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ABSTRACTIn this paper an attempt is made to indicate some possible relations between the working of political systems and, on the one hand, some aspects of "culture" and, on the other hand, various aspects of power and market relations. The discussion begins with some recent attempts to explain the variability of modern and modernizing societies in other terms than those offered in the earlier studies of modernization which heavily emphasized the difference between "traditional" and "modern" societies and attempted to explain many of the differences. The revision of these assumptions stresses both the importance of cultural continuities (and "traditions") and various internal and international constellations of power relations in explaining the variety and variability of "modern, modernizing and transitional societies."The analyses presented here present a fuller specification of some of the institutional loci of such continuity, the nature of the cultural orientations or codes (similar to Weber's Wirtschaftsethik) which may influence the working of political systems, and the mechanisms through which such influence is exerted. These codes or models are not just abstract or intellectual orientations. They provide rather specific institutional directives. They help to define boundaries of collectives, the coalescence of different types of such collectivities – the cultural, political, ethnic and religious –, the rights of membership in these collectivities, the specification of collective goals and public goods prevalent in them, and the centers and various counter‐cultures. The paper attempts to trace the influence of such codes on some crucial aspects of social and political organization in both the traditional and modern phases of the "same" society – W. Europe, Russia, and various patrimonial societies in S.E. Asia and Latin America.It attempts also to analyze some of the crucial differences between traditional and modern social phases, to indicate the nature of the process of struggle which takes place during transition, and to relate these changes to cultural models and codes.