To question the principle of administrative secrecy is to question a long-cherished tradition of the British parliamentary system. Yet when one explores the full range of its adverse effects one cannot help but ask whether it conforms with the requirements of modern democracy. The Cold War and the need for military security have led to certain areas of administrative activity being walled off entirely from the public. During the post-war era of McCarthyism and hysteria in the United States, the need for military secrecy and personnel security was greatly exaggerated by the administration, and the press in that country complained loudly about the dangers and evils resulting from this over-extension of secrecy. Readers will perhaps recall Herblock's biting cartoon late in 1956 in which John Q. Citizen is sitting before a stage, and all he can see is a paper curtain with the official words stamped on it in huge letters: “SECRET, CLASSIFIED, SHH!” At the side of the stage is the master of ceremonies, Mr. Government Secrecy, saying, “It's a great performance going on—take my word for it!” It is easy for Canadians to be under the comfortable impression that this passion for secrecy was one of the excesses of American society. But in fact the United States has always had a much more open system of administration than our own, and the pinch of secrecy was felt much more acutely by the public and press in that country than in Canada. Moreover, if one compares the American personnel screening system with our own, one sees that the secrecy of our system has not only obvious virtues but subtle vices.

An all-pervading interdependence is what makes economics so intractable a subject. Walras' algebra, which represented the relationships between prices and quantities as a system of equations, was one of the first explicit demonstrations of how everything could depend on everything without entailing circular reasoning. So far as positive economics is concerned the only relationships to be considered are those which are believed to be operative; that a man feels worse off in consequence of the change of fortune or behaviour of other men is by itself nothing to the purpose of positive economics. In order for such facts to qualify as agenda for an economics that seeks to formulate predictive hypotheses these feelings must have some impact on observable economic magnitudes—on the prices and the quantities of goods and factors. But for a normative study, at any rate for a study that is manifestly concerned with human welfare, such reactions of men to the behaviour of others are no less relevant simply because they do not register on the existing economic mechanisms. Indeed, it is just because these reactions fail to influence the working of the market that they are of particular interest to economists concerned with resource allocation.

The current widespread concern with economic growth has stimulated much quantitative study of the economic history of now-developed countries, including Canada. Population change has been an important part of the Canadian record and considerable attention has been given to international migration. Unfortunately, in the period now of greatest interest–say between Confederation and the eve of the First World War–insufficient attention was paid in Canada and other countries to the problems of keeping accurate and comprehensive records of migration. As a result serious doubts must attach to any migration statistics which still survive from this period. These doubts must extend to the Canadian official figures, even though immigrant statistics go back to 1852, are ostensibly complete in that the annual series is thereafter unbroken, and ostensibly genuine in that immigrants are defined as “those who have never been in Canada before and who declare their intention to live there permanently.” In fact, the Canadian official record of migration in the second half of the nineteenth century suffers from at least three serious defects: the immigration figures are lacking in internal consistency; the unguarded propinquity of the United States created more problems in counting migrant heads than Canadian (or American) authorities could solve; and there are no data at all on emigration.

The unique contribution of American scholarship to the study of politics is undoubtedly the development of behaviouralism. As “a successful protest” against the limits of traditional political science, the behavioural approach has certainly broadened our perspective by calling attention to hitherto neglected areas of political research. It has also made us methodologically more sophisticated by its insistence on rigorous empiricism and on theory-building as a major task. And yet it is difficult to be convinced that “all segments of political science can be treated behaviorally,” as one student has recently claimed. Behaviouralism is certainly an effective way of studying politics. But it is quite a different thing to say that there exists no aspect of politics which cannot be treated behaviourally. It is the aim of this paper to enquire whether there may not exist segments of politics which by their very nature resist the behavioural treatment.

Let us first define what is to be understood by behaviouralism. In view of its inherent “ambiguity,” it may be best to start by listing three major assertions which I think set apart behavioural explanations from other kinds of statements in political studies. These assertions are: (1) individuals rather than groups constitute proper units for analyses; (2) facts must be separated from values; and (3) legitimate explanations always run in terms of laws or generalizations, but never in terms of descriptive statements of particular occurrences.

Government grants in federal countries account for a small share of the national product of these countries. I suppose that this, and the fact that federal arrangements are relatively flexible, explains why no well-organized body of economic doctrine deals with the issues raised by the existence of these grants. In terms of general principles, I venture the opinion that the consensus among economists—though perhaps not among students of public administration—holds that these grants can be defended with ethical and distribution arguments, but that on grounds of efficiency (in the economist's sense) and resource allocation they are to be condemned. Further, I would guess that majority opinion would favour unconditional over conditional grants on the ground that the latter do not respect the sovereignty of the “consumer” or of the spender.

These principles seem to have been accepted and even defended by economists like Bhargava, Buchanan, and Scott and to have received the support of Dehem and Wolfe among others. Dissenters, like Buchanan—on the question of efficiency versus ethics—have dissented only in part.

