ABSTRACT
The recent literature of political and social science is most impressive in its clear break with formalism. Not more than a decade or two ago the commitment to powerful boundaries between the structure of society and the function of its parts, as represented in the tradition of David Easton in political theory and Talcott Parsons in social theory, was clear-cut. In an odd way, such formalism derived from a classic European model: in Marxian terms, a dualism of base and structure; in Toennies’s terms, a distiction between Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft; in Durkheimian terms, a gap between the contractual and the organic; in Weberian terms, a perennial struggle between charismatic and rational authority. The entire sweep in political and social theory assumed dualism as not only a mode of analysis but a deep structure of mind.
