¹ For a discussion of the problems and trends in the comparative study of politics see Macridis, Roy C., The Study of Comparative Government (New York: Random House Inc., 1955)Google Scholar; Macridis, Roy C. and Brown, Bernard E. (eds.), Comparative Politics (Rev. ed.; Homewood, Ill.: The Dorsey Press, 1964), pp. 1–11 Google Scholar; Eckstein, Harry, “A Perspective on Comparative Politics, Past and Present,” in Eckstein, Harry and Apter, David E. (eds.), Comparative Politics (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), pp. 3–33 Google Scholar. Modelsfor the comparative study of political systems have been proposed in Apter, David E., “A Comparative Method for the Study of Politics,” The American Journal of Sociology, 64 (1958), 221–237 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Apter, David E., The Politics of Modernization (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1965), esp. pp. 1–42 and 223–265 Google Scholar; Gabriel A. Almond, Introduction to Almond, G. and Coleman, J., The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1960)Google Scholar; Almond, Gabriel A., “A Developmental Approach to Political Systems,” World Politics, 17 (1965), 183–214 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Almond, G.A. and Powell, B. G., Comparative Politics (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1966)Google Scholar. A model for the comparative study of political participation has been proposed by Rokkan, Stein in “The Comparative Study of Political Participation: Notes towards a Perspective on Current Research,” in Ranney, Austin (ed.), Essays on the Behavioral Study of Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962), pp. 47–80 Google Scholar.

² Almond, Gabriel A., “Comparative Political Systems,” Journal of Politics, 18 (1956), 391–409 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Some of the major problem-areas in cross-national political survey research have been examined in: Verba, Sidney, “Survey Research and the Study of Comparative Politics,” (Center for Advanced Study inThe Behavioral Sciences, 1963)Google Scholar; and Scheuch, Erwin, “Progress in The Cross-Cultural Use of Surveys,” (Paper submitted to the International Social Science Council, Round Table on Comparative Research, 1965)Google Scholar. For a review of current efforts in cross-national research, including survey research, see Rokkan, Stein, “Comparative Cross-National Research: The Context of Current Efforts,” in Merritt, and Rokkan, (eds.), Comparing Nations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966)Google Scholar. The problems of equivalence of meaning encountered in intranational survey research also apply to cross-national research; they are discussed in the literature on methods in survey research. For recent contributions in this area see Converse, Philip E., “New dimensions of meaning for cross-section sample surveys in politics,” International Social Science Journal, 16 (1964), 19–34 Google Scholar; Przeworski, Adam and Teune, Henry, “Equivalence in Cross-National Research,” Public Opinion Quarterly, (1966), 551–568 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ With respect to semantic differences, see, for example, Osgood, C. E., Suci, G. J. and Tannenbaum, P. H., The Measurement of Meaning (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1957)Google Scholar; Osgood, C. E., “Cross-cultural comparability inattitude measurement via multilingual semantic differentials” in Steiner, I. D. and Fishbein, M. (eds.), Current Studies in Social Psychology (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc., 1965), p. 95 Google Scholar.

⁶ The most comprehensive presentation and analysis of the psychological and social factors affecting political involvement is Lane's, Robert E. Political Life (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1959)Google Scholar. Since this study is based almost exclusively on data from the United States, where the politicization of life is relatively low, the salience of politics is not treated as a separate dimension. Its expression in political life is discussed as an aspect of ethnic—or economic—group politics, or in terms of the “conscious needs served by participation in political life.”

⁷ Attitude research has shown that attitudes vary as a function of the perceived importance of the attitude-object in leading to or blocking the attainmentof values, and as a function of the rated importance of the values associated with that object; see Rosenberg, Milton J., “Cognitive Structure and Attitudinal Affect,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 53(1956), 367–372 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. See also S. M. Lipset's distinction between social “characteristics” and social “factors” affecting therates of voting turnout. Among the “factors” Lipset includes “the relevance of government policies to the individual”: Lipset, Seymour Martin, Political Man (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1960), pp. 186–190 Google Scholar. On the relevance of government policies to business and industry, as a factor affecting the political interest and involvement of members of these sectors of the economy, see Lane, op. cit., pp. 321–326.

⁸ Rokeach, Milton, “Attitude Change and Behavioral Change,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 30 (1966), 529–550 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. “Attitude” is defined by Rokeach as “a relatively enduring organization of beliefs about an object or situation predisposing one to respond in some preferential manner.”

⁹ See Kalleberg, Arthur L., “The Logic of Comparison: A Methodological Note on the Comparative Study of Political Systems,” World Politics, 19 (1966), 69–82 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Bendix, Reinhard and Lipset, Seymour M.,“Political Sociology,” Current Sociology, 6 (1957) 79–99 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ On the “self-interest axiom” in social action see Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957), pp. 27ffGoogle Scholar. According to Bendix and Lipset, “cultural, socio-psychological and situational determinants … intervene between the economic position of individuals and their collective actions, … these intervening conditions modify—though they do not nullify—the impact of economic self-interest on conduct ….” (“Political Sociology,” op. cit. p. 88). On economic interest and political involvement see Lane, op. cit. pp. 102–108, 321–334; an example of a recent study is Lindenfeld, Frank, “Economic Interest and Political Involvement,”Public Opinion Quarterly, 28 (1964), 104–111 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² Almond and Verba, op, cit. p. 168.

