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Synopsis The rise of the social sciences accompanied the revolutionary reconstruction of the enlightened monarchies of the eighteenth century into the nation states of the nineteenth century. The social sciences were conceptual orientations and technologies of middle- class strata newly thrust into positions of power by revolution and facing the problem of understanding and consolidating the society that had come into their hands. Sociology was a discipline responsive to the problems of nation-states. The state is the system of political institutions that exercise a monopoly over the use of power in a given territory. The nation is a peculiar type of commu-nity, a system of institutions constituting a more or less complete way of life for a  population; the nation is a commu-nity of sufficient integrity to possess a state of its own. In the nature of the case, the development of the nation and the state have rarely been completely simultaneous or parallel. However, in the long run, stability has depended on the degree to which they are mutually enhancing. If there was a general task that faced sociology at the time of its origin, it was to carry out the adaptation of the nation to the state. As nation state formation diffused in areas where the development of the nation outran the formation of a contemporary type of state, this task was reversed.