Suchergebnisse

Political theorists from Plato to the present have concerned themselves not only with the nature of the polity as we know it, but with how it came to be, what purposes it serves, and by what stages it has developed. The last item, however, has more often than not been slighted. This lack now forces itself on our attention for an obvious reason: Never before have so many "new states" come into being in so short a span of time and never before have students of politics been provided with so many living examples of states at all stages of development, many of them conspicuously failing to perform vital functions, frequently to the extent that disorder and violent change prevail.

Following the lead of G. Almond & S. Verba in THE CIVIC CULTURE (Boston, 1965), this paper seeks to examine the way in which the relationship between pol'al culture & pol'al structure (which Almond & Verba described as "one of the most signif researchable aspects of the problem of pol'al stability & change") has been treated in one particular area--that is, in studies of pol'al participation & apathy. It is argued that although investigations of pol'al culture & pol'al soc'ization may have formed one of the "growth points" in pol'al studies over the last decade, they have, as yet, made a minimal contribution to the understanding of "the problem of pol'al stability & change." IPSA.