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89 Pol. Sci. Q. 1 (1974-1975)

handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry89 and id is 1 raw text is: 






Paradigms of American Politics:


             Beyond the One, the Two, and

             the   Many








                                SAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON


              In American  social studies, Louis Hartz observed
eighteen years ago, we still live in the shadow of the Progressive
era.' The book in which he wrote these words played a major and,
in some respects, decisive role in dissipating that shadow and mov-
ing the study of American society into the bright, warm, soothing
sunlight of the consensus era. For a decade thereafter, the dominant
image  of American  society among  scholars and intellectuals was
that formulated and expressed in the works of Boorstin, Hofstadter,
Parsons, Potter, Bell, Lipset, Hartz himself, and many others. The
consensus theory was the product of a new scholarly concern with
what was  different about American society and, indeed, Ameri-
can civilization. The consensus theory marked not only a rejection
of the earlier progressive paradigm of American politics. It also dif-
fered from, although  it was not entirely incompatible with, the
pluralistic model which, from the early decades of the century, had
been the most  popular paradigmatic child of the American  polit-
ical science profession. The progressive theory stressed class con-
flict; the pluralist model stressed the competition among a multi-
  ' Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace,
1955), P- 27.

SAMUEL   P. HUNTINGTON  is Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government,
Harvard University, and editor of the quarterly magazine, Foreign Policy. His
books include The Soldier and the State, The Common Defense, Political Power:
USA/USSR  (with Z. Brzezinski), and Political Order in Changing Societies.
Political Science Quarterly Volume 89 Number 1 March 1974

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