The initial stimulus for this research was the realization that my coauthors (Carolyn Adams and Hugh Heclo) and I could write a book on Comparative Public Policy, but that ironically that title was very difficult to translate into the languages of most of the countries which were the subject of our comparative analyses. The attempt to probe this problem benefited from a lot of patient counseling from numerous friends and colleagues, and I would like to express particular gratitude especially to John Armstrong, Stuart Lakoff, David Laitin, Karl Rohe and Giovanni Sartori. Others who provided helpful comments or provided useful insights were Carl Bohret, the late Marshall Durbin, Dell Hymes, Alan Kirkness, Reinhart Koselleck, Elizabeth Leinfellner, Geoffrey Nunberg, Walter Ong, Rupprecht Paque, Ekart Pankoke, Hans-Juergen Puhle, Marc Raeff, Carter Revard, Richard Rose, Robert Salisbury, Dolf Sternberger and Tracy Strong. An initial version of this paper was presented at the International Political Science Congress in Rio in 1982, and subsequent versions benefited from comments at the American Political Science meeting in 1983, and at seminars given at several German and Dutch universities in 1984.

¹ One tendency among the Continentals has been to coin appropriate terms. Thus the West German political scientists have sought to introduce the term Politikfelder as a surrogate for policy studies. The French and French-Canadians, even more anxious to find an alternative to just importing the English term, have tried to accentuate gender differences by distinguishing between le politique for “politics” and la politique and les politiques for “policies.”

² Anthony, , Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinion, Times, etc. (London: Grant Richards, 1900), 2:248 (italics added).Google Scholar

³ Sternberger, Dolf; “‘Politics’ in Language: Twelve Notes on the History of Words and Meanings: in Language and Politics, ed. Cranston, Maurice and Mair, Peter (Brussels: Bruylant, 1982), pp. 26, 31.Google Scholar

⁴ Sartori, Giovanni, “Guidelines for Concept Analysis,” in Social Science Concepts: A Systematic Analysis, ed. Sartori, G. (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1984), pp. 15–16, 51.Google Scholar

⁵ Koselleck, Reinhart, “Begriffsgeschichte and Social History,” Economy and Society, 11:4 (11 1982), 409–427CrossRefGoogle Scholar. German version in Koselleck, Reinhart, Vergangene Zukunft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1979), pp. 107–129.Google Scholar

⁶ Skinner, Quentin, “Language and Social Change,” in The State of the Language, ed. Michaels, Leonard and Ricks, Christopher (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), p. 564.Google Scholar

⁷ Eulau, Heinz, “The Interventionist Synthesis” in “The Place of Policy Analysis in Political Science,” American Journal of Political Science, 21:2 (05 1977), 420.Google Scholar

⁸ “La langue anglaise presente un meilleur outillage terminologique avec trois substantifs, politics, policy, polity et deux épithèts', politic and political. … La terminologie anglaise plus riche … nous suggére d'abord des résponses objectivees aux mêmes questions: Quoi? Le political dans la polity. Comment? Par les politics, que leus actes soient politic ou non. Pourquoi? Pour une policy ou des policies” (Bergeron, Gerard, La gouverne politique [Paris: Mouton and Quebec: Laval, 1977], p. 150) (italics added).Google Scholar

⁹ “Policy and politics gehören zu jeder Politik und lassen sich als unterscheidbare Dimensionen politischen Handelns erkennen … Man könnte formulieren das Politik die Verwirklichung von Politik — policy — mit Hilfe von Politik — politics — auf der Grundlage von Politik — polity — ist …. Begriffe wie Verwaltung, Planung, oeffentliche Angelegenheiten … stellen den Begriff policy in den Mittelpunkt. Kreist das politische Denken dagegen um Begriffe wie Macht, Herrschaft, Konflikt, Partizipation‥dürfte eine stärkere politics-Orientierung vorliegen” (Rohe, Karl, Politik: Begriffe und Wirklichkeiten [Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1978], pp. 65, 68, 80).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Brown, Roger, Words and Things: An Introduction to Language (New York: Free Press, 1958), p. 259.Google Scholar

¹¹ Hymes, Dell, “Linguistic Aspects of Comparative Political Research,” in The Methodology of Comparative Research, ed. Holt, Robert T. and Turner, John E. (New York: Free Press, 1970), p. 320.Google Scholar

¹² Friedrich, Carl J., Constitutional Government and Democracy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1941), pp. 88–89.Google Scholar

¹³ Rohe, Karl, Politik, p. 62.Google Scholar

¹⁴ See next page for full page footnote.

