“Liberalism” is a late modern word, appearing first (along with “conservatism,” “socialism,” and “communism”) in the early nineteenth century. Its basic ideas are old. The particular freedoms called for have changed as the denials of freedom have changed. The demands have been for liberation from oppressive political rule or intolerant ecclesiastical authority; or from a status of slavery or serfdom; from restraints embodied in laws and customs that hamper the rise of new productive forces, or from limitations on equal opportunity resulting from narrow concentrations of private economic power; from limitations on voting rights and from interferences with freedom of religion, speech, and association. The constant concern has been with pleas for deliverance from restraints which, although perhaps widely regarded at a given time as a normal part of life, have come to be regarded, by some in the community, as unnatural and intolerable.

Disenchantment with moral abstractions as the hallmarks of enlightened foreign policy has recently revived infatuation with the slogans of “national interest,” “power politics,” and “balance of power.” Until the eve of World War II, these ideas had been recessive—at times moribund—for at least half a generation. Naive belief in the efficacy of professions of good will, reliance on weak instruments for effectuating simply noble intentions in the complex realms of policy and practice, and contentment with lofty exhortations, had too often become the directives of policy unconcerned with the harshness of politics or the intricate give-and-take of sustained diplomacy.

Since the Republic's inception, statesmen have proclaimed national interest as the firmament on which our foreign policy rests. To that concept they have repeatedly referred as a guide and rationale for action in foreign affairs. Over the years the concept of national interest has been endowed with a varied and changing content. Therefore, interpretation has been a matter of historical, rather than etymological, enquiry. Certainly, a single dictionary definition will not do. Nevertheless, while dominant meanings at different moments and a long-term trend in the development of meaning are alike discoverable, or imputable, the actual meaning in our own day rests largely on the setting of current controversies. A particular concept of the national interest, therefore, is not “automatically” warranted and acceptable by appeal to tradition and great names, any more than by formal definition.

The widespread interest in understanding the political behavior of the American electorate has been served by a number of different methodological approaches. One of the most widely known and used is the analysis of aggregate voting statistics along the lines indicated by the work of Louis Bean. Major problems susceptible to study through aggregate behavioral measures include those related to the consequences of urbanization, population migration, drastic economic crisis or long-term change, or important international developments. Trends in voting behavior and regional differences in voting fall within this type of analysis, with census tract information and political sub-division voting statistics providing much of the relevant data for investigation.

A different approach to the study of political behavior is provided by the analysis of data on individuals, information pertaining to the behavior of identifiable persons. This approach allows flexibility in the ultimate units of analysis. The use of data on individuals not only provides such gross information as the percentages of people forming large groups (Democrats and Republicans, well-informed and poorly-informed) in the population, but it also provides information about various characteristics of these groups within the population.

The new Italian Constitution was written by the 556 deputies the Italian people elected to their first Constitutional Assembly on June 2, 1946. The Assembly approved the Constitution on December 22, 1947, by a vote of 453 favorable, 62 opposed, and 31 absent. After this approval the Constitution was promulgated by the Provisional President of Italy, Enrico de Nicola, and became effective ten days later, on January 1, 1948. Numerous evaluations of the Constitution are available, and it is not our purpose here to duplicate this work. We are concerned solely with discovering to what extent the Constitution was actually in effect during the four and one-half year period following its promulgation and with explaining, if possible, why there has been so much delay in implementing some of its basic provisions.

What we shall find is that some enabling legislation was passed by the Constitutional Assembly in the interim period between the effective date of the Constitution and the election of the first Parliament in April, 1948. Parliament has implemented a few more constitutional provisions, but vast and basic sections of the Constitution are still ineffective, owing to Parliament's inaction. To a lesser degree the administration and the courts are in a position to implement the Constitution.

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.

The Hoover Commission's personnel management report was published on February 9, 1949, early in the first session of the 81st Congress. Four sessions of the Congress have had an opportunity to act on the report, and the executive branch has had four years to take advantage of those recommendations that could be adopted by administrative action. This seems to be an appropriate time, therefore, to review the record of progress in both legislative and executive branches, in order to learn the extent to which these far-reaching recommendations for improvement of federal personnel management have been adopted.

