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How faulty conceptualization of units & levels of analysis for the study of the US federal system has vitiated much policy research is demonstrated. Special emphasis is given to administrative reorganization research, the case study approach & policy output analysis. An alternative conceptualization of units & levels of analysis is then developed. It is based in the public service industry approach of public choice theory. The alternative units & levels for analysis emphasize the complex interorganizational systems that regulate decision-making in multicentered institutional arrangements. Hypotheses for research are proposed. Examples of current research in this tradition are summarized. Implications of the alternative units & levels are summarized for the prescriptive component of policy studies. AA.

The authors report a Q-factor analysis of 115 nations and 68 variables for the grouping of nations on the basis of their political characteristics. Five factors emerge to distinguish major political groupings of the con temporary world: polarchy, elitism, centrism, personalism, and tradi tionalism. Professor Banks is coauthor with R. B. Textor of A Cross-Polity Survey. Phillip M. Gregg is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at Indiana University.

Since the publication of David Easton'sThe Political System, it has become increasingly common for political scientists to speculate as to the basic factors which may be common to all political systems and which, in their varying manifestations, determine the unique styles of political behavior within each. Efforts to identify the basic political phenomena and their complex relationships have generated a variety of cross-national conceptual schemes and propositions. Some authors speak of structural and functional requisites, some refer to equilibrium conditions for system maintenance. Others, employing more traditional concepts, refer to power, legitimacy, ideology, instability, consensus, influence, and bargaining. Regardless of the form these efforts assume, they all posit the existence of factors or dimensions which are common to all political systems.