At crucial turning points in the history of U.S. political science, urban politics has moved to the center of the discipline. In the early 1900s, comparative studies of local government and administration contributed to the emergence of professional political science. In the postwar era, studies of community power played a critical role in the behaviorialist revolution. In recent years, the rethinking of national boundaries and institutions has presented new opportunities for studies of politics at the local level to contribute to reformulated approaches to state-society relations in general. This extended theoretical essay, though addressed to “urban studies” rather than to political scientists as such, offers glimpses of how such a reformulation might look.