The abundance of both data and theory in political development today makes it a fascinating field, but the gap between them continues to frustrate its students. What follows is an attempt to explore this gap by trying to harness both data and theory to the study of development in the single state. The case selected for examination is Lebanon, but this is unimportant for the main interest here is methodological. The basic object is to employ comparative quantitative data to illuminate the relation between social mobilization and political development.