Two years ago, when an astute critic made a half-century appraisal of comparative politics in the United States, he reminded us that the American Political Science Association was founded in 1903 as an outgrowth of moves to establish a National Conference on Comparative Legislation. During the more than half-century that followed, the writings in comparative government and politics have reflected the influences which have made themselves felt in the discipline as a whole. The attention given by Charles E. Merriam after World War I to “informal government,” “underlying processes and relations,” and “social bases of political cohesion” is fully appreciated now by those who are projecting comparative studies of political socialization. In the 1930s, Carl J. Friedrich's writings pointed up the need for more adequate conceptualization when combined with appropriate appreciation of empirical research. Mention should also be made of the earlier works of Herman Finer. In their respective ways, albeit in varying degrees, all of these writers recognized the need for an increased emphasis upon the informal and extra-legal factors affecting the political process, and for more concern with generalization and theory.

Asylum for political refugees is an ancient practice, privilege and problem. It has shown a remarkable capacity for institutional survival, albeit with accommodations, in the vicissitudes of changing international relations. I propose here to review its recent performance and consider its continued utility in the contemporary world.

I. MASS INFLUX OF FUGITIVES

Cyrus, after the conquest of Sardes, had placed Pactyas, a native, in a position of trust in the occupied city; but no sooner was Cyrus gone than Pactyas organized a revolt against the new regime. When he learned that Cyrus's troops were on the march to quell the insurrection, he fled in terror to Cyme. Cyrus's military governor then demanded the rebel's surrender, on penalty of that city's destruction. The oracle of the Branchidae, where the Cymeans sought to learn the will of the gods, advised extradition, and the city made ready to abide by the decision. One Aristodicus, however, a citizen of distinction, balked, successfully; a second mission was dispatched to seek out the oracle. The oracle stood pat. Thereupon Aristodicus, who was one of the envoys, circled the temple, removing all birds' nests within reach. The oracle's voice interceded for the birds, bidding Aristodicus to state his case. How then, he said, are you in haste to protect supplicants whilst you command the Cymeans to give one up? Said the voice: Verily, I did so order the Cymeans that they may perish the sooner for their impiety nor ever return to seek my oracle's counsel on the surrender of supplicants.

Practicing politicians as well as students of politics have long recognized the check on presidential power imposed by the federal administrative machinery. High policy must be interpreted; it can sometimes be changed or even frustrated by the bureaucrats who apply laws and executive orders. Officials down the line have interests, loyalties, and ambitions which go beyond and often clash with the allegiance accorded a given tenant of the White House. Each bureaucrat has his own ideas about proper public policy, particularly in his field of special competence. If a career civil servant, he may identify only partially, if at all, the good of the governmental service, not to say the good of the public, with the ends sought by the Administration. And if he owes his appointment or promotion to other sources than the merit system, he may find a positive conflict between his loyalties to the President and to other politicians or political groups.

This conflict can occur at all administrative levels. Cabinet members may make up the President's official family, but some of them are at times his chief rivals for power within his own political party, or, more often, representatives of those rivals. Or the department heads may be so split with sibling political rivalry among themselves that common loyalty to their nominal leader may be subordinated to other values. An observer has lately written: “The conditions which a system of fragmented power sets for the success and the survival of a Cabinet officer encourage him to consolidate his own nexus of power and compel him to operate with a degree of independence from the President.”

Mounting concern over the aims and achievements of American public schools emphasizes the need for continuing analysis of how the schools are run and who runs them. The general theory is simple enough: schools are objects of local control, the people of a local school district exercise that control through an elected school board, and the board appoints a superintendent to act as the chief executive of the district. There are variations from this pattern—in some places school boards are appointed rather than elected, in others the school system is formally a part of the city government, and in a few districts other officials, such as a business manager or building superintendent, share the top executive authority—but it is by far the most common arrangement among the nation's approximately 50,000 school districts.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the relationships between partisan and nonpartisan voting patterns in four cities using nonpartisan municipal elections. It is part of a larger comparative study on the process of policy formation in middle-sized cities. The data have been used to test the nonpartisan rationale which states that the removal of party labels from the ballot insulates local elections from state and national political party influences.

The “insulation” argument states that national political parties do not and cannot adequately serve the needs of the local political unit. Their intrusion into the local scene invariably represents the introduction of irrelevancies which confuse the voters and prevent them from dwelling on local issues in city elections. Thus, the nonpartisan idea is partially based on the belief that local democracy will be improved through rationalizing its political universe. Citizens will choose well if specific, pertinent, and familiar questions are posed to them.

The Senate of the United States, we are told, is a “club.” The image, while hopelessly imprecise and occasionally quite misleading, does have at least one advantage: it underscores the fact that there are unwritten but generally accepted and informally enforced norms of conduct in the chamber. These folkways influence the behavior of senators to a degree and in directions not yet fully understood. “There is great pressure for conformity in the Senate,” one member (mercifully varying the simile) has recently said. “It's just like living in a small town.” And, as in small-town life, so too in the Senate there are occasional careers to be made out of deliberate nonconformity, sometimes only skin-deep, but sometimes quite thorough-going.