This book argues that contemporary society in Western democracies is
generally misunderstood to be a pyramidal hierarchy dominated either by
government or the economy. Neither view is correct. We live in a
fundamentally pluralistic society divided into numerous 'modular' social
systems each performing different functions; these include politics,
public administration, the armed forces, law, economics, religion,
education, health and the mass media. Because each is specialized, none
of these systems are dominant and there is no overall hierarchy of
power. Modernizing societies are therefore structured more like a mosaic
than a pyramid. Modernization is the tendency for growth in the adaptive
complexity and efficiency of the social systems. Growth in complexity is
shaped by selection processes which maintain the functionality of social
systems. The best examples are the market economy, science and
democratic politics. The process of modernization is both inevitable
and, on the whole, desirable: this constitutes the modernization
imperative. Therefore, the proper question should not be whether society
should modernize, but how.