Books in Brief

The Study of Comparative Government and Politics, by Gunnar Heckscher, with a Preface by W. A. Robson (Macmillan, $4.25). This is a technical handbook for teachers, researchers and advance students in political science. Written with clarity, brevity and a laudable absence of jargon, it should be useful to any general reader, but its chief value will be to scholars and teachers who want to sharpen the focus of their work. The critical reader will have to make his own corrections and adjustments. He will, for example, find no discussion of constitutionalism or of loyalty and security; nor will he find more than passing references to the Communist-totalitarian regimes which dominate half the globe and threaten the other half. At times the author reveals that pompous mixture of obviousness and obliviousness which is a vocational academic disease; thus: “It is quite probable that the development of ‘militarism’ and the importance of the military in relation to the civil power is closely connected with the extent to which the country is threatened by attack from outside.” The discussions of socialism and the administrative state are superficial, and the author is not sufficiently critical of the pragmatic-materialist approach to the study of politics. Granted these objections, the book remains an excellent vade mecum.

r. English

Featured Tags

The Study of Comparative Government and Politics, by Gunnar Heckscher, with a Preface by W. A. Robson (Macmillan, $4.25). This is a technical handbook for teachers, researchers and advance students in political science. Written with clarity, brevity and a laudable absence of jargon, it should be useful to any general reader, but its chief value will be to scholars and teachers who want to sharpen the focus of their work. The critical reader will have to make his own corrections and adjustments. He will, for example, find no discussion of constitutionalism or of loyalty and security; nor will he find more than passing references to the Communist-totalitarian regimes which dominate half the globe and threaten the other half. At times the author reveals that pompous mixture of obviousness and obliviousness which is a vocational academic disease; thus: “It is quite probable that the development of ‘militarism’ and the importance of the military in relation to the civil power is closely connected with the extent to which the country is threatened by attack from outside.” The discussions of socialism and the administrative state are superficial, and the author is not sufficiently critical of the pragmatic-materialist approach to the study of politics. Granted these objections, the book remains an excellent vade mecum.

r. English