The Keynesian faith in the effectiveness of fiscal policy consists in the belief that there is a positive rate of change of national income with respect to autonomous expenditure. This in turn stems from the belief that the marginal efficiency schedule is downward-sloping. This dependence can be seen from a simple formulation of the Keynesian system. Letting Y be national income, E1 investment expenditure, E2 autonomous expenditure, r the marginal efficiency of capital, i the interest rate, and M the stock of money:

The dependent variables are Y, E1, r, and i. The derivative dY/dE2, evaluated from (1)–(4),is the expression:

The addition of dE1/dt to the right side of (3) yields a differential-equation system whose solution is stable only if the denominator of this expression is positive. It follows that dY/dE2, the rate of change of national income with respect to autonomous expenditure, is opposite in sign to ∂η/∂E1, the slope of the marginal efficiency schedule.

It is possible that the current “crisis” in French-English relations in Canada has been helped to its present pitch through a simple lack of understanding of the roots of French-Canadian discontent on the part of English Canadians, rather than as the result of a clash between irreconcilable ends. Two of the most common manifestations of this lack of understanding are to be seen in the lines of argument so often employed by English Canadians in discussing constitutional questions. The first has a long and honourable history, going back at least as far as 1887. Moreover, it enjoys the distinction of having seen active service down through the years on both sides in the various English-French and Dominion-provincial disputes.

The error in question is that of basing constitutional arguments upon an interpretation of the intentions of the Fathers of Confederation. This basis of argument has been invoked by both the compact theorists, among the upholders of provincial rights, and the “Judicial Committee ruined our Constitution” school among the centralists. (This word is used in a non-pejorative sense, although it seems to have acquired pejorative overtones in recent years.) The Fathers of Confederation were practical politicians attempting to deal with the practical political problems of the mid-nineteenth century, and it was with reference to these problems and to the contemporary value systems of the various communities of British North America that they conceived the series of compromises embodied in the British North America Act. To credit the Confederation settlement of a century ago with eternal validity is to credit the Fathers with a prescience which they simply did not possess.

Discussions of the post-war development of the Euro-dollar market have drawn attention to the foreign currency business of Canadian chartered banks. In these discussions interest in Canadian banks' foreign currency operations has centred on their international implications, and particularly on their impact on the balance of payments of the United States. With the exception of parts of a paper by O. Altman and a short section in the Report of the Porter Commission there has been little analysis of the development and significance of this business as an adjunct of the Canadian financial system. This paper is an attempt partially to fill this gap. It draws together available information on the foreign currency business of the banks, including some data on interest rates which are not otherwise readily available, and presents an analysis of the growth, changing character, and domestic implications of these operations since the mid-1950's. The analysis is intended to complement and extend the work previously reported by Altman and the Porter Commission.

The chartered banks conduct a variety of transactions in currencies other than Canadian dollars. For convenience these can be classified into five categories. It should be noted, however, that even if these categories were sharply distinct conceptually (which they are not), published data would not permit precise quantification of each.

Cette étude s'inscrit dans le cadre plus large d'une analyse de la vie politique montréalaise. Vouloir répondre à la question « qui gouverne ? » exige que l'on considère d'abord les détenteurs offlciels de la puissance politique. L'objectif à long terme que nous poursuivons amènera ensuite à tâcher de saisir le processus en action, à cerner les rôles et combats réels au moment de la mise en train d'actions importantes, de la prise de décision. Pour le moment, la recherche présentée ici porte sur un aspect très précis: la connaissance des élites politiques officielles entre 1840 et 1960.

Montréal reçoit sa première charte municipale en 1833 mais son autonomie, tout au moins formelle, ne sera acquise pour de bon qu'en 1840. Entre cette date et 1960, trente-huit maires ont dirigé près d'une centaine de conseils municipaux. Voilà donc un personnel politique de bonne dimension. Qui ont été ces élus du peuple depuis cent-vingt ans ? A quels groupes ethniques appartenaient-ils, à quelle religion; quel était leur statut social: leur occupation, leur niveau d'instruction; ont-ils participé à la politique à d'autres niveaux, provincial ou fédéral, sous quelle bannière ? Telles sont les questions que nous nous sommes posées. Les éléments de réponse ont pu en général être obtenus et une forte majorité de ces élus possède une fiche à peu près complète. Les sources sont assez diverses, mais les dossiers d'archives en constituent l'essentiel. Mentionnons tout de même quelques recueils biographiques qui ont été précieux. Voilà d'ailleurs un des aspects les plus étudiés de notre vie politique, grâce d'ailleurs à des recherches patientes et tenaces. Nous avons eu à les compléter dans le cas des conseillers municipaux surtout, et encore davantage à les soumettre à des analyses propres à la science politique.

