Inkeles emphasizes that democratic systems give people freedom to influence the course of public events, to express themselves, and to realize their individual human potential. This volume presents the efforts of social scientists to measure the properties of political systems to address a number of key issues relating to democratic systems. A common syndrome regularly appears and unites these investigations. This includes civil rights and civil liberties. Although the political structures are important in their own right, without significant opportunity to exercise civil rights and enjoy civil liberties there can be no effective political rights and no meaningful functioning of democratic political structures. The authors also reveal that political democracy is not only conceptually but also empirically distinct from various social and economic patterns and outcomes. ISBN 0-88738-881-7: $19.95.