ABSTRACT
Modern political systems can be analysed at two levels: at the level of the mass citizenry, and at the level of the corporate groups controlling major resources within the system. At the mass level there is formal equality within territorialy defined electorates: within each constituency one vote counts as much as any other, and decisions are reached by some form of aggregation of equally weighted preferences. At the corporate level there is no equality: there may be provisions for parity in the organization of arenas of bargaining but what counts in the dealings among corporate groups is the capacity to mobilize, to control and quite particularly to withdraw resources of direct importance for the maintenance of the territorial political system (Rokkan in Flora et al. 1999: 261).