Source: Schulte, Ruth, “Intelligence,” in Sprachwissenschaftliches Colloqium Bonn, Kurzmonographien (Europäsche Schlüsselworter: Wortvergleichende and Wortgeschichtliche Studien, Vol.II), (Munich: Hueber, 1964), p. 46.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Mansfield, Harvey C., “On the Impersonality of the Modern State: A Comment on Machiavelli's Use of Stato,” APSR, 77 (1983), 849–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶ Dyson, Kenneth, The State Tradition in Western Europe: A Study of an Idea and Institution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 37.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Ibid, p. 25.

¹⁸ Nettl, J. P., “The State as a Conceptual Variable,” World Politics, 20 (1968), 559–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁹ Ernest Barker, cited by Dyson, , State Tradition in Western Europe, p. 43.Google Scholar

²⁰ Tilly, Charles, “Reflections on the History of European State-Making,” in The Formation of Nation States in Western Europe, ed. Tilly, Charles (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 32–35.Google Scholar

²¹ Maier, Hans, Die Ältere Deutsche Staats und Verwaltungslehre (Polizeiwissen-schaft) (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1966), p. 121.Google Scholar

²² Written about 1565 while Smith served as Queen Elizabeth's ambassador to the French Court, the volume proposes to chart or map “the form and manner of the government of England, and … the principal points wherein it doeth differ from the policy or government at this time used in France, Italy, Spain, Germany” and other countries which followed the Roman law (SirSmith, Thomas, The Manner of Government or Policie of the Realm of England, p. 142).Google Scholar

²³ Stourzh, Gerald, “Staatsformenlehre und Fundamentalgesetze in England und Nordamerika im 17 und 18 Jahrhundert” in Bürger und Bürgerlichkeit im Zeitalter der Aufklärung, ed. Vierhaus, Rudolf (Heidelberg: Schneider, 1981), pp. 294–335.Google Scholar

²⁴ Dorwart, R. A., The Prussian Welfare State Before 1740 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁵ Its development into a powerful concept was nurtured from both sides of the Reformation struggles. But the elimination of the Church as a contestant for authority enabled the Protestant princes to monopolize regulatory power, and some of the German Protestant states intensified the use of policy ordinances in the latter sixteenth century. Raeff, Marc, The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change in the Germanies and Russia, 1600–1800 (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 56–69.Google Scholar

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ Ibid. p. 41.

²⁸ Emsley, Clive, Policing and Its Context: 1750–1870 (London: Macmillan, 1984), pp. 99.Google Scholar

²⁹ Dyson, Kenneth, State Tradition in Western Europe, p. 118.Google Scholar

³⁰ Raeff, Marc, Well-Ordered Police State, p. 255.Google Scholar

³¹ Braun, Rudolf, “Taxation, Sociopolitical Structure and State-Building: Great Britain and Brandenburg-Prussia,”Google Scholar in Tilly, , Formation of Nation States, p. 299.Google Scholar

³² But some of the states with highly developed Polizey rules and enforcement techniques showed a “definite trend toward “civilizing” criminal processes — that is the transformation of criminal delict and prosecution into a civil action or case in equity” (Raeff, p. 135, Well-Ordered Police State). “Stateless” societies like England found that lack of an effective constabulary contributed to a great increase the number of offenses which carried the death penalty. By 1819 there were 223 capital offenses in the English criminal law; in France there were six. Bailey, David H., “The Police and Political Development in Europe,”Google Scholar in Tilly, , Formation of Nation States, p. 353.Google Scholar

