It is a commonplace to assert that science should be independent of politics. By this one usually means that the search for truth, which is the essential function of science, should not be influenced by political interests, which are the interests concerned with the establishment and maintenance of a definite social order or a particular social institution. Politics as the art of government, that is to say, the practice of regulating the social behavior of men, is a function of will and, as such, an activity which necessarily presupposes the conscious or unconscious assumption of values, the realization of which is the purpose of the activity. Science is a function of cognition; its aim is not to govern but to explain. To describe the world is its object. Its independence of politics means in the last analysis, that the scientist must not presuppose any value; consequently he has to restrict himself to an explanation and a description of his object without judging it as good or bad, i.e., as being in conformity with, or contrary to, a presupposed value. This implies that the statements by which a scientist describes and explains the object of his inquiry must not be influenced by values in which he himself believes.

The state of modern jurisprudence is not inaptly reflected in the range of considerations to which this title might give rise. If the illusion of certitude still survived as a legal premise, if the judicial process were conceived in terms of “tidy formulas,” one could feel more assurance that the enterprise itself is meaningful and potentially fruitful. But if the past fifty years have taught us nothing else, they have made us aware of the complex and ambiguous evaluation of alternatives that underlies the judicially enforced command. Even the word “constitutionality,” which once seemed to express a coherent idea, has lost its definable contours as understanding of public law has progressed. The salutary result of all this is that we recognize the great network of imponderables which we must assess before declaring with confidence that a given exercise of governmental power conflicts with our fundamental law. But by the same token uncertainties have been multiplied, and flat statement and prediction have become increasingly hazardous. The penalty of understanding is doubt.

One of the most important powers of the United States Senate—but one largely neglected in studies of Congress—is that of passing upon presidential appointments. At its regular session in 1950, the Senate granted its “advice and consent” to 25,590 nominations and rejected 4; in addition, 6 nominations were withdrawn by the President and 99 were not acted upon. The great bulk of these cases, some 23,056 of them, involved the promotions of military and naval officers, and were routinely approved. Another 1,197 nominations were of postmasters, now appointed after a civil service examination, whose approval by the Senate is pro forma. The remaining 1,446 nominations submitted by the President were for “other civilian” offices. It is with regard to this last group that the function of senatorial confirmation takes on importance. Even this number is much too great for the Senate as a body to consider, and during each session of Congress there are ordinarily less than a dozen contested confirmation cases which require consideration by the Senate itself. In general, no other function of the Senate is so completely delegated to its committees, which in turn act largely on the recommendations of individual Senators with regard to federal appointments within their states.

To depreciate politics—and of course diplomacy—because it is a thing of power, is to engage in the doubtful sport of “criticism without a fulcrum,” if it be not indeed to impute “guilt by association.” Of course, politics is a powerphenomenon: no power, no politics; much politics, much power. We must take it or leave it at that; for politics is, willy-nilly, a pulling or a pushing around of somebody. To be sure, there are degrees of both pulling and pushing and proprieties of each; but complete avoidance of both, there never is. Other things being equal, to be pulled is better, I suppose, than to be pushed. For one's face to another's back is safer, under power tactics, than one's back to another's face. Better still is it to march abreast, all faces forward, even though that formation, too, involves some lateral shoving for deference in a line that is never entirely even.

Nevertheless, democratic politics, of the persuasive, the pulling, sort, is better than Nazi geo-politics, which is the apotheosis of pushing. It is better, too, than Communistic neo-politics, which is a pushing of all who will not be pulled by the ideal of classlessness, involving a lethal kick now and then from Big Brother to all the deviant little brothers up and down the line. In short, power for is less poisonous than power against; and power with makes for more perfection for more persons than does power over.

