to endure a democratic revolution….” Fundamental as this insight is, we have not remembered Tocqueville for it, and the reason is rather difficult to explain. Perhaps it is because, fearing revolution in the present, we like to think of it in the past, and we are reluctant to concede that its romance has been missing from our lives. Perhaps it is because the plain evidence of the American revolution of 1776, especially the evidence of its social impact that our newer historians have collected, has made the comment of Tocqueville seem thoroughly enigmatic. But in the last analysis, of course, the question of its validity is a question of perspective. Tocqueville was writing with the great revolutions of Europe in mind, and from that point of view the outstanding thing about the American effort of 1776 was bound to be, not the freedom to which it led, but the established feudal structure it did not have to destroy. He was writing too, as no French liberal of the nineteenth century could fail to write, with the shattered hopes of the Enlightenment in mind. The American revolution had been one of the greatest of them all, a precedent constantly appealed to in 1793.

The ideas of the bloodless and “glorious Revolution” of 1688, and especially those of John Locke, inspired the Founding Fathers of the United States and, both directly and indirectly, influenced the French Revolution. In the nineteenth century a successful Britain also made her great contribution to European civilization, and this not least in terms of her political ideas and of her parliamentary institutions. Politically it would be quite accurate to say that she led the world.

In this present generation, however, England is in a poorer way as a fount of political ideas than she has been for centuries. The great succession of Occam and Fortescue, More and Hooker, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Bentham, the Mills, Green, even Spencer, perhaps Bradley, seems to be broken. Many British writers are too content to subedit Hegel or Marx and to explain what they really meant. The most eminent now living, Lord Russell, is primarily a mathematical philosopher.

In a liberal society such as prevailed in America during the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian eras, where the aristocracies, peasantries, and proletariats of Europe are missing, where virtually everyone, including the nascent industrial worker, has the mentality of an independent entrepreneur, two national impulses are bound to make themselves felt: the impulse toward democracy and the impulse toward capitalism. The mass of the people, in other words, are bound to be capitalistic, and capitalism, with its spirit disseminated widely, is bound to be democratic. This is one of the basic insights Tocqueville had about the actual behavior of the American people. The irony of early American history, however, is that these impulses, instead of supplementing each other, seemed to fight a tremendous political battle. The capitalist Whiggery of Hamilton was frightened of democracy, and the democratic tradition of Jackson, which was therefore able to destroy it, formulated a philosophy which seemed to deny its faith in capitalism. The result was a massive confusion in political thought, comparable to the one that we find in the constitutional era, and a set of victories and defeats which the Americans who experienced them scarcely understood. One is reminded of two boxers, swinging wildly, knocking each other down with accidental punches.

Looked at from one point of view, it is strange that Federalism and neo-Federalism should have been shattered so badly in the liberal setting of American politics.

The French Communist Party emerged from the national elections of 1951 with a greater number of popular votes than any of its competitors. Since the preceding elections of November, 1946, it is true, the party has lost close to 500,000 voters, and its proportion of the total number of registered voters has declined from 21.6 to 20.1 per cent. Yet the Communist Party (CP) remains not only numerically, but also by virtue of its geographical distribution, the most important of the French parties. In none of the election districts did less than 5 per cent of the voters cast their ballot for the communist lists, while all other parties parade a considerable number of blank spots on the electoral map of France. In twenty-seven districts the CP can boast of a support larger than one-fourth of the total electorate, while the next strongest party, de Gaulle's RPF, is similarly represented in only eleven districts.

A comparison of the present communist vote with that of 1946 shows that five years which affected deeply the political constellation of Europe and the world have not changed significantly the distribution of communist sympathies among the French electorate. The greatest concentration of votes for the CP is still to be found in the region situated between Paris and the Belgian border, reaching in the East to the départements of Ardennes, Marne, and Aube, in the West to those of Somme and Seine-Inférieure.

