The Contemporary Comparative Politics Series will treat the more enduring as well as the more recent themes, approaches, and problems pertaining to the study of political system. In all cases, the volumes are pointed toward the following goals: to ilustrate the relationship between theory and method without being theoretically pretentious or methodologically self-conscious; to underline the essential interrelatedness between fact and value or empirical and normative considerations in politics; to inform the reader in brief compass and in ordinary language, free from the jargon and neologisms of modern social science. The final and overriding goal of the series is to show what the comparative political scientist does and why is an activity of intrinsic interest for the reader and considerable utility for society.