This book is not a marginally revised edition. It has been rewritten from first to last. We have attempted to incorporate the newer literature of the discipline of comparative politics as it begins to move into the 1980 s. Yet the reader familiar with the first edition will recognize the clear continuities in the present version. The intellectual structure in the earlier work has been more fully elaborated and analytic approaches proposed then are more completely implemented now. The new edition also reflects intellectual growth in the way it deals with problems of explanation, understanding and interpretation of political phenomena. It the first edition we stressed sociological, anthropological and psychological modes of analysis, seeking to explain the characteristics of politics in terms of constraining, social structural and cultural conditions. In the present edition, the political system as often becomes the independent one, as we elaborate our treatment of public policy.