The term “political modernization” is of late encountered with increasing frequency in the literature of political science. Its antecedents are somewhat diffuse. In the most general sense, it seems to represent a specialized adaptation of scholars' long-standing concern with the question of whether the process of social change is determinate or variable, random or patterned, continuous or episodic, cyclic or evolutionary. Within this tradition “political modernization” is a concept opposed in tendency to the relativistic character of much modern scholarship in the field of politics. It would seem to be oriented more in the direction of a patterned and evolutionary—although not necessarily determinate or value-laden—interpretation of social change.