La science politique n'a pas encore réussi à élaborer de grands ensembles théoriques. A vrai dire, les politicologues doivent se contenter de quelques généralisations, assimilables tout au plus à des hypothèses de travail d'une nature bien particulière, de typologies destinées à faciliter le dépouillement des données politiques. Signalons à la volée, les multiples typologies des régimes politiques, les essais de classification de « l'homme politique » et les théories des « élites ». Toutefois, devant la nécessité de développer et de multiplier démarches et recherches en vue d'échaffauder un début de théorie, il nous paraît intéressant, utile peut-être, de tenter de découvrir la dynamique qui agite et soutient les divers éléments d'une telle typologie.

Ainsi, la typologie des partis politiques, mise au point par Maurice Duverger. Le juriste français a regroupé autour de deux principaux pôles les divers types de partis politiques que connaît le monde contemporain. Les « partis de notables », groupes restreints composés de personnalités en vue dans un milieu et dont l'objectif unique se définit par l'organisation des campagnes électorales, se dressent contre les « partis de masse », créés par les mouvements socialistes européens et destinés à rallier tous les sympathisants d'une même cause politique, de façon permanente. Bien sûr, Duverger reconnaît la possibilité de multiples variantes, sur un continuum reliant ces deux pôles extrêmes.

When the British North America Act was passed in 1867, the distinction between Privy Council, cabinet, and ministry was already well established in Britain. The Privy Council was the body recognized by law, but its original function of advising the Crown had been taken over by the cabinet, which remained in principle a committee of the larger body. The ministry was composed of those privy counsellors who formed the cabinet, plus certain other ministers who were outside the cabinet and were not normally sworn of the Privy Council.

Before the federation of the British North American provinces, colonial “cabinets” had been styled “executive councils” and resignation from office had carried with it no continuing title of precedence; that is, contrary to British practice, a minister who resigned his portfolio ceased to be a member of the the executive council and hence lost his title of “Honourable.” Undoubtedly it was felt, as Alpheus Todd has stated, that an organization resembling the British Privy Council, liable to be convened on special occasions or for ceremonial purposes, was unnecessary in a colony, where government should be kept as simple as possible. Similarly, since the powers of colonial governments were relatively limited, there was no need for a large ministry; thus, the British distinction between ministers in the cabinet and those outside had not developed in the colonies.

During the closing decades of the nineteenth century the self-governing colonies of the British Empire and particularly Canada attempted to obtain a broader degree of freedom in developing their commercial policies. The campaign, which may be said to have commenced in 1878, had as its goals the right for the dependencies to conclude preferential tariff agreements with each other, the establishment of tariff preference throughout the Empire, including the United Kingdom, and the denunciation of the mother country's treaties with Belgium and the German Zollverein. Abrogation of the latter two agreements was regarded as vital since they provided that any duty concessions made to the United Kingdom by the colonies had to be accorded to Belgium and Germany. These concessions also had to be extended to all other foreign countries with which London had treaties containing the most-favoured-nation clause that included the colonies.

The movement suffered a considerable set-back in 1895 when the Colonial Secretary, the Marquis of Ripon, issued his famous circular letter to the colonies in which he stoutly defended Britain's free-trade policy and emphasized the value of her commerce with the foreign world. His policy statement rejecting the establishment of tariff preference within the Empire and the abolition of the two treaties was aimed at a series of resolutions emanating from the Colonial Conference of 1894 held in Ottawa. This imperial pronunciamento was not the last word. The entire issue was raised again in 1897 when a new tariff bill was introduced in the Canadian House of Commons by the Finance Minister, W. S. Fielding. The purport of the bill was to grant preference to British goods.

There are two things we would like to do in what follows. The first is to provide a comparative anatomy of some of the simple, basic models of economic growth. The second is to offer the thesis that within this selection of models surprisingly little has been added to the structure of Sir Roy Harrod's “Essay in Dynamic Theory.” If the Harrod model is prefaced by F. P. Ramsey's account of savings, and supplemented by J. von Neumann's existence theorems for growth in a disaggregated economy, that range includes the essential ideas of the entire selection. Many issues have been clarified by the later items. Useful elaborations have been developed, chiefly in an improved treatment of money and of technological change. But other elaborations have been at best ornamental, and purely analytical improvements have been very small. In the spirit of this assessment we maintain that it is a mistake to link Harrod's model with that of E. D. Domar in the often encountered Harrod-Domar model: the Domar model is much the narrower in scope.

These views might depend on the choice we have made of simple models, but we believe they reflect instead the aptness and durability of the Harrod scheme. In any case we are not attempting either a review article or an exercise in the history of economic thought. Our interest is in analysis, and we identify our choice of models by a short list of specific references, drawing upon associated commentaries only for help in interpretation. The list goes back no earlier than to 1928 and F. P. Ramsey's classical “Mathematical Theory of Savings.”