David Easton was a Canadian-born American political scientist. At the forefront of both the behavioralist and post-behavioralist revolutions in the discipline of political science during the 1950s and 1970s, Easton provided the discipline's most widely used definition of politics as the authoritative allocation of values for the society. He was appointed Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of California, Irvine in 1997.

Preface Prologue Part I: Structure in Political Research 1. Structure and Contemporary Political Analysis 2. Political Structure Revived 3. Structure in Political Explanation 4. Meaning of Political Structure 5. Varieties of Political Structures 6. Effects of Nonformal Political Structures 7. Effects of Formal Political Structures 8. Structuralism as a Theory of Determination 9. Structuralism, Systems Analysis, and Higher-Order Structures 10. Comparative Research and Whole System Constraint Part II: The Structuralism of Nicos Poulantzas 11. Poulantzas: Marxism Redefined 12. Structuralist Marxism and Systems Analysis 13. A Structuralist Explanation of the State 14. The State a Structural Object 15. The Structural Forms of the Political System 16. The Transformation to Authoritarian Political Structures Part III: Higher Order Structures 17. Higher Order Structures: As Explanation 18. Higher Order Structures: Their Composition and Influence 19. Substance versus Methods Notes Index of Names Index of Subjects.