By tradition public administration is regarded as a division of political science. Woodrow Wilson set the stage for this concept in his original essay identifying public administration as a subject worthy of special study, and spokesmen for both political science and public administration have accepted it since. Thus Leonard White, in his 1930 article on the subject in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, recognizes public administration as “a branch of the field of political science.” Luther Gulick follows suit, observing in 1937 that “Public administration is thus a division of political science ….” So generally has this word got around that it has come to the notice of the sociologists, as is indicated in a 1950 report of the Russell Sage Foundation which refers to “political science, including public administration….” “Pure” political scientists and political scientists with a public administration slant therefore are not alone in accepting this doctrine, which obviously enjoys a wide and authoritative currency.

But if public administration is reckoned generally to be a child of political science, it is in some respects a strange and unnatural child; for there is a feeling among political scientists, substantial still if mayhap not so widespread as formerly, that academicians who profess public administration spend their time fooling with trifles. It was a sad day when the first professor of political science learned what a manhole cover is! On their part, those who work in public administration are likely to find themselves vaguely resentful of the lack of cordiality in the house of their youth.

World politics today is admittedly bipolar, and it seems destined to remain so within the foreseeable future. Beset by its sustained tension, Americans have been led to debate, sometimes acrimoniously, the proper foundations, scope, and content of an effective foreign policy. Since presumably the central theme and central purpose of this debate is the definition of what constitutes the American national interest, the first objective is to define the idea of national interest. Thereafter it is necessary to draw proper deductions relevant to the total world situation, and in turn to apply these deductions as policy to the forces there at work. These forces—political, economic, ideological, and military—in their interconnectedness collectively constitute the raw materials for assessment, judgment, planning, and action in our policy-making.

Resultant differences of opinion therefore can take place at different levels. Initially there are vastly divergent concepts of the characteristics of a nation, of the role of nations in the world, and of the nature of interests proper to a nation. The scope of these divergencies is often hidden by our tendency to find in the term “national interest” connotations of particularism, of exclusiveness, of the nation as against, or superior to, the rest of the world.

Contemporary studies of political power have often been based on the belief that the major determinants in the struggle for power may be ascertained by analyzing the social stratification of a society. This belief is supported by the following series of more or less tacit assumptions: The ideas and actions of men are conditioned by their social and economic position in society. When large number of individuals occupy a comparable social position, they may be expected to think and act alike. They are likely to share social and economic interests which are promoted—in competition or conflict with other social groups—through political organization and interest-representation. Hence, a study of politics should be concerned with the social composition of the members and leaders of different political organizations; this kind of knowledge will provide a clue to the power which such organizations can exert and to the political goals which their leaders are likely to pursue.

I wish to examine the relation between stratification and politics in four respects:

(1) How did Marx deal with the problem of social stratification and political power?

(2) What insight into the relation between stratification and politics can be gained from retrospective investigations?

(3) Does a knowledge of social stratification enable us to understand the development of totalitarian movements and their conquest of power?

The five papers which follow were prepared during the summer of 1951 by the Social Science Research Council's Interuniversity Summer Seminar on Political Behavior. The seminar, which met at the University of Chicago, was attended by seven persons, who accept joint responsibility for the papers: Samuel J. Eldersveld, University of Michigan; Alexander Heard, University of North Carolina; Samuel P. Huntington, Harvard University; Morris Janowitz, University of Michigan; Avery Leiserson, Vanderbilt University; Dayton D. McKean, University of Colorado; and David B. Truman, Columbia University. Ralph M. Goldman met with the seminar as an associate, and later Elizabeth Wirth Marvick assisted in preparing some of the materials.

The papers, one product of the seminar's work, were written to define and illustrate what the participants feel to be a significant contemporary development in political research. The first paper, “The Implications of Research in Political Behavior,” outlines some of the requirements, characteristics, and implications of political behavior research. It is followed by plans for three research projects, “Party and Administrative Responsibility: Council-Manager Government,” “Political Participation in a Metropolitan District: A Study of Group Influence on Political Activity,” and “The Roles of Congressional Leaders: National Party vs. Constituency,” drawn up in accordance with these specifications.

The theoretical models developed to deal with the interaction of sociological and psychological factors in the formation of political behavior indicate a wide divergence of opinion. At one extreme area group of scientists, mainly psychiatrists and anthropologists, who see most social phenomena as deriving from the subjective experiences of the individual. The specific traumata inherent in different methods of upbringing and in the resulting renunciations imposed upon the child are regarded by them as the formative basis for customs, religions, social attitudes, and so forth. Some specific examples of their point of view may be found in attempts to explain war as an expression of the destructive instincts, or capitalism as a manifestation of the anal syndrome. But at the other extreme are proponents of the view that the social structure is independent of the single individual and that individual behavior can be explained and predicted in terms of membership in classes and groups as they have developed historically, mainly on the basis of mode of subsistence.

