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This paper is based on certain concepts about the nature of social and cultural order and traditions. We view social and cultural traditions, first, as the major ways of looking at the basic problems of social and cultural order, and of posing the major questions about them; second, as giving various possible answers to these problems; and, third, as the organization of institutional structures for implementing different types of solutions or answers to these problems.

FOR A LONG TIME sociological studies of educational systems and processes were rooted in the conception of education as a means of maintaining cultural continuity and of improving productivity. The major functions of education were perceived as: (a) accumulation and transmission of knowledge; (b) development of personality, mainly in the sense of capacity for adjustment to future role and status; (c) promotion of identification and solidarity with the value system of the society and its transmission from generation to generation.' Thus the prevailing conception of education implied the assumption of equilibrium in its relation to other subsystems of the society. The rapid technological developments in industrial societies since World War II and their implications for power politics and for welfare, and especially the emergence of the new nations in which the clamor for rapid economic and social advance was set off against the almost total absence of modern skills and institutions, have stimulated an awareness of the search for factors systematically related to economic growth, rational use of resources and the capacity for technological advancement. In face of the almost total absence of educational facilities in the developing countries, and the general belief that education is the key to economic development, both the leadership of these countries and the international agencies gave unquestioned priority to the setting up of "modern" educational systems rather than to theoretical research into the development-linked factors in education. However, at the same time, the classical conception of education, as concerned mainly with the promotion of cultural continuity, was revised. The dimension of change not only entered into the conception of the objectives of education but came to the forefront in both practical and theoretical preoccupation with education by educators and social scientists.2

Centralized bureaucratic polities can be defined as those political systems with the following major characteristics: first, the political sphere is relatively autonomous and distinct from other social institutions and second, there exist special permanent administrative organizations. We shall base our analysis on a number of pre-modern historical examples: the ancient Egyptian Empires, the Sassanid Empire of Persia, the Chinese Empires from the period of Han onwards, the Roman and Byzantine Empires, certain European countries (especially France) in the age of Absolutism, and the Spanish American Empire. Our purpose is to bring out the common characteristics of the political process in these historical societies, especially as it effects their continuity and stability. In the following pages we shall present some preliminary hypotheses and analyses about the political process in these polities. These hypotheses and analyses are derived from a larger and more detailed study which is in progress.

What do we mean when we call a territorial unit a nation? Is nationhood a worthwhile goal for developing areas of the world, or are there alternative solutions to be found outside the Western European model? These questions and a host of related issues are confronted in BUILDING STATES AND NATIONS, the first full-length report covering UNESCO's major series of international conferences on nation-building.