Abstract
AT a time when a bold experiment in the method of governing India is to be made and the details of the new federal constitution are being elaborated, a thoughtful paper by Sir Arnold Wilson, in the English Review for May, on the relative merits of government by means of an executive responsible to an elected body and by bureaucratic methods, should be read. As is well known, the application of the democratic principle to Eastern conditions is by no means new. It has already been attempted, not only in the management of local affairs in India itself, but also in a wider field in other countries, such as Turkey, Egypt, Persia, Iraq, Cyprus, Ceylon, and the Dutch East Indies. The results so far obtained are described in detail in the paper under review. They make very melancholy reading. In these very different localities, the introduction of the electoral principle has almost without exception either ended in complete failure or has been disappointing. On the other hand, in the overseas possessions of France and Italy, where the system adopted is a benevolent autocracy, the people are said to be contented and there is little or no unrest of the type now so common throughout India.
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Constitutional Tendencies in the Orient. Nature 130, 123 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130123e0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130123e0