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89 Pol. Sci. Q. 1 (1974-1975)

handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry89 and id is 1 raw text is: Paradigms of American Politics: Beyond the One, the Two, and the Many SAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON In American social studies, Louis Hartz observed eighteen years ago, we still live in the shadow of the Progressive era.' The book in which he wrote these words played a major and, in some respects, decisive role in dissipating that shadow and mov- ing the study of American society into the bright, warm, soothing sunlight of the consensus era. For a decade thereafter, the dominant image of American society among scholars and intellectuals was that formulated and expressed in the works of Boorstin, Hofstadter, Parsons, Potter, Bell, Lipset, Hartz himself, and many others. The consensus theory was the product of a new scholarly concern with what was different about American society and, indeed, Ameri- can civilization. The consensus theory marked not only a rejection of the earlier progressive paradigm of American politics. It also dif- fered from, although it was not entirely incompatible with, the pluralistic model which, from the early decades of the century, had been the most popular paradigmatic child of the American polit- ical science profession. The progressive theory stressed class con- flict; the pluralist model stressed the competition among a multi- ' Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955), P- 27. SAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON is Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government, Harvard University, and editor of the quarterly magazine, Foreign Policy. His books include The Soldier and the State, The Common Defense, Political Power: USA/USSR (with Z. Brzezinski), and Political Order in Changing Societies. Political Science Quarterly Volume 89 Number 1 March 1974