Political power and the governmental process C.2

This book is based on six lectures the author was privileged to deliver under the auspices of the Walgreen Foundation at the University of Chicago in January, 1956. While the publication in book form required the reformulation and amplification of the material, its structure and the sequence of topics are largely iden tical with the lectures.

The study is a contribution to the branch of political science known as comparative government. In its approach, however, it differs from those traditional in this field; it is not a "country-by country" description and analysis of political institutions or a "functional" comparison of the related institutions and techniques of different political civilizations. By contrast, this study is a pioneering attempt to establish what lately has come to be spoken of as a "conceptual framework." The political institutions and techniques that operate the different political systems will be analyzed by subordinating them to a single, over-all concept or thought pattern that serves as a compass for the evaluation of the bewildering variety of historical and contemporary patterns of government. This conceptual context to which the discussion is oriented is the exercise of the political power fundamental for all political organizations: Is power concentrated in the hands of a single power holder or state organ, or is it mutually shared and reciprocally controlled by several power holders or state organs?

By design, this undertaking is neither grounded in, nor aimed at, an encompassing and unified political theory of a philosophical -speculative or metaphysical-nature. It should be considered a contribution to the reality of the process of political power.