some of the more visible problems posed by what might be called the crisis of undercoordination--a crisis rooted in the widen­ ing gap between the degree of interdependence in the systems of modern society and the degree of coordination which libertarian societies are willing to tolerate. The disquieting implication of this crisis is that to achieve stability through coordination may necessitate the imposition of pervasive controls which may be hard to accept by societies steeped in the democratic tradition. Viewed in this perspective, the need for developing a better understanding of the behavior of large-scale societal systems presents a problem of much more than purely academic importance.