Failing to agree with either of these extreme points of view, one may argue that any speculation about the causal interrelation of sociological and psychological factors in the group and in the individual must recognize the fact that these factors have been artificially isolated and abstracted and that no exclusive factual primacy can be given to any of the aspects in a pattern so closely interwoven.

In the chilling atmosphere of the cold war, attention is more readily turned to the politics of power and to concepts of the national interest than to international law and the services it may perform. Indeed, two distinguished writers have recently warned us against what George Kennan calls “the legalisticmoralistic approach to international problems,” or “the belief that it should be possible to suppress the chaotic and dangerous aspirations of governments in the international field by the acceptance of some system of legal rules and restraints,” “some formal criteria of a juridical nature by which the permissible behavior of states could be defined,” instead of by dealing with “awkward conflicts of national interest … on their merits with a view to finding the solutions least unsettling to the stability of international life.” Instead of “making ourselves slaves of the concepts of international law and morality,” Kennan writes, we should “confine these concepts to the unobtrusive, almost feminine, function of the gentle civilizer of national self-interest in which they find their true value.”

The chief social values cherished by individuals in modern society are realized through groups. These groupings may be simple in structure, unicellular, so to speak, like a juvenile gang. Or they may be intricate meshes of associated, federated, combined, consolidated, merged, or amalgamated units and subunits of organization, fitted together to perform the divided and assigned parts of a common purpose to which the components are dedicated. They may operate out of the direct public gaze like religious organizations, which tend to have a low degree of visibility. Or they may, like Congress and many other official groups, occupy the front pages for weeks at a time. National organizations are usually conspicuous; indeed, so much is this so at times that they tend to divert the eye from the great number of groups which stand at the elbow of the citizen of every small town. Everywhere groups abound, and they may be examined at close range and from afar.

The literature of many disciplines agrees, as it does sometimes in little else, on the central importance of groups to an understanding of men in their relations with each other.

A major concern of political theorists has been the definition of the proper role of legislators in relation to their constituencies. Yet relatively little analysis has been made of the uniformities of behavior that actually prevail in these relations. Such uniformities, if they could be found, would bear directly on the theory of the party system, on speculation about the nature of representative government, and on the feasibility of proposals for a reordering of party practices.

It has been shown that the tendencies of Congressmen to vote with their party or to cross party lines are associated with the similarity or dissimilarity between party policy and presumed interest of constituency. One aim of this study is to test the applicability of this proposition to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, by examination of the relation between roll-call votes and constituency characteristics. The evidence indicates that a similar relation exists in this body, and has been present consistently throughout the last two decades.

In spite of later claims that it had been the leader of the anti-fascist camp and of the Slav world from the beginning of the second World War, the Soviet Union followed a strictly Russian policy, neither anti-fascist nor Pan-Slav, from August, 1939, to June, 1941. This policy clearly foreshadowed a nationalist revival of the language and aspirations that had been most characteristic of Old Russia but were assumed to have been definitely buried in the ten November days of 1917 which shook the world. During these two years not the slightest sympathy for the Czechs and Poles suffering under German occupation was expressed. Indeed, although Leninist communism during World War I had conducted a violent defeatist propaganda compaign in both warring camps, the subversive communist propaganda that was resumed in 1939 was directed only against the democratic nations. “Moreover, officially, even ostentatiously, help was granted to the camp of fascism so that, from 1939 to 1941, the Soviet Union could be considered a non-belligerent partner of the Axis. From the policy of benevolent neutrality towards the Axis the Soviet Union was removed against its will. Circumstances made it an ally of the democracies. This change was performed reluctantly, only because no other choice was left.”

