The 1910 amendments to the Colombian constitution provided:

Art. 40. In every case of incompatibility between the Constitution and the law the constitutional provisions shall be applied by preference.

Art. 41. To the Supreme Court of Justice is confided the guardianship of the integrity of the Constitution. Consequently, in addition to the powers conferred upon it by this Constitution and the statutes, it shall have the following: To decide definitively as to the enforceability of bills that have been vetoed as unconstitutional by the Government, or as to all laws and decrees accused before it by any citizen as unconstitutional, first hearing the Attorney-General of the Nation.

The first function, “to decide definitively as to the enforceability of bills that have been vetoed as unconstitutional,” was merely a restatement of the plan copied from Ecuador in 1886 and still in use, although it has proved a major disappointment.

In November, 1936, the voters of New York City approved the use of proportional representation for the election of members of the city council by a vote of 923,186 to 555,217, after its opponents had failed by court action to prevent the question from being submitted. By a combination of Democratic delegates from New York City and machine Republicans from upstate, the constitutional convention of 1938 provided the people of the entire state an opportunity to reject decisively an amendment that would have prohibited the use of P.R. in any election in the state. Still another unsuccessful attempt to abolish the system was made in 1940—this time through initiative petition under provision of the New York City charter. With the entry of the United States into the war, no further serious effort at repeal was made until 1947, although dissatisfaction with the results of the councilmanic elections continued to be heard even above the din of war.

How did the forces line up in the intense battle over P.R. in the campaign of 1947? The political parties, of course, had a direct stake in the results of the campaign. On the one side were the Democratic and Republican county organizations urging repeal of P.R., while the American Labor party, the Liberal party, the Communist party, and the Fusion forces worked for retention of the system.

Party Organization Undemocratic. Outwardly, Japan is governed by political parties working for democracy through parliamentary action. The presence of four major parties, plus some 1,250 other political groups officially recognized by the nine-member Election Management Commission, offers what appears to be corroborative evidence that Japan follows the line of Western political development.

In practice, this is sheer illusion. The 1,250 parties seem bewilderingly numerous, yet no one but the American is in the least confused. All Japanese realize that the so-called parties are, in reality, nothing more than local subdivisions of major groups, together with a swarm of wholly unimportant minor factions made up of irresponsibles with no actual following. An Oriental will form a group, dignified by a high title, at the drop of a hat. Because the law requires it, and because it satisfies his vanity, the Japanese will register his association (although actually composed of himself, his brother-in-law, and his next door neighbor) as a political party; as such, it will appear on the record as one of the 1,250 organizations. As a matter of fact, it may, and probably will, split into fragments and even disappear before the registrant has returned home; but since no procedure is provided for the erasure of a name from the list, the total snowballs into astronomical figures.

Internal Procedures. Unschooled in the history and theory of Occidental parliamentarism, the old political factions, with new names, naturally try to adapt the new order of things in the Diet to the normal Japanese pattern. Their modus operandi during the first and second sessions—by way of adjusting to the Diet as the “highest organ of state power”—is an eventful chapter in the development of popular government in Japan.

Basic is the fact that political parties manage the Diet: every action is a party action, every vote a party vote, every decision a party decision. The individual member stands for nothing. Bills and resolutions, motions of any kind, speeches, interpellations, filibustering, even heckling and rowdyism, in committee and House sessions—all are products of political parties.

The primary agency through which political parties collectively manipulate the Diet is an entirely new piece of legislative machinery, the “Steering Committee,” one of 21 standing committees in each House.

UNESCO has frequently been criticized for not having devoted enough of its efforts and resources to the social sciences. To some extent, such criticism may appear justified (and not to social scientists alone), and it provides little comfort to know that UNESCO is, in this respect, by no means unique, but reflects orthodox patterns and attitudes in relation to the social sciences. However, its work In this field is hampered ab initio by two serious obstacles which do not prevail to the same degree in other scientific disciplines. In the first place, there is the lack of international associations of social scientists. UNESCO is not a university or research center which aims primarily at the advancement of the frontiers of human knowledge, but is, rather, a clearing house whose main purpose is to make available already existing knowledge for socially and internationally useful purposes. UNESCO can, and does, perform a significant function by planning projects which cannot be carried out by a single country, but depend on the working together of scientists from many parts of the world; such projects, desirable as they may be, cannot be easily realized in those areas of learning, however, in which, as in the social sciences, no—or no effective—international professional organizations exist. Much of the actual research and writing in an internationally planned enterprise has to be “farmed out” to individual institutions and persons in various countries, and the absence of representative international social science associations has constituted a serious obstacle to the implementation of UNESCO programs.

The rapid expansion of courses in international relations on the university level is causing an acute need for a consideration of the contents of the introductory course. More and more political scientists are required to teach international relations, and many of them are not at all certain about what material to cover or what approach to use. The relative newness of courses in international relations and the lack of any standard criteria have created a situation perplexing to both teacher and student.

The field of international relations may be broken down into international law, international organization, and international politics. The study of international politics is the basic, introductory course in the field. International politics is really a study of the primary factors that enter into the politics of nations as reflected in current international developments. International politics is a new academic discipline only in so far as it involves the selection of certain pertinent material largely from the social sciences and the application of these data to international developments. The study of international politics reflects the present tendency toward the consideration of social science as a whole and away from its artificial division into separate compartments.