108 NATIONAL CIVIC REVIEW [February

ginning of more intensive objective study of public school finances and operations; in any event, it provides both the spe- cialist in local government and the lay- man with highly useful source material on the subject.

WADE S. SMITH, Director of Municipal Research

Dun & Bradstreet, Inc., New York

French Election Systems

ELECTIONS, 1789-1957. By Peter Camp- bell. Foreword by Sir Douglas Savory. New York, Frederick A. Praeger, 1958. 144 PP.

When the interim government of Charles de Gaulle rewrote the electoral law for the French elections of Novem- ber 23 and 30, 1958, there was nothing novel about the act. Unlike the United States or the United Kingdom, France has frequently changed electoral laws and the law that was used for the 1958 elec- tions was basically the same as the one used for thirteen of the seventeen elec- tions held during the Third Republic. The history of these changes, the rea- sons for them and their results are all recorded in Mr. Campbell’s book, and the story of how the electoral law has repeatedly been used as an instrument in the partisan struggle is an interesting one. Mr. Campbell begins with a chapter in

which he analyzes the role of electoral systems in French politics and then he treats, in successive chapters, the years of indirect election and limited suffrage (1789-1848), the start of direct manhood suffrage (1848-1870), the electoral laws and elections of the Third Republic (1870-1940) and the various forms of proportional representation used during the Fourth Republic. Three appendices provide a summary of the electoral sys- tems adopted between 1848 and 1951 and describe briefly the election of overseas deputies and elections to the second chamber.

FRENCH ELECTORAL SYSTEMS A N D

Students of local government will not find any account of municipal elections and only one brief reference to depart- mental elections (page 126), as Mr. Campbell deals only with national elec- tions, principally those to the popularly elected lower house of Parliament.

Mr. Campbell concludes that the fre- quent changes in the French electoral laws have done no permanent good in that changes in the law alone have had no effect on the strength and stability of French governments, and that they have helped to bring discredit upon par- liamentary democracy in France as the public has disliked the spectacle of poli- ticians altering the electoral law for their own benefit. The de Gaulle govern- ment agreed with Mr. Campbell’s first point for, although it changed the elec- toral law, it placed its main hopes for strengthening the government in the new constitution. Whether the politicians of the new French republic will heed Mr. Campbell’s second point is for the future to decide. ROY PIERCE University of Michigan

Manager and Policy THE ROLE OF THE CITY MANAGER IN

POLICY FORMULATION. By Clarence E. Ridley. Chicago, The International City Managers’ Association, 1958. viii, 56 pp. $2.00.

The author, for 27 years executive director of The International City Man- agers’ Association, was ideally fitted from prior acquaintance with the profes- sion to take the assignment of exploring the actualities on the question of how far city managers may and do go in contrib- uting to policy. He has covered the sub- ject objectively and thoroughly after obtaining answers to questionnaires from 88 selected managers in office in cities up to 150,000, and touring among his informants.

Somewhere, sometime, it became the fashion to set up a straw man and joy- fully proceed to knock it down. The