Political Order in Changing Societies

Political Order in Changing Societies is a 1968 book by Samuel P. Huntington dealing with changes in political systems and political institutions. Huntington argues that those changes are caused by tensions within the political and social system, and criticizes modernization theory, contending that its argument for economic change and development being the prime factors responsible for the creation of stable, democratic political systems is flawed. Focusing on other factors like urbanization, increased literacy, social mobilization, and economic growth, he stresses that those factors are not significantly related to political development; in fact a major part of his argument is that those processes are related but distinct.

Huntington argues that order itself is a crucial objective in developing countries. The existence (or lack) of order should not be confused with the issue of the type of that order (both on political level - democratic, authoritarian, and on economic level - socialist, free-market, etc.) While modernity equals stability, modernization is actually a cause for instability, due to urbanization, rising expectations due to literacy, education and the spread of media, etc.

Controversial on first release, and not only in the west, the book is favored by Chinese Neoconservatives. Considering a strong state important in economic growth along the lines of Asian "tiger" economies, they continued to draw ideas from Samuel Huntington and his Political Order in Changing Societies in particular, even after their fall from grace in the June 4th incident. Whatever his use as a foreigner who advocated limiting the scope of democracy, his ideas seemed to have merit on their own. The events of June 4th confirmed their belief in a strong state, considering China's autocratic model to actually be weak and ineffectual much the same as Huntington would.

...
Wikipedia