A Modern Approach to Government
TANENHAUS, JOSEPH
A Modern Approach to Government The Dynamics of Democratic Government. By John P. Roche and Murray S. Stedman Jr. McGraw-Hill. 445 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by Joseph Tanenhaus Assistant Professor of...
...In recent years, the conviction has spread that the truly significant aspects of government can be better understood by focusing attention on the ways in which public policy is formulated and implemented...
...There are several reasons for their success besides their general emphasis on the dynamics of government...
...At the same time, they take pains to encourage dissent by presenting the substance of differing viewpoints and interpretations...
...The task of working his way through such a forest of legal, historical and technical data leaves the average reader exhausted and totally confused...
...They lay bare their basic assumptions at the outset and then proceed to support them as stalwartly as honesty and sound scholarship permit...
...Books oriented along these lines, yet designed for the non-specialist, have proved uncommonly difficult to write...
...They have, in the first place, effectively utilized recent developments in the social sciences, but without falling prey to the formidable jargon that so often frustrates the unitiated in these fields...
...contributor, "Phylon," "Journal of Politics'' The typical government text is notoriously a ponderous and unimaginative tome, as fact-crammed as the World Almanac and hardly more stimulating...
...Every subject is treated in comparative fashion...
...Indeed, the book as a whole is written with a verve rarely associated with this sort of work...
...The chapter on "The Functions of the Judiciary," for example, begins with a general description of the judicial process, and then turns to the role of the judiciary in the United States, Great Britain and France...
...Reviewed by Joseph Tanenhaus Assistant Professor of Government, NYU...
...Furthermore, the authors have successfully undertaken to relate their description of political processes in the United States, Britain and France both to peculiar local conditions and to a theory of democracy outlined in the introductory chapter...
...Roche and Stedman present their analysis in the best liberal tradition...
...As a result, the reader has several frames of reference constantly before him and is thus in a much better position to evaluate his own institutions...
...This reviewer's experiences during the past several weeks in reading The Dynamics of Democratic Government with a group of undergraduates has strongly confirmed his first impression: Roche and Stedman have written the best introduction to contemporary democratic government currently available...
...Roche and Stedman have now attempted such a volume—and with admirable results...
Vol. 37 • August 1954 • No. 34
