Modern Political analysis/by

This sixth edition of Modern Political Analysis appears more than a decade after its immediate predecessor and in the early years of a new century and new millennium. Notwithstanding the passage of years and accompanying political events-of which the audacious terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, are surely among the most prominent-this new edition of Modern Political Analysis reaffirms enduring perspectives on the nature of politics and how contemporary political scientists analyze it. Even so, this edition, marked by the addition of a co-author (Bruce Stinebrickner) to work with the original author (Robert A. Dahl), reflects a thorough revision of what has gone before.
Our treatment of influence and the nature of politics in Part I has been substantially revised and reordered to make it more easily grasped by student readers. Chapter 1 describes people in different situations of influence, ranging from those with virtually no influence over others to enormously powerful figures like Hitler and Stalin. Only after these historical accounts in Chapter 1 do we treat in more abstract fashion the central concept of influence and its relationship to politics and associated phenomena in the remaining four chapters in Part I.
The four chapters that constitute Part II treat similarities and differences among the world's political systems and generally parallel the approach used in the fifth edition. However, the demise of the Soviet Union since that previous edition has reshaped the political landscape in a large part of the world and significantly increased the number of sovereign states on this planet, all of which is reflected in relevant tables and figures presented in Chapters 8 and 9. Yet our analysis in Chapter 9 confirms that earlier editions' overarching approach to the factors that facilitate democracy in national political systems has stood the test of time. In this context, we wish to thank Sunil K. Sahu, a colleague of Stinebrickner at DePauw University, and Michael Coppedge of the University of Notre Dame, a former graduate student of Dahl at Yale.