The Development of Socio-Political Centers at the Second Stage of Modernisation-A Comparative Analysis of Two Types.

This article analyzes briefly, two types of socio-political regimes which develop at second phase of modernization, the phase of so-called "mass modernization". This analysis will be based on the several assumptions about modernization developed in other papers--assumptions which see modernization as a process of continuous socio-demographic and structural differentiation of a growing tendency to a "mass-consensual" society--all of which create continuously new, changing problems and which pose therefore the general problem of sustained growth, of the ability to absorb such continuous changes as the major problem of modernization. It is within this broad conceptual framework that the distinction between the two phases of modernization may best be understood. These phases can be distinguished according to the two major aspects of modernization--the continuous structural differentiation, the impingement of broader groups on the center and the problems arising out of these processes on the one hand, and the ability of the centers to deal with these problems-to develop adequate institutional and symbolic arrangements on the other hand.