Political Order in Changing Societies

This now-classic examination of the development of viable political institutions in emerging nations is a major and enduring contribution to modern political analysis. In a new Foreword, Francis Fukuyama assesses Huntington’s achievement, examining the context of the book’s original publication as well as its lasting importance. “This pioneering volume, examining as it does the relation between development and stability, is an interesting and exciting addition to the literature.”—__American Political Science Review__“’Must’ reading for all those interested in comparative politics or in the study of development.”—Dankwart A. Rustow, __Journal of International Affairs__

The rise of atheism in the modern world is a religious phenomenon unprecedented in history, both in the number of its adherents and in the security of its cultural establishment. How did so revolutionary a conviction as this arise? What can theological reflection learn from this massive shift in religious consciousness?

In this book, Michael J. Buckley investigates the origins and development of modern atheism and argues convincingly that its impetus lies paradoxically in the very attempts to counter it. Although modern atheism finds its initial exponents in Denis Diderot and Paul d’Holbach in the eighteenth century, their works bring to completion a dialectical process that reaches back to the theologians and philosophers of an earlier period.  During the seventeenth century, theologians such as Leonard Lessius and Marin Mersenne determined that in order to defend the existence of god, religious apologetics must become philosophy, surrendering as its primary warrant any intrinsically religious experience or evidence. The most influential philosophers of the period, René Descartes and Isaac Newton, and the theologians who followed them accepted this settlement, and the new sciences were enlisted to provide the foundation for religion.

Almost no one suspected the profound contradictions that this process entailed and that would eventually resolve themselves through the negation of god.  In transferring to other areas of human experience and inquiry its fundamental responsibility to deal with the existence of god, religion dialectically generated its own denial.  The origins and extraordinary power of modern atheism lie with this progressive self-alienation of religion itself.

This now-classic examination of the development of viable political institutions in emerging nations is a major and enduring contribution to modern political analysis. In a new Foreword, Francis Fukuyama assesses Huntington’s achievement, examining the context of the book’s original publication as well as its lasting importance. “This pioneering volume, examining as it does the relation between development and stability, is an interesting and exciting addition to the literature.”— American Political Science Review “’Must’ reading for all those interested in comparative politics or in the study of development.”—Dankwart A. Rustow, Journal of International Affairs Contents 7 Tables 10 Foreword by Francis Fukuyama 11 Preface 19 1. Political Order and Political Decay 23 2. Political Modernization: America vs. Europe 115 3. Political Change in Traditional Polities 162 4. Praetorianism and Political Decay 214 5. Revolution and Political Order 286 6. Reform and Political Change 366 7. Parties and Political Stability 419 Index 485 This now classic examination of the development of viable political institutions in emerging nations is an enduring contribution to modern political analysis. The foreword by Fukuyama assesses Huntingdon's achievement Examines the development of viable political institutions in nations and contributes to modern political analysis.