My intention is to consider political science as a discipline and as a profession in relation to the impact of the physical and biological sciences and of engineering upon the life of man. I propose to inquire into the possible reconciliation of man's mastery over Nature with freedom, the overriding goal of policy in our body politic.

In the interest of concreteness I shall have something to say about past and potential applications of science in three areas: armament, production, and evolution.

It is trite to acknowledge that for years we have lived in the afterglow of a mushroom cloud and in the midst of an arms race of unprecedented gravity. Here I shall support a proposition that may at first evoke some incredulous exclamations. The proposition is that our intellectual tools have been sufficiently sharp to enable political scientists to make a largely correct appraisal of the consequences of unconventional weapons for world politics.

Throughout the years when the Meiji Constitution served for most purposes as Japan's basic law (1890–1947), it was always a matter of considerable value to the nation's constitutional scholars to have readily available an authoritative statement of the intent of the framers of that document. This was Itō Hirobumi's Kempō Gige (Commentaries on the Constitution). It played a role somewhat analogous to that of Madison's journals in our own annals of constitutional, legal and historical scholarship, but was even more definitive. It is interesting therefore to speculate just where present or future Japanese scholars might find a similar source for their present constitution. The facts presently available would indicate the necessity of a pilgrimage to New York's Waldorf Tower. There or in its immediate environs are to be found the most notable of the “founding fathers” of the present Japanese Constitution.

That one should have to seek on foreign shores for the author of the fundamental law of a great modern state is in itself a phenomenon unique in recent history. Even stranger perhaps is the fact that some nine years after its promulgation and four years after the end of the military occupation which made it possible in the first place, this constitution remains formally intact and unamended.

Recent political developments in France, particularly the dissolution of the National Assembly and the subsequent elections of January 2, 1956, overshadowed one of the most interesting and long-awaited enactments of the second legislature of the Fourth Republic. A law of November 30, 1954, passed by the National Assembly by the required two-thirds majority, realized the revision of the constitution of the Fourth Republic. The law was the culmination of debates that had begun when the new constitution was framed. One might indeed say that constitutional reform was advocated throughout the whole period of the Third Republic, and in 1945 the French people overwhelmingly expressed themselves in favor of a constituent assembly to frame a new republican constitution. Yet when the document was drafted and submitted to the people it was received with great apathy and endorsed on October 13, 1946, by a minority of the registered voters. No sooner had it been put into force than the movement for reform recommenced, and various leaders like DeGaulle, Reynaud, Mendès-France, Laniel and Bidault joined the eminent statesmen of the Third Republic in proclaiming the need for further revision. Perhaps no better evidence testifies to the inherent instability of the French body politic than this perennial dissatisfaction with the basic instrument of government.

Recent controversies over the degree of responsibility displayed by American parties have underscored at least one feature of voting in the Congress. Whatever the merits of the contending interpretations and demands, the facts adduced on both sides suggest relatively fluid, unstructured voting patterns, especially in the House of Representatives. Although the party label is clearly the single most reliable indicator of congressional voting behavior, it is admittedly somewhat less than perfect. The individual Representative may fairly often dissent from the views of most of his party colleagues, not only on matters of local or minor significance but also on issues of national or even global import.

The Representative's “independence” is most commonly, and in a good many instances accurately, ascribed to peculiarities of his constituency which generate demands for a non-conforming vote or, perhaps more frequently, are expected to be the source of recriminations and penalities if he does not display independence of his party colleagues on certain types of issues. But the Member of Congress is by no means always able to predict the electoral consequences of his choices even though he is sure that they may produce repercussions in his district.

The use of public employment for political patronage is an ancient phenomenon seldom studied by political scientists in systematic and objective detail. Texts and treatises on political parties reckon with the subject, but usually support their generalizations and conclusions with illustrations rather than comprehensive evidence. Detailed studies date back to the muck-raking period, and deal chiefly with large metropolitan centers. The role of patronage in maintaining the thousands of rural and small city party units across the country, in the face of marked changes in the methods of national party operation over the past generation, is largely guesswork. Yet the vitality of these organizations is a matter of general concern for the future of the party system.

This study is an attempt to apply some of the more familiar assumptions about the value and role of patronage to actual experience in a rural county in central Pennsylvania where it can have little to do with policy control. Exactly what are the political uses of state patronage at this low level? Has it been used to reward the party faithful, or to encourage party activity and contributions, or to woo new partisans? In short, what does a small group of political jobholders contribute to the party that placed them in office—money? service? votes?

As a self-conscious discipline among the cluster of specialties or “fields” encompassed by political science, public administration came late and grew fast. Its recent arrival and rapid growth sometimes obscure the fact that its origins are to be found in a process of experimentation with governmental structure that long preceded the appearance of public administration as a subject of systematic study and is likely to continue as long as the nation exists. This process of experimentation goes on vigorously today, and the development of new forms is generating discord more profound and far-reaching than any that has ever hitherto divided students of public administration. It is with the sources and significance of that discord that this paper is concerned.

The central thesis of this paper is that an examination of the administrative institutions of this country suggests that they have been organized and operated in pursuit successively of three values, here designated representativeness, neutral competence, and executive leadership.

Contemporary social scientists generally regard Henry Adams as a brilliant but erratic figure in the history of American thought. Their image of him is that of a gifted but unreliable and unscientific writer. Yet it is striking how, upon a re-examination of his approach to his world, there emerges a cluster of attitudes and preoccupations which clearly anticipate much of what is significant in the work of these social scientists themselves. The reason why Adams is not, however, regarded as a forerunner of present-day students of society is that he never kept himself from pushing his theories to conclusions. If those who share his scientific ideals must ultimately reach his conclusions, the limits of their science might be exposed by a reconsideration of his personal battle, of his peculiar pains, trials, and failures.

Anticipating familiar tendencies, Adams made a case for irrationalism insofar as he pleaded for the conversion of theory into action; for conservatism insofar as he supported the reduction of discords by a manipulative science of means; and for elitism insofar as he permitted the practitioners of empirical science to settle the social conflicts left open to debate by the traditional methods of politics and philosophy.

It is a commonplace that every period rewrites history in the light of its own problems, and with the aid of wisdom after the event. Changes in the climate of opinion and shifts in the winds of doctrine naturally bring the contributions of earlier thinkers under new scrutiny. Today the mood of critical reassessment is strong, for a significant shift has taken place in English and American political opinion during the past decade; the temper of the times is not visionary, but revisionist, and the pull is not toward revolution, but toward revaluation. The spate of books and articles on the “new conservatism,” the “new right,” and the “conservative tradition,” however, and if ever, defined; the reconsiderations of liberal and reformist thought; the succession of Michael Oakeshott to the chair of Harold J. Laski; the recantations of repentant liberals, and the curious spectacle of revolutionaries triumphantly in reverse; the vogue of Burke and De Tocqueville; and even the difference between D. W. Brogan's earlier acid etching of the American political scene and his recent essay in contentment, all make clear in their varying ways that times have changed.