As a generating mechanism of spiral structure, we have recently studied the driving of density waves in the stellar component of disk galaxies by growing barlike perturbations or oval distortions. Numerical experiments (Thielheim and Wolff 1981, 1982) as well as analytical calculations using the first-order epicyclic approximation (Thielheim 1981; Thielheim and Wolff 1982) have been performed, demonstrating that this mechanism is capable of producing two-armed trailing spiral density waves in disks of noninteracting stars. These regular, global spiral structures are similar to those found in N-body experiments on self-consistent stellar disks that show bar instabilities which are weak enough to allow spiral patterns to persist (e.g., Hohl 1978; Berman and Mark 1979; Sellwood 1981). On account of this similarity, we take the view that the spiral structure observed in N-body experiments is primarily not an effect of the self-gravity of the stellar disk but a response phenomenon, caused by the formation of a weak central bar and its subsequent growth due to angular momentum extraction by interaction with the spiral as described by Lynden-Bell and Kalnajs (1972).