Soon after publication of the report, intensive study and discussions began within the executive branch. The Civil Service Commission sent a preliminary memorandum of its views to the President on March 23, 1949, with a transmittal letter referring to the report as a “constructive document,” and agreeing with the objective of establishing a civilian career service. The Federal Personnel Council, composed of personnel directors of federal agencies and representatives of the Civil Service Commission and the Bureau of the Budget, made a detailed study of the report and submitted a number of comments to the Civil Service Commission.

The 1951 Term of the Supreme Court, during which there was no change in its makeup, continued to exhibit the behavior pattern of the previous Term, both in the mechanics of operation and the drift of decision. The work of the Truman Court is a compound of new Justices and the shifting concatenation of historical forces. It operates amidst the strains and tensions of the Cold War. The leading cases of this Term, dealing with such subjects as presidential seizure of private property, the treatment of aliens, by-products of the trials of Communists, and the pressure on civil liberties generally, all reflect the push of current history.

The total number of dispositions during the 1951 Term, 1207, was almost the same as the number for the 1950 Term, which was 1202. There were only 83 signed opinions, as compared with 98 in the 1950 Term and 87 in the 1949 Term. Twenty-five years ago the number of signed opinions averaged around 200 per Term. The reduction in the number of signed opinions was matched by a growing number of dispositions on the merits by memorandum order. The Court disposed of 200 cases on the merits; 101 came up by appeal (in about equal numbers from the federal district courts and the state courts) and 99 reached the Court on certiorari (72 from the federal Courts of Appeals, 24 from state courts, and 2 from the Court of Claims). The Court continued to keep a tight rein on its discretionary jurisdiction.

The role of public opinion in the political process is more often justified than explained by political theorists. Insofar as contemporary theory offers an explanation, it replaces the primitive democratic notion of “The People as Legislator” with a neo-idealistic conception of public opinion as the “sense of the community” (A. D. Lindsay), an emergent product of the process of public discussion that enfolds the struggle of private group leaders, public administrators, and political representatives to influence the substance and direction of governmental policy.

However, this is not the meaning of the term as used either by the man in the street or by the social scientist. In both popular and scientific language “public opinion” has come to refer to a sort of secular idol, and is a “god-term” to which citizens, scientists, and office-holders alike pay allegiance, partly as an act of faith, partly as a matter of observation, partly as a condition of sanity. The public opinion idol has its high priests, claiming to be expert translators of the oracles of the personified deity. The idol aIso has its heretics, divided like all protestants into many denominations. The least heretical sect, perhaps, consists of those who postulate a conceptual fiction somewhat resembling the legal relation of “principal-and-agent,” except that they recognize that political representatives possess the power to act as trustees as well as agents of their amorphous principal.

Americans differ in their views as to the proper role of the government in our economy. It is generally agreed, however, that government—state, local, and national—has become the most important single factor affecting the level of economic activity. The purpose here is not to discuss the arguments for or against a greater or lesser role to be played by government, but to outline the more significant ways in which this role manifests itself in our daily economic life.

The remarks which follow obviously cannot treat in detail the relationships between government and industry. They are intended rather to set forth in overall terms the importance of various governmental programs to the economy as reflected in governmental budgets at all levels. Examples and illustrations are drawn primarily from the federal budget, although the importance of governmental action upon the economy at the state and local level has been too frequently underestimated.

This paper discusses, first, the overall impact of the budget upon the economy; second, the effect of the changing emphasis in the budget upon national security programs in a peacetime period; and, third, the process through which more effective public understanding and control of governmental expenditure can be achieved.

On April 4, 1949, the representatives of twelve European and American nations, assembled in Washington, D. C., affixed their signatures to an instrument called the North Atlantic Treaty. This was the crucial step in the formation of one of the most impressive alliances ever entered into by sovereign states. The pact bore testimony to the rise of a new menace in the world, a menace spearheaded by a specious form of communism and powered by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, whose postwar activities left to the free nations no practicable alternative other than to seek safety in a regional collective security pact.

Japan, on October 1, 1952, held the first general election for members of the House of Representatives since the end of the occupation. In that election, the conservative government party, the Jiyūtō (Liberal party), won a clear majority, the Communist party failed to elect a single candidate, and there was a marked advance by the two Socialist parties.