ABSTRACT
The governmental, public nongovernmental, and political institutions of the civil community are linked with each other and with the local citizenry through "games," any of which will involve some or all of them. The frontier path chosen by American society imposed a dual burden on American political institutions. The political system and its subsystems are blamed—often beyond what are reasonable—when the problems are not, or cannot be, solved. The major thrust of American politics, then, has been toward coming to grips with one frontier after another. The nation's political history stands as stark evidence of this fact. On the rurban-cybernetic frontier, the modest-size urban community, appears to be the best equivalent of those forms of settlement, offering sufficient ambit for the development of a complete local communications network while maintaining a level of interpersonal communication sufficiently high to encourage sharing on a personal basis. Some medium-size and smaller cities are freestanding metropolitan centers.
