Political decay is a political theory, originally described by Samuel P. Huntington, which describes how chaos and disorder can arise from social modernization increasing more rapidly than political and institutional modernization. Huntington provides different definitions for political development and describes the forms of political decay according to the various definitions. Huntington focuses primarily on political development as modernization and institutionalization. However, he points to the different definitions of political development as being arbitrary ways to understanding the rise of political systems and the relationship between the political systems of different nations.
