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.