It is a foolish man who believes that he knows the sources of his ideas. I shall not pretend, therefore, to try to specify them here. In previous books, I have indicated some of those whom I regard as the most important influences on my intellectual development, and I will not repeat this discussion. I should indicate, however, that the general theoretical perspective and methodology of this book owes much to the classic work of Max Weber, who set standards for comparative and historical sociology which no one has even come close to emulating. With respect to the contents of this book, however, I think it appropriate to point out that much of my thinking about the relations of values to behavior in American society has been heavily influenced by Robert Merton's noted essay, "Social Structure and Anomie," and that my efforts to locate the analysis of given societies in a comparative and historical context have borrowed heavily from the work of Talcott Parsons. On the methodological side, Karl Deutsch has shown the way for those who seek to fully incorporate comparative historical and social analysis into systematic social science. Both he and Parsons, who have worked together on these problems, have shown the value to scholarship of men who are not afraid to present new, incomplete, and untested approaches for the rest of social science to elaborate or reject. Significant innovators in any field must be prepared to learn that they have been in error; these are the risks inherent in opening new perspectives on old problems.

When I say that we value equality, I mean that we believe all persons must be given respect simply because they are human beings; we believe that the differences between high- and low-status people reflect accidental, and perhaps temporary, variations in social relationships. This emphasis on equality was reflected in the introduction of universal suffrage in America long before it came in other nations; in the fairly consistent and extensive support for a public school system so that all might have a common educational background; and in the pervasive antagonism to domination by any elite in culture, politics, or economics. The value we have attributed to achievement is a corollary to our belief in equality. For people to be equal, they need a chance to become equal. Success, therefore, should be attainable by all, no matter what the accidents of birth, class, or race. Achievement is a function of equality of opportunity. That this emphasis on achievement must lead to new inequalities of status and to the use of corrupt means to secure and maintain high position is the ever recreated and renewed American dilemma.

Karl Deutsch too has pointed to the social scientist's need for general variables to codify national experiences. He suggests that nations vary in their "wills" (a concept close to "central value systems") as a result of differing historical experiences:

Talcott Parsons himself disavows the notion that an emphasis on values implies a monistic approach to social analysis:

Interestingly enough, Friedrich Engels - whose Marxist approach generally underplays the independent significance of values - recognized the force that values exert on political change. It may be worthwhile to cite a few of his descriptive comments on national polities:

Furthermore, in accounting for the "rebellious" behavior of the French and German workers, as contrasted with the British, Engels (writing in 1892) stressed the strength of specific values, not class relationships. To keep the masses in line, once they are aware of their political rights, one must rely on "moral means." And England was more stable than various continental societies because it had not broken with traditional religion. "Religion must be kept alive for the people - that was the only and last means to save society from ruin. Unfortunately for themselves, they the continental bourgeoisie] did not find this out until they had done their level best to break up religion forever.

For Engels and other Marxists, of course, "juridical, philosophical, and religious ideas are the more or less remote offshoots of the economical relations prevailing in a given society." But these ideas account for variations in societies having the same "economical relations"? Such statements while clearly outside the formal Marxist framework of analysis, may be viewed as attempts to analyze systematically variations within major historical epochs and to go beyond the ad hoc descriptions of most Marxists, or indeed of most economists concerned with "non-economic" factors.

The attempt to generalize about the development of social systems in this way has been questioned by some sociologists, e.g., Barrington Moore, Wright Mills, and George Lichtheim. Basically, these critics argue that all complex social systems must be analyzed primarily from a historical point of view. They feel that the analysis of the consequences of specific historical situations is a more adequate "explanation of system" than is the effort to specify the interrelated functions served

by the system and its parts at any given time.

