THE AMERICAN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

by Max Beloff ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1959

This thoughtful book by a British observer, Gladstone Professor of Government and Public Administration in the University of Oxford, author of The Tasks of Government. The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1929-1941, and Soviet Policy in The Far East, 1944-1951, is an analysis of the American Government, its functions, problems, potentialities and foreign policy, ""from the point of view of non-Americans, whose main concern is with those aspects of American institutions and policy that affect the outside world."" Taking the United States as ""the extreme case of the common fate of modern governments in being unable to cope effectively with the ever growing burden of day-to-day responsibilities,"" the author writes in turn of the American political system, the Constitution (""a very short document ... in practice very difficult to amend""), the Presidency, the Congress, etc., doubting if the deficiencies of the Federal Government, known to all thoughtful Americans, can be remedied ""without sacrificing the substance of democracy,"" a problem that also confronted the country in the 1780's. Although aimed primarily at a British audience, this provocative and sometimes discouraging book should also in appealto American students of government and foreign policy. It should be an excellent text for advanced students in political economy and could be read with profit by members of Congress and the State Department.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1959

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1959

Categories: NONFICTION