Comparative Government

This book is meant as my introduction to the study of politics. I have written it for my students and for the general public. In
it I have tried to present a vision of the ubiquity of political behaviour, and the paradoxical omnipotence and frailty of the
effort to channel and domesticate it which is what we call government'. Deliberately, I have set out to systematize,
simplify and codify our ever-widening, ever-flowing range of data and circumstances, so as to provide a first - and I really
mean a first - step on a long journey which I hope will absorb and enchant. Why I should attempt this is best explained in terms of personal history. I have been teaching in this field for over twenty years, I still hold the perhaps old-fashioned view that
undergraduates need more attention than graduates and beginning students more attention than the senior ones; and so
over this period, I have considered it a matter of honour and duty and indeed of love to give the first year introductory course
in comparative government. The first rudimentary approach to this book was initiated in lectures I gave at Cornell University
in 1962. Then, at Keele University I modified it substantially, in the years 1963-6. But the book as it now stands follows and
elaborates the First Year undergraduate course in government which I have been giving at the University of Manchester. Indeed,
it is the written version of this course: somewhat less picturesque and mediterranean than my lectures, but fuller, more nuancé,
and, I hope, rather more elegant. thot much in the book records