Alfred Schutz was not a political scientist in the conventional sense of the term, nor a political writer, stating his positions to the varying policy problems of his time. Yet his general social theory and philosophy, a body of thought on which he was working with persevering consistency throughout his entire scholarly life, contains at its core conceptions and categories that are eminently applicable to an analysis of the human polity, and which he himself on several occasions in fact applied to such an analysis.¹