³³ Schmitt, Carl, Der Begriff des Politischen (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1963), pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

³⁴ Heidenheimer, Arnold J., “Comparative Public Policy: The Past Decade in Perspective,” Journal of Public Policy, 5:4 (11, 1985).Google Scholar

³⁵ Chapman, Brian, Police State (New York: Praeger, 1970), p. 50.Google Scholar

³⁶ Smith, Adam, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), pp. 2, 42, 51, 170.Google Scholar

³⁷ Ibid., p. 59.

³⁸ Ibid., pp. 78, 110, 318. Elsewhere, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith wrote: “The perfection of police, the extension of trade and manufacturers, are noble and magnificent objects.” Haakonssen notes that here “Smith strikes that perfect equipoise between irony and encomium which is so typical of him.” This posture of Smith, as an ironic commentator on how concepts were tossed around on both sides of the Channel, probably also reduced the chances that his transposition techniques could serve as a model which others could comfortably follow. (Haakonssen, Knud, The Science of a Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith [Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1981], pp. 91, 95).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

A modern scholar on Smith as a mediator of German and English language influences notes that the translators of the German editions of Wealth of Nations in 1776 and 1794 utilized the term “europäische Polizey” to capture the meaning of “the policy of Europe” (Erämetsä, Erik, Adam Smith als Mittler englisch-deutscher Spracheinfflüsse [Annales Academiae Scientarium Fennicae, Series B, Vol. 125. Helsinki, 1961], p. 95).Google Scholar

Smith's influential German academic followers, like Christian Jacob Kraus, holder of the cameralistics chair at Königsberg, followed through on Smith's terminological innovation in their own influential works, and a later American author translates the subject of Kraus' Polizey lectures as dealing with “policy” and kindred subjects (Hasek, Carl William, The Introduction of Adam Smith's Doctrines Into Germany [Studies in History, Economic and Public Law, No. 261, New York: Columbia University, 1925] p. 86).Google Scholar

³⁹ Small, Albion, The Cameralists (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1909), p. 509.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ “In German-speaking areas it can be shown that from 1770 onwards both new meanings for old words and neologisms proliferate, altering with the linguistic arsenal of the entire political and social space of experience, and establishing new horizons of expectations” (Koselleck, Reinhart, “Begriffsgeschichte and Social History,” pp. 409–427).Google Scholar

⁴¹ Krünitz, Johann Georg, “Polizey,” Okonomisch-technologische Encyklopädie, vol. 114 (Berlin: 1810), 175–471Google Scholar: “Da Die Polizey keinen eigenen Gegenstand hat, woraus ihre Gränzbestimmung hergenommen werden könnte, sondern dass sie mit alien Teilen der Staatsverwaltung, aber nur auf ihre eigentumliche Art gemeinschaftlich mitwirkt; so folgt von selbst, dass ebenso viele Aste der Polizey sein müssen, als es Zweige der Regierungsgeschäfte gibt.”

Later in the article the author notes that “in almost all European languages two words have come to be formed, Politik and Polizey, with the former referring to the entire body of wisdom of the state and the latter referring to only part of it.” Because of the disagreement about what Polizey refers to, and many dozens of deviating definitions are cited, he considers possibly giving up usage of the term in scientific discourse. But then he concludes that “word reforms are often more difficult than substantive reforms” it was the better part of wisdom to make do with the existing terms (p. 206).

