ABSTRACT
This paper is a highly speculative attempt to delineate a theme in the development of social organization that I think is of special importance in modern society-and hence to all comparative studies of social structure. This structural theme is the associational aspect of social relationships, involving particularly the voluntary principle wi th respect to membership and certain major patterns of equality in the relations among members. The institutions of citizenship, as crystallized in the principal "democratic" societies of the modern world, comprise its largest-scale form. However, i t also permeates the immense network of modern private voluntary associa tions and, in modified form, the modern professional world (cf. Parsons, 1968).
