It is now 30 years since Mr. Felix Frankfurter, then law teacher, called upon the political scientists for help. I propose to consider in what manner we might respond to his appeal.

In a review of the first book by one of our now distinguished colleagues, Mr. Frankfurter urged political scientists and economists to quit trying to be lawyers and to act more like specialists in the study of human relationships. “What we have a right to expect from economists and political scientists,” he said, “is an analysis of what true governmental problems are, in the light of what actually goes on in the world and wholly apart from the technicalities of American constitutional law …. Until the economists and political scientists attend to their special tasks and we lawyers to ours and each has awareness of the other's problems, we shall continue to have … crosssterilization of the social disciplines.”

In the 19th century what was meant by the term “constitution” was reasonably definite and clear. Paradoxically enough, if the word retained some ambiguity, this was because of the British constitution; that is, because the mother country of modern constitutionalism appeared to have an obscure constitution, or even—according to some of the standards that seemed very important elsewhere—no constitution at all.

The threat of violence, and the occasional outbreak of real violence—which gives the threat credibility—are essential elements in peaceful social change not only in international, but also in national communities. Individuals and groups, no less than nations, exploit the threat as an everyday matter. This induces flexibility and stability in democratic institutions.

I refer not only to the police power of the state and the recognized right of self-defense, but also to private individual or group violence, whether purposive or futile, deliberate or desperate. Violence and the threat of violence, far from being meaningful only in international politics, are underlying, tacit, recognized, and omnipresent facts of domestic life, in the shadow of which democratic politics are carried on. They instil dynamism into the structure and growth of the law, the settlement of disputes, the processes of accomodating interests, and they induce general respect for the verdict of the polls.

Reinhold Niebuhr has profoundly affected American thought in theology, on society, and about politics. He has puzzled more than one of his many critics and commentators, especially by the veritable panorama of doctrines which, at one time or another, he has appeared to advocate: several varieties of socialism, liberalism, and what seems to be a sort of mellow conservatism. The confusion engendered by this ideological medley has not been alleviated either by the voluminous extent of his writings, or by his teutonic, yet highly personal style. But Niebuhr's policy suggestions have been shaped in response to changing conditions in the political world. Deeper analysis reveals a remarkably consistent teaching, present in all essential respects at least as early as his Moral Man and Immoral Society, which if not a philosophy, is at least a theology of politics. The scope of this paper prevents any examination of the entire intellectual pilgrimage of Reinhold Niebuhr; I shall confine my attention to the main lines of his political teaching.

In the apocalyptic visions of Marx, the world revolution which was to destroy capitalist society was also to sweep away the entire system of nation-states, and in its place to substitute a world proletarian society, a new supra-national community ruled over by the victorious working class.

Of all the prophecies of early Marxism, none proved more ill-founded than this belief in an international socialist order. The revolution, when it came, was confined to Russia. Only after the victories of the Soviet armies in World War II did it become possible to extend Communist rule beyond the borders of the Soviet Union. After less than two decades, this new international Communist community of nations has become divided into blocs of quarrelling states, and the goal of international Communism seems still distant. The Communists, like other universalistic movements of the past, have apparently proved incapable of surmounting the limits of the nation-state system they set out to destroy. Why?

Each German federal election since 1949 has resulted in a reduction in the number of parties securing representation in the Bundestag. While this trend continued in 1961, there is evidence that the party system is becoming stabilized, making it unlikely that any of the present parties will disappear in the near future. This article examines the 1961 election and its significance for the German party system.

The major outlines of the present German party system became apparent as early as 1946, when party activities were resumed on a zonal basis. The principal parties then in the field were the Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party, the Christian Democratic Union, and the Free Democratic Party. The last two of these were known differently in different sections of West Germany, but today, with very few exceptions, the designation for each group is the same throughout the Federal Republic.

The Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) is today the largest communist party outside the Sino-Soviet bloc. In a country with a population of some 96 million, it claims today a membership of two million, and the communist mass organizations claim more than 11 million members. At the same time PKI is well represented in parliament and the several high-level councils appointed by Sukarno to render advice to the government. The deputy governors of three of the four provinces in Java are communists, and as of March 9, 1962 the two main Party leaders acquired quasi-cabinet status. Yet the possibility is remote that PKI may achieve power in Indonesia in the foreseeable future. My purpose here is an analysis of the Party's place in Indonesian politics that results in this forecast.

