This book examines fascism, communism, anarchism, conservatism, and liberalism as systems of rule as well as domains of theory. It is thus a unique effort at linking problems of history with problems of policy.

The six sections of the book detail the historical and theoretical antecedants of this relatively new hybrid area in social research: policy coordinates of political sociology, types of social systems, forms of political ideologies, polarities of revolution and counter-revolution, civil-military relations, mass vs. elite contradictions, and threads of consensus and conflict running through these themes.