In times of crisis and transition the common man is a political philosopher. An example of how, as part of the widespread concern with the basic problems of our politics, the learned world and the world of practical politics today find themselves close neighbors, was the Tenth International Congress of Philosophy. That this Congress, meeting in Amsterdam in August, 1948, has been described by Professor F. H. Heinemann of Oxford in an article entitled “The West in Search of a Metaphysics,” may also indicate how those who think in terms of practical political leadership for the West and those concerned with wider inquiries concerning life and nature have not yet found acceptable common answers. On the one hand at the meeting were the Thomists, or Neo-Thomists, who had already at their disposal some twenty-five Thomist periodicals and who were, in general, “the best organized contemporary philosophical school.” There were also the Marxists and socialists, who, although they had recently gained some professorships in the French and Italian universities, aroused no very great interest. A third organized element was that of Unesco, the leadership of which achieved for itself an organizational control to extend over future Congresses and their affiliated activities; yet Unesco, with its attempted promotion of a scientific humanism, failed to make progress toward either the integration of a western outlook or the building of a bridge between East and West. The speech of its director-general, Julian Huxley, advocating his well-known evolutionary humanism, “fell flat,” evincing, as Dr. Heinemann put it, that “this sort of naturalism … is totally inadequate for the solution of the spiritual crisis of our time.” It appeared also that a spiritual regeneration probably cannot be achieved by means which are largely political.

What social conditions are prerequisite for given forms of community-wide political behavior (“democracy,” “dictatorship,” etc.)? What transitions are possible between one such form of power exertion and another? What social conditions are necessary to, or determinate of, a given type of transition? Working hypotheses for the exploration of these problems are presented in this article.

An understanding of the factual limits on the effectiveness of political aspiration and exhortation has suddenly become essential in the struggle for survival of the free areas of the world against totalitarian domination. The discussion and appraisal of foreign policy is dangerously confused because of the failure of political knowledge authoritatively to define the real areas of choice. We no longer have time to embark upon policies merely because they are sentimentally acceptable, if it is possible to determine in advance their probable failure. With the accelerated transformation of age-old social structures caused by industrialism and by the spreading specialization of tasks, a similar necessity for political knowledge is bound to arise in domestic policy as well. The time is here when the broader policy choices must be confined within a practicable range by established theories correlating power behavior with social conditions.

The venerable city of Strasbourg has long been famed for its stately Cathedral, its University, its baroque palaces, the quaint houses of its medieval quarter known as La Petite France—and for its greatest single gift to European culture: the invention of printing by Johann Gutenberg five centuries ago. During the past year its people have proudly displayed a new edifice symbolizing what many regard as the greatest single step toward European unity. La Maison de l'Europe, built in five months on land given by the municipality, was formally opened on August 7, 1950. It stands in the northeast quarter of the city at Place Lenôtre, facing the pleasant park of l'Orangerie across the tree-lined Allée de la Robertsau. The long white structure, with fifteen flags floating in the breeze before its central portal, is strictly functional, having been planned, with a view toward efficiency and economy, as a temporary headquarters to last ten years.

The French Constitution does not regulate the precise mode of election to its principal legislative chamber, the National Assembly, beyond stipulating (Art. 3) that it shall be elected on a territorial basis through direct and universal suffrage. This general provision was until recently implemented by a law which established a proportional list system based in general on the principal unit of French local government, the département.

The Assembly which enacted these electoral laws was completely dominated by the three big parties of the Left, the Communists, the Socialists, and the Popular Republican Movement (MRP). These groups favored proportional representation for a variety of reasons. First of all, devotion to proportionalism was part and parcel of left doctrine—an important point in a country in which political battles are carried out to a very large extent on the plane of ideas and doctrines. The Communists thought that PR would assure them a large representation in the dominant branch of goverment, i.e., the Assembly, while the MRP, an essentially new party without local organizations and experience with precinct work, considered it more favorable to its interests than a system in which its largely unknown candidates would have been hard-pressed in a struggle of personalities against older, and therefore better-known, men of such traditional parties as, for instance, the Radicals.

The sacrifice of local autonomy and the subordination of individual rights to the implementation of public policy have long been prominent among the charges against planning writ large. Few would deny the existence of these potentials. While a generous optimism may assume that planners are motivated by public purpose alone, the experience of our time has too often demonstrated that power corrupts. And planning is uniquely power. On the other hand, though the vesting of authority commensurate with great ends necessarily provokes the threat of arbitrary decision, the crushing economic problems which face Britain today demand solution, and great power must be ventured. Happily, however, power is negotiable. A tradition of civil freedom and a responsible Parliament provide impressive sanctions against maladministration. Nor is authority inevitably the antagonist of liberty. Indeed, one may suggest, with Kant, that far from adversary, authority is the condition making liberty possible, for law is the foundation of freedom.