If there is any lesson to be learned from these essays, it is this: The empirical world is too complex to admit any single definition of it. Analytical systems are ways of delimiting reality for various purposes and ultimately acting upon it. Each analytical system should be, in the long run, a basis for policy on a concrete system. These were the objects of the classical political theorists and Marx. They remain valid today, with due allowance for our modest, piecemeal objectives and ambitions. The problem, then, is not whether to support a systematic approach or to reject it, but to discover wich system is meaningful and useful for what purpose. These essays represent attemps to find some useful systems for the political analysis of development.