This paper is built upon the assumption that modernization consists of processes of structural transformation which tend to increase both the resource-producing or energy-producing capacity of a social configuration and the extent to which this capacity may be realized and coordinated by strategic elites. There are a number of qualifications. For example, modernization involves an increase in resources or energy produced and/or an increase in the extent to which such resources are channelled into the hands of groups such as capitalist entrepreneurs and state officials. In the short run, rapid increases may occur in either of these aspects while the other remains relatively stable. ‘Resources’ and ‘energies’ are terms broadly interpreted to include the enthusiasms and allegiances of a population experiencing profound alterations in the conditions of its existence, the fruits of colonial expansion and frontier exploration, and the outcomes of scientific research and technological innovation. A proportion of resources is likely to be drawn from outside the national polity (for example through colonial receipts or ‘development aid’); a proportion is also likely to be applied outside this polity (as in warfare and commercial activity).

Let us define a cycle as a recurrent pattern in the life (or functioning) of a system. The concept implies that over a certain period of time the system, in some meaningful sense, returns to its starting point, that it regains a state occupied at an earlier stage. If such behavior is demonstrably regular and if recurrence takes place in a pattern that is potentially predictable, such behavior may appropriately be called cyclical or periodic. Cycles are commonly distinguished from trends.

‘Modernization theory’, Alexander Gerschenkron remarked recently, ‘obstructs rather than promotes the understanding of processes of econo- mic change’. Far from being a startling judgement, Gerschenkron's comment only signals that another distinguished scholar has joined the theory's detractors. The marked failure of modernization theory to predict how less developed countries would react to incentives for material advance explains the growing chorus of criticism. This indeterminate response from third world peoples has quite properly raised doubts about how well we understand what is involved in the reorientation of a society's habitual practices. The blight of disconfirming evidence, according to E. I. Eisenstadt, has now led to the abandonment of hope that breakdowns in modernization would be followed by resurgences towards modernity.

Everywhere a disparity can be observed between the socioeconomic composition of the electorate and the composition of the elected, representative body, which acts as a legislature for the society. Microcosm and macro- cosm are never identical; the legislature never mirrors the population at large. This is a universal generalization. It holds true for all representative systems at all times. It is furthermore true that the character of this disparity differs cross-nationally and over time: each legislature is unique in this sense.