⁴² Sellin, Volker, “Politik,” Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, ed. Brunner, Otto, Conze, Werner and Koselleck, Reinhart (Stuttgart: Klett, 1983), 4:789–874.Google Scholar

⁴³ von Unruh, Georg Christoph, “Polizei, Polizeiwissenschaft und Kameralistik” in KG.A. Jesenćh, et al, eds. Deutsche Verwaltungsgeschichte, Vol. II, 1983, p. 425Google Scholar; Maier, , Die Altere Deutsche Stoats und Verwaltungslehre, p. 244Google Scholar. In academic settings more instrumental state theories sought to eclipse the regimenting traditions by gradually substituting the label and concept of administration for that of police. Thus although Polizeiwissenschaften continued to be taught into the 1860s, they were gradually replaced by Verwaltungswissenschaften. One might have expected that this shift toward administrative perspectives might have favored the emergence of a suitable, more neutral and more adaptable policy term and concept, but it didn't.

⁴⁴ Wolzendorff, Kurt, Der Polizeigedanke des modernen Stoats (Breslau: Markus, 1918), p. 165.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Chapman, B., Police State, p. 34.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Stanforth, Anthony W., “Deutsch-englischer Lehnwortaustausch” in Wortgeographie und Gesellschaft, ed. Mitzka, Walther (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968), p. 548.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Sternberger, Dolf, “Das Wort ‘Politik’ und der Begriff des Politischen.” Politische Vierteljahresschrift 24 (1983), 6–14.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Sartori, Giovanni, “What Is ‘Polities’? Political Theory, 1 (1973), 5–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁹ The Dutch term beleid presently embraces meanings like course of action, set of actions, planning and prudence, which make it very similar to the English policy. It is derived from the key verb leiden, meaning “to lead” or “to make go,” and it is similar to another term used by Dutch political scientists, bestuur, meaning “to steer,” which is a term for administration. Beleid has roots in medieval Dutch and developed many meanings into the seventeenth century, then became partially obsolete in the nineteenth century, but was revived in the twentieth century. See Kuypers, Gijs and Verhoog, Jaap, “Politics/Policy: The Dutch Context”Google Scholar (Paper delivered at the 1983 Meeting of the American Political Science Association). Why such a term was developed in Dutch and not in Early High German, how this can be related to concepts of stateness, and the presence of policey traditions are questions well worth further investigation.

⁵⁰ Koselleck, “Begriffsgeschichte and Social Theory,” p. 417.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Sartori, , “Guidelines for Concept Analysis,” pp. 18–20.Google Scholar

⁵² Montefiore, Alan, “The Concept of the Political,” in Neutrality and Impartiality, ed. Montefiore, A. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 40–41, 276–8.Google Scholar

⁵³ Schmitt, Carl, The Concept of the Political (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1976), p. 26.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Hofferbert, Richard I., The Study of Public Policy (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1974), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Hartwich, Hans-Hermann, ed. Policy-Forschung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Ihr Selbstverständnis und Ihr Verhalten zu den Grundfragen der Politikwissenschaft (Opladen: Westdeuscher Verlag, 1985), p. 462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁶ Hirschman, Albert, The Passions and the Interests (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Rohe, , Politik, p. 79.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Frohock, Fred M., “The Structure of ‘Politics,’” American Political Science Review, 72 (1978), 867.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁹ Kari Palonen's effort at an interpretation of the machrohistory of the Politik concept, which seeks to distinguish various Politik conceptions in a broad spectrum of German writing up to 1933, reached me after conclusion of this article. He makes an interesting attempt to search for something like a protoconcept for “Politik as Policy,” long before any German used this expression. His report is negative in the sense that he can find no reshaped and reflected articulation of the Politik concept which could be said to have adequately anticipated the subsequent formulation. He traces the attempts by Kelsen and others to break the previous tight conceptual link between “Politik” and “State” but concludes that these efforts to counter the “Politik from above” perspective were not radical enough to permit the “Politik as policy” perspective to achieve a breakthrough up to 1933. He sees attempts in this direction as coming more from neo-Kantians, whereas such dynamic philosophical tendencies of the interwar period as existentialism and phenomenology are regarded exerting inhibiting effects. Palonen, Kari, Politik als Handlungsbegriff: Horizontwandel des Politikbegriffs in Deutschland 1890–1933 (Commentationes Scientarium Socialum, 28) (Helsinki: Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, 1985) pp. 113–14.Google Scholar