Authority Relations and Governmental Performance

This paper presents authority patterns as one aspect of the framework of a research project in comparative political sociology now being carried out by a group of faculty members and graduate students. After summarizing the concerns, reflections, and previous work out of which the project developed, it states and explains the principal hypotheses that the research is intended to investigate. Subsequent reports on the framework of the project will cover the concepts used in it and the manner in which the concepts have been 'operationalized' to make possible the systematic gathering of pertinent data and the measurements required to evaluate the hypotheses.