The application of several European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries for membership in the Common Market (EEC) is viewed in Washington with great pleasure: the development of a United States of Europe is widely anticipated. Many observers have already calculated the combined manpower, economic resources, military power, etc. of the new union, and have pointed to the decisive advantage the United States, in coalition with this “third power,” will have over the Soviet Union. Even the fact that the EEC and EFTA, if completely merged, would have 13 members is not considered unlucky: after all, the United States itself evolved out of a union of 13. It may however, be premature to prepare a celebration for the birthday of the United States of Europe. The following theoretical excursion suggests that loading the EEC with new members may well reduce it to the level of a glorified customs union rather than forward it to a political federation. Moreover, I shall argue, political communities often unify not by increasing their membership, but in a dialectic fashion: two or more groups form; they appear to be moving in opposite directions until each is well integrated, then they are “synthesized” (not merged) in a superior union. That is, they form one encompassing union without dissolving the bonds that held together the units that composed a group before the larger unification. The earlier autonomous groups become sub-groups in one union, adjusting to the new over-riding bond without being fused into one group that knows no internal divisions.

Since the theory of games was first made widely available, with application to economic behavior, its use has been suggested in many other areas, from the global to the individual. Several correspondences between game theory and certain aspects of political process have been noted.

The contribution of game theory to substantive knowledge in the empirical sciences, however, has been modest; Luce and Raiffa judge that its impact has been greater in applied mathematics. The area of political behavior—despite the apparent applicability of the notion of conflict of interest—is similarly lacking in studies, although a few notable exceptions exist.

The concept of power remains elusive despite the recent and prolific outpourings of case studies on community power. Its elusiveness is dramatically demonstrated by the regularity of disagreement as to the locus of community power between the sociologists and the political scientists. Sociologically oriented researchers have consistently found that power is highly centralized, while scholars trained in political science have just as regularly concluded that in “their” communities power is widely diffused. Presumably, this explains why the latter group styles itself “pluralist,” its counterpart “elitist.”

There seems no room for doubt that the sharply divergent findings of the two groups are the product, not of sheer coincidence, but of fundamental differences in both their underlying assumptions and research methodology. The political scientists have contended that these differences in findings can be explained by the faulty approach and presuppositions of the sociologists. We contend in this paper that the pluralists themselves have not grasped the whole truth of the matter; that while their criticisms of the elitists are sound, they, like the elitists, utilize an approach and assumptions which predetermine their conclusions. Our argument is cast within the frame of our central thesis: that there are two faces of power, neither of which the sociologists see and only one of which the political scientists see.

The purpose of this article is to investigate distributions of influence in a legislative body, to spell out the resulting hypotheses, to introduce a method for estimating the degree of interaction between legislators, and to demonstrate the relevance of specific indicators to the study of legislative behavior. The methodological task falls somewhere between the small group laboratory situation and the more complex arena of community decision-making. Intense observation, control, and precision are sacrificed in favor of a real and vital situation. The analysis of a relatively self-sufficient political entity is lost in favor of maintaining some of the advantages of laboratory research. The universe selected for this study consists of fifty people who must directly or indirectly, but not remotely, rely upon each other in order to satisfy their official purposes.

Nature seldom allows us to get what we wish without paying her price. This truism is commonly illustrated by the delicate balance in animal life which often cannot be disturbed to satisfy man's wants (e.g., for fox hunting) without demanding of man in return (e.g., by increases in the rabbit population and in crop damage).

The several civil service systems in this country also illustrate this bittersweet combination of intended and unintended consequences. The argument here will not go to the extreme of one observer, in whose judgment the United States Civil Service Commission was the single greatest obstacle to the successful waging of World War II. Rather, the focus here will be upon several characteristics of our civil service systems that have as presumably unintended consequences an increase in the burdens of managing work. For the most part, the analysis of management problems will derive from the research literature dealing with behavior in organizations, a field of study presently seething with activity.