Book Reviews : Essays in Medieval Life and Thought Presented in Honor of Austin Patterson Evans. Edited by JOHN M. MUNDY, RICHARD W. EMERY, and BENJAMIN N. NELSON. (New York: Columbia University Press. 1955. Pp. xviii, 258.)

• Published date: 01 March 1956
• Date: 01 March 1956
• DOI: 10.1177/106591295600900138
• Subject Matter: Articles

206
making in the federal system, drawing upon some of the results of the
Minnesota study of intergovernmental administrative relations. Finally,
Roy Blough contributes a lively essay on the fiscal aspects of federalism.
The fourth and concluding part of the book is concerned with the
stirrings of supranational union in Western Europe. The reader will find
here a great deal of information about such developments as the Council
of Europe, the Organization for European Economic Co-operation, the
European Coal and Steel Community, and the European Payments Union.
William Diebold, Jr., and Ingvar Svennilson analyze problems of economic
integration in Western Europe, and Tom Charlton Clark describes the
inauguration of the Coal and Steel Community. Robert R. Bowie traces
briefly the successive steps that have been taken in federating Europe, and
Carl J. Friedrich contributes a learned essay on federal constitutional theory.
John Fischer states flatly, in an earlier essay, that among Europeans &dquo;na~
tionalism appears to have lost most of its vital force.&dquo; The authors of the
essays in Part Four do not go this far, and are extremely cautious in making
predictions about the possibilities of a federated Western Europe. Their
attitude seems to be that anything can happen, and that no one particular
development is inevitable.
The men who speak in these pages agree that the institutions of federal.
ism are not the products of abstract thought, but are rather pragmatic
responses to felt needs. They understand that the growth of national power
in federal systems is not to be explained by any simple devil theory of
history which would attribute the drift to the center to the evil machina,
tions of power-hungry men. Above all, these scholars have little patience
with simple or single solutions or nostrums, and agree that the road ahead
is one of piecemeal adjustment, starting always from existing realities.
This book is not for beginners. But for members of the political...