ABSTRACT
Given the terminological difficulties, it is perhaps not surprising that radically conflicting empirical claims are made regarding relations between states and societies. For Bentley [1908], Truman [1951], Easton [1965], and their pluralist followers, no state is ever independent. Bentley did not flinch from confronting the extreme case: "When we take such an agency of government as a despotic ruler, we cannot possibly advance to an understanding of him except in term of the group activities of his society which are most directly represented through him. Always and everywhere our study must be a study of the interests that work through government; otherwise we have not got down to the fact." [pp. 270-271] The state is always and everywhere an expression of society: it is but a channel for exercising influence. In fact, to be truthful to the pluralist terminology we should have avoided the term "state." In Easton's view, all we have is a system which transforms outside influences into authoritative decisions, without any specific effect of its own.