Government in the United States is in considerable part local government, and of all local governmental units the county is most widely prevalent. Every state has counties (they are called parishes in Louisiana); in all states but Rhode Island the county is organized for governmental purposes; and, not with standing the existence of some areas without county organization, county government may be said virtually to blanket the nation. A generation ago, in a sub-title to one of the earlier books on the subject, the county was characterized as the “Dark Continent” of American Politics. Now, at mid-point in the century, it seems appropriate to reëxamine the county with a view to determining the extent to which the backward institution of the early 1900's has since been modernized and the directions in which further improvement may reasonably be expected in the future.

Perhaps most striking, in a comparison of present-day counties with those of a half-century ago, is the fact that, in total number of organized units (now 3,051) and in geographic outline, the county setup remains practically unchanged. Most present-day counties were established well before the turn of the century and, by and large, subsequent boundary changes have been few and of minor nature. A map of the nation's counties as of today would be scarcely distinguishable from one portraying the counties as of 1900 or even earlier.

In the development of democracy in the modern world, increasing attention has been paid to the idea of representation. With the growth of large electorates which resulted from the extension of the franchise, it has been a necessary and logical process for thinkers and constitution-makers to devise methods by which the will of the electors can be formulated and translated into public policy. Since the voters are too numerous to gather in the market place, some means must be found to represent their opinions in the control and administration of the state. In the words of John Stuart Mill, “the meaning of representative government is, that the whole people, or some numerous portion of them, exercise through deputies periodically elected by themselves the ultimate controlling power, which, in every constitution, must reside somewhere.”

But specifically whom should the deputy represent—individuals, areas, groups, parties, or himself? Must he be popularly elected and, if so, how, and by whom? These and other vital questions have occupied the attention of scholars and statesmen for more than a hundred years. How to organize a system of good democratic representation is today a very live question in several countries, and a really critical question in one or two of them.

The following essays in American political thought are presented in honor of Professor Francis W. Coker, who recently retired from active service in the Department of Political Science at Yale University. It was the original intention of a group of his former graduate students to do something on a more elaborate scale, but the project foundered on the shoals of the tensions and insecurities of the cold war, with normal work schedules disrupted by the military call-up and by transfers into and out of the civil service. Professor Coker has had a long and distinguished career in American political science, as a scholar and author, as chairman of his department, and as an active member of the American Political Science Association, of which he served as President in 1935. But he is best remembered by his graduate students as a relentlessly intelligent teacher, as a constructive critic, as a kindly gentleman, and as a friend always interested in their work and in their progress. They often recall his seminar in political theory, its range and depth, its careful scholarship, and above all, its concern with moral questions. It is hoped that the publication of these essays will convey to Professor Coker some small measure of the respect and affection which his former students acquired during their pleasant years in New Haven.

A good case could be made for the thesis that the election of 1951 was simply the second phase of the election of 1950. Not only were they near in point of time—nineteen months apart—but also the inconclusive nature of the 1950 results left all parties looking toward a second contest the moment the outcome of the first was known. In a sense the whole of the interval between February, 1950, and October, 1951, was a period of electoral campaigning. And to an extent unusual in British politics, the minds both of party leaders and of party members ran continuously on the contest ahead.

The new German Constitution, the Basic Law for the German Federal Republic of May 23, 1949, provides in Article 92 that the highest judicial power shall be vested in a Federal Constitutional Court. Although the Bonn Basic Law thus created a new institution, it is an institution with a precedent in the former Weımar Constitution of 1919. In accordance with the latter, the Constitutional Tribunal (Staatsgerichtshof) had jurisdiction over constitutional controversies within any Land which had no tribunal of its own for the adjustment of such controversies, as well as over controversies, other than civil law matters, among the various Laender or between the Reich and one of the Laender. And the Supreme Court (Reichsgericht), as the highest authority, could establish finally whether disputed Land statutes were compatible with the federal Constitution.

The Basic Law, however, grants the new Federal Constitutional Court considerably wider jurisdiction than that accorded either to the Constitutional Tribunal or to the Supreme Court under the Weimar Constitution. The Federal Constitutional Court must, above all, arbitrate both disputes which may arise among the constitutional organs of the Republic, the so-called “federal constitutional” cases, and the so-called “conflicting rules” (Normenkollisionen) cases—the latter designating disputes involving the compatibility of the written federal law or Land law with the Basic Law, as well as the compatibility of the Land law with the federal law.