Thomas Flanagan’s research while affiliated with University of Calgary and other places

Politics involves conflict within the community for control over the community; it also involves conflict among communities. In either case, it provokes anxiety to which the vision of a conflict‐free millennium is a response. There are three broad types of politics ‐ monism (administration, populism, totalitarianism); dualism (total war, class or race struggle); pluralism (liberal democracy, constitutional regimes). Millenarian movements are monistic in their view of the future but dualistic in their view of the present. If, as most political scientists hold, complex societies are inherently pluralistic, millenarian projects are bound to be infeasible (utopianism) or to eventuate in high levels of force in an effort to transform reality (totalitarianism).