This book offers the first accessible, systematic study of the five schools of thought that dominate modern political science in the West. The authors give an account of the intellectual origins and the methodology of pluralism, the New Right, elitism, Marxism, and neo-pluralism–concentrating on the models of political mobilization, state organization, and crisis that are posited by each. Dunleavy and O'Leary end with a strikingly original evaluation of rival analyses of the state, providing a new frame of reference for the study of political controversy in liberal democracies.

...a model of clear organization. * Environment and Planning *

Patrick Dunleavy is a professor from the London School of Economics (LSE) in the fields of public policy and government. Some of his other work includes Digital Era Governance: IT Corporations, the State, and E-Government, Government on the Web, and Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice. He lives in Milton Keynes.

Brendan O'Leary is an Irish political scientist, who is Lauder Professor of Political Science and Director of the Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania. He was formerly a professor at the London School of Economics. He is the author of numerous influential books about the Northern Ireland conflict, many of them co-authored with John McGarry.