Political Order and Political Decay

principle of effective government is meritocracy; the principle of

democracy is popular participation

sequence by which modern institutions are introduced and, in particular, the stage at which the democratic franchise is first opened

clientelism as the trading of votes and political support for individual benefits rather than programmatic policies, and distinguished it from elite patronage systems in which the scope of clientelist recruitment is far more limited and less well organized

clientelism had become deeply rooted in American politics prior to the onset of reform and hence was much harder to eradicate

courts, opposition on a state level, and the difficulty of achieving a clear legislative majority all slowed the American reform process

produce new social actors not present in an agrarian society. These actors have no strong stake in the existing patrimonial system; they can either be co-opted by the system, or they can organize an external coalition to change the rules by which the system operates

process of socioeconomic modernization

necessitates new taxes and revenue-raising capacity; it requires bureaucratic organization both to tax and to manage the fiscal and logistics chain that supplies the troops in the field; and it upsets interelite relationships by forcing the recruitment of nonelites to serve in and often lead the army.

Military competition creates imperatives far more powerful than any economic incentive: