Book Reviews : Jefferson: The Scene of Europe, 1784-1789. By MARIE KIMBALL. (New York: Coward -McCann, Inc. 1950. Pp. ix, 357. $6.00.)

• Author: Stephen S. Goodspeed
• Published date: 01 December 1950
• Date: 01 December 1950
• DOI: 10.1177/106591295000300420
• Subject Matter: Articles

639
The resulting study, although unexceptionable in its presentation
of the relevant facts and historical sequences, lacks the proper theoreti-
cal basis which would relate the results of such a study to the major
problems of politics. Dr. Berlau confines himself to the discrepancies
between party platform and party action. What is lacking is the basic
framework of the political theorist who distinguishes, at least for pur-
poses of intellectual analysis, between three levels of discourse: the level
of values, the level of empirical data and observation, and the level of
the theoretical model or corpus of theoretical principles which provides
the blueprint for action and helps predict the course of events, given
certain values and certain sets of empirical data. Only an appraisal of
party literature and party action based on such a methodological frame-
work would make possible an evaluation of the changes in the theoreti-
cal principles or even the values of the SPD in the light of the real
situation in Germany between 1914 and 1921.
Furthermore, a study of this kind should surely be conducted in
terms of an explicit and detailed working model of the term &dquo;political
party.&dquo; Dr. Berlau might reply that such a definition is implied in his
opening chapters where political party is treated as a group of like-
minded people who draw up a platform to which they are henceforth
committed. But is this definition valid for all the parties that were then
operating within the context of German political institutions? Is it even
applicable to the SPD itself for the entire period in question, or was
there rather a radical change in the nature of the party? Answers to
questions such as these would raise, in turn, other questions about the
nature and content of the Erfurt program and the role of political
parties in general.
Further analysis along these lines will make it apparent that no
careful and well-executed collection of data and primary source
materials, such as...