This criticism, that the efforts to formulate generalizations about systems necessarily conflicts with the analysis of historical processes, is warranted. The attack aimed at sociological theory for ignoring Marxian "principle of historical specification" has been discussed by Lewis Feuer, a student of both scientific methodology and Marxian thought. After pointing out that Marx never used the expression, "the principle of historical specification" (which Mills attributed to him), Feuer goes to state:

To be sure, since there are relatively few existing societies to compare, specific hypotheses about their evolution are less subject to verification than generalizations about, say, the development of individual persons, where many more cases can be compared. And because social systems are complex units, we must rely on historical case studies as our basic method for the study of national evolution. However, this does not rule out generalization altogether. The historical case studyapproach need not concentrate solely on the unique. It can draw out generalizations that can apply to all similar cases, and can test and elaborate general hypotheses. Thus there is no necessary clash between developing general sociological hypotheses and taking historical specificity into account. "Much may be gained by using analytical concepts to guide our historical inquiry, and by using the results of historical inquiry to modify our concepts regarding present day problems"

The analyst of societies must choose between a primarily historical or a primarily comparative approach for a given piece of research. He must choose simply because each of these requires a different mode of generalization. But even if he chooses one approach, he cannot ignore the other. Without examining social relations in different countries, it is impossible to know to what extent a given factor actually has the effect attributed to it in a single country. For example, if it is true that the German Stand-estaat (rigid status system) has contributed to the authoritarian pattern of German politics, why is it that similar status systems in Sweden and Switzerland are associated with very different political patterns?

Such an example suggests that comparisons may better enable the researcher to evaluate the effect of specific factors in the development of single national patterns. Three chapters in this book, "A Changing American Character?" "Religion and American Values," and "Trade Unions and the American Value System," use comparative materials in this way.

On the other hand, the analyst obviously cannot ignore specific historical events in attempting to assess what is common to the evolution of different nations. Chapter 6, "Values and Democratic Stability," attempts to show how the French and American revolutions have affected the value systems of these two countries so that they differ greatly from other countries with similar economic structures. And varying value systems, in turn, influence the political stability of the nations in question. "Party Systems and the Representation of Social Groups" (Chapter 9) shows even more clearly the necessity to focus on specific historical events in a comparative analysis, for the electoral systems in each of the countries described are themselves an important determinant of the degree to which the polities of the various countries are stable.

In the end the choice between a primarily historical or a primarily comparative approach is a matter of relative emphasis. If the analyst stresses an historical approach, he must use comparative materials to show to what degree his findings are specific to the country he is studying. If he selects an essentially comparative approach, he should employ historical detail to show how specific social conditions affect the operations of the general relationships he has discovered.

A general theory of social development can scarcely be formulated from the analyses presented in this book. Much more evidence and conceptual clarification are necessary before any such theory is possible. However, comparisons between America's development and that of other nations may silhouette some of the problems involved, for instance, in establishing a new nation. Consider the following:

One of the necessary conditions for a stable democratic polity is a clear distinction between the source of sovereignty and the agents of authority. In a nation, which has broken sharply with the traditional sources of legitimacy, the dominant political ideologies are the products of a revolutionary mood, and hence are most often populist: they emphasize that sovereignty comes from the people. They will therefore also be tempted to emphasize that authority should be exercised by the people - which is almost never feasible. A populist source of the values, which legitimate the authority structure is inherently unstable because in its purist sense it would promise the citizenry more direct control over the government than it could possibly have.

In democracies, the rights of the minority must be respected. Populism has a tendency to deny these rights, to assume that those whose values do not agree with the basic consensus of the society should be driven out. The populist source of the values which legitimate authority in post-revolutionary societies must be supplemented with a respect for the rule of law if a stable democracy is to result. But where the law lacks the support of old traditions, the institutionalization of a respect for the rule of law is difficult. The Founding Fathers consciously sought to inhibit such excesses by creating a system of constitutional checks and balances. America is particularly fortunate in that its long history of effective government and national growth has had the effect of legitimating constitutional government and, consequently, of making appeals to the people over the law increasingly less effective. In France today the rule of law has not been institutionalized to nearly the same degree, and populism remains as the principal source of, and threat to, the legitimacy that is granted agents of authority.

Only if we recognize that in the United States the difficulties encountered in making a distinction between the authority to establish government and the authority to govern almost resulted in a failure to create a nation, can we appreciate the tremendous problems faced by contemporary post-revolutionary societies with much more complicated and less advantageous conditions than ours. Clearly, the odds are against democracy in the new states of Africa and Asia. Many experts on these countries suggest that democracy may be a Utopian short-term objective for such nations. Instead of speaking generally about democracy, it may be advisable to focus on the conditions which protect personal liberty, that is, on due process and the rule of law. Perhaps we should ask, as we look at new countries: under what circumstances is a post-revolutionary regime, or the government of a new state, compatible with the rule of law?.