ABSTRACT
In a remarkable essay, D. Lockwood claims “that Parsons’ array of concepts is heavily weighted by assumptions and categories which relate to the role of normative elements in social action, and especially to the processes whereby motives are structured normatively to ensure social stability. The alternative between “normative elements in social action” and a factual “substratum of social action,” which Lockwood takes over from the work of Renner, in fact indicates two levels of the analysis of social structure which are in no way contradictory. The categories employed in the model will be used in terms of the coercion theory of social structure. A note of caution is required with respect to the “modes of behavior” included by Ginsberg in his definition of quasi-groups. Conflict groups are certainly also psychological phenomena. The almost unnoticed transition from conflict theory to elite theory in the works of Pareto and Mosca has one aspect of some significance for our context.