¹³ The correlation between salience at the orientational and at thebehavioral level is a researchable variable. One may assume that for any given individual the present perception and evaluation of politics in terms of goal-attainment will be related to his past experience with goal-seeking through political action. At the macro-level of analysis, one would expect a high positive correlation between the orientational and the behavioral magnitude of salience, except in periods of rapid change.

¹⁴ A method for the measurement of the crossnational validity of political concepts through a differentiation between identical and equivalent indicators has been proposed by Adam Przeworski and Henry Teune, op. cit.

¹⁵ See infra.

¹⁶ Palombara, J. La, “Notes, Queries, and Dilemmas,” in Palombara, J. La (ed.), Bureaucracy and Political Development (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 42–43 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷ Verba, Sidney, “Comparative Political Culture,” in Pye, L. and Verba, S. (eds.), Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 549 Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Almond and Verba, op. cit., pp. 481–482.

¹⁹ Kroeber, A., The Nature of Culture (Chicago, 1952), p. 107 Google Scholar.

²⁰ Kluckhohn, C., “Culture and Behavior” in Lindzey, G. (ed.), Handbook of Social Psychology (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), II, pp. 923–924 Google Scholar. The emphasis is mine.

²¹ Kluckhohn, C., “The Study of Culture,” in Lerner, D. and Laswell, H. D. (eds.), The Policy Sciences (Stanford, 1951), p. 88 Google Scholar. The emphasis is mine.

²² Parsons, Talcott, “Culture and the Social System,” Introduction to Part IV of Parsons, Talcott, Shils, Edward, Naegele, Kaspar and Pitts, Jesse (eds.), Theories of Society (Glencoe, Ill., The Free Press, 1961), p.964 Google Scholar.

²³ Duijker, H. C. J., “Comparative Researchin Social Science with special reference to Attitude Research,” International Social Science Bulletin, 4 (1955), p. 560 Google Scholar.

²⁴ See note 7.

²⁵ Himmelstrand, Ulf, Social Pressures, Attitudesand Democratic Processess (Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell, 1960), pp. 157, 166, 181 Google Scholar.

²⁶ Aubert, , Fisher, , Rokkan, , “A Comparative Study of Teachers' Attitudes to International Problems and Policies,” Journal of Social Issues, 4 (1954), 25–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rokkan, S., “Party Preference and Opinion Patterns in Western Europe,” International Social Science Bulletin, 4. (1956), 587–588 Google Scholar. See also Rokkan, S., “Citizen Participation in Political Life,” International Social Science Journal, 12 (1960), pp. 12–13 Google Scholar.

²⁷ Campbell, A., Converse, P., Miller, W., Stokes, D., The American Voter (N.Y.: John Wiley & Sons, 1960), pp. 177–178 Google Scholar.

²⁸ Habermas, , Friedeburg, , Oehler, , Weltz, , Student und Politik (Frankfurt: Neuwied, 1961), pp. 71–123 Google Scholar.

²⁹ Campbell, A., “The Passive Citizen,” Acta Sociologica, 6, (1962), 9–21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ Almond and Verba, op. cit., pp. 180–261.

³¹ Ibid., pp. 481–482.

³² S. Verba, “Comparative Political Culture,” op. cit., pp 544–550.

³³ Allardt, E., “Community Activity, Leisure and Social Structure,” Acta Sociologica, 6 (1962), 67–82 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁴ Bendix and Lipset, op. cit. Neil J. Smelser has used these elements for his macro-political theory of collective behavior: see his Theoryof Collective Behavior (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962)Google ScholarPubMed.

³⁵ This refers to the typology in Parsons, T. and Shils, E. (eds.), Towards a General Theory of Action (New York: Harper and Row, 1951, 1962), p. 75 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁶ Anthony Downs, op. cit.

³⁷ Talcott Parsons, “Culture and the Social System,” op. cit., p. 967.

³⁸ Ibid. Parsons admits that “in one sense inclusion is also a category of reward, the reward of “acceptance”” (p. 968). The distinction between rewards and facilities is parallel to that between consummatory and instrumental action.

³⁹ Palombara, J. La, Interest Groups in Italian Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 306–348 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁰ Peter Nettl has recently discussed the status of the political “subsystem” within society in terms of two variables: (a) the range of the political subsystem, which refers to the area of goals drawn into the process of collective goal-attainment; and (b) the salience of the political subsystem, which is its weight relative to other subsystems, i.e., the relative priority assigned to politics. The historical examples of shifts in range and salience cited by this author (Guizot's “enrichissez-vous!,” the shift towards the welfare-state in the last fifty years, the depoliticization in Sweden, America and other countries, and Nkrumah's “Seek ye first the Kingdom of Politics”) point towards a macro-political concept of salience similar to that presented in this paper, particularly with reference to the problems of development or change. See Nettl, Peter, Political Mobilization (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1967), pp. 56–102 Google Scholar. Although it is possible to distinguish analytically between “range” and “weight,” it seems that the priorities implied in the concept of “weight” are a function of the specific range of goals sought through political action and of the priorities assigned to these goals.

⁴¹ This term has been proposed in Eulau, Heinz and Koff, David, “Occupational Mobility and Political Career,” Western Political Quarterly, 11 (1962), p. 508 Google Scholar.