… disagreements about how benefits should be distributed permeate the relations among actors and persist because bargains are never permanently valid Furthermore, this struggle to make others adjust is played repeatedly. Apparent victory can be illusory or defeat ephemeral, for political bargaining and maneuver result not in definitive choices conferring power on some people rather than others, but in agreements that may in the future be reversed or in discord that signals a continuation of bargaining and maneuver.

This discovery of instability…points up sharply the contrast between economic activity, most of the models for which are self-equilibrating or assume some kind of “dynamic” equilibrium, and political activity, where fundamental instability seems inherent and ineradicable.