The author discusses three models of political development: a liberal modernizing, a radical nationalist, and a revolutionary socialist. In the first part of the article, the liberal model as he understands it, is criticized, among other things, for its narrow conception of politics and its wrong conception of conflict. The latter consists in assuming identity of interest in society and is fundamental to the other points of criticism. In the second section the three models are compared on a selected number of salient dimensions taking the criticism into account. The basic assumption in this section is that it is time order between the dimensions which matters. Seemingly the models have several identical points. Seen in a diachronic perspective, however, the results are hypothesized to be very different and much more so than a cross-sectional analysis would reveal. The argument leads finally to the political conclusion that it is mobilization which is the most important part of any process of change.