ABSTRACT
Politics in Western countries involved more than relations among elite persons and groups. Yet patterns of elite relations tended to be decisive for the basic modalities of politics and the main characteristics of political systems. This chapter reviews Western political development during the modern period. The persistence of warring elite factions and camps during this early part of the West's modern history was conspicuously interrupted only in England. Outside the main European power centers, the roll of countries with united or at least partially united elites increased during the nineteenth century. In Sweden, disunited elites appeared to follow the English example of 1689. The formation of united elites in the Dutch territories involved a different mechanism than in England. The elite unifications that occurred in England and the Dutch Provinces, and later in the United States, depended upon essentially accidental, but propitious political circumstances that had little con-nection with economic changes.
