This volume is part of a series of monographs from Australia devoted to outlining an alternative approach, based on neo-Marxist concepts, to educational administration. The opening essay examines the historical development of liberalism as a key to understanding the relations between the state, civil society, and the economy, and the development of the mediating role of public bureaucracies. The essay is divided into three major parts. The first part describes the emergence of English liberalism and its associated ideas of representative democracy, as contrasted with continental notions of participatory democracy exemplified in Rousseau. The second part examines three contemporary analyses of the emerging dilemmas of the liberal, democratic state. The third section examines Marxist class analysis and its effect on the understanding of relations between state, economy, and civil society. The analyses of Marx and Lenin are contrasted with that of Weber, and contemporary neo-Marxist analyses of crisis tendencies in the modern state are introduced. Four readings by separate authors follow: (1) "Nervous Liberals," by Michael Walzer; (2) "Bureaucracy and the State," by Erik O. Wright; (3)"What Does a Crisis Mean Today? Legitimation Problems in Late Capitalism," by Jurgen Habermas; and (4) "Crisis Tendencies, Legitimation, and the State," by David Held. An annotated bibliography is included. (TE)