Suchergebnisse

After two years of effort, the Committee on State Government of the National Municipal League has completed its work on the new fourth edition of the Model State Constitution. This constitution was originally published in 1921, and revisions were made in 1928 and 1933. The form of the constitution has been improved, and the text itself subjected to a thoroughgoing revision, resulting in many important changes. Whereas the third edition had ninety-eight sections, the new one has 116 sections grouped under thirteen articles, dealing respectively with the bill of rights, suffrage and elections, the legislature, initiative and referendum, the executive, the judiciary, finance, local government, the civil service, public welfare, intergovernmental relations, constitutional revision, and the schedule. The explanatory comments have been thoroughly revised and rewritten.

For some time, students of state government and state administration have been puzzled, and perhaps somewhat dismayed, at their inability to measure objectively the accomplishments of the governments of the several states. The same general problem was presented from another angle when, at a round table held in connection with the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Chicago in December, 1936, the attempt was made to measure objectively the results of the administrative reorganization code movement. If standards of achievement could be agreed upon, it might be possible for different investigators, working independently, to examine the same states with similar or comparable results. It should, likewise, be possible to compare the government of a given state before and after the adoption of a code providing for administrative reorganization, and to compare with some degree of accuracy the governments of states of similar size, population, industrial characteristics, etc.