A number of these points are reiterated in the work of Offe who seeks to provide a general explanation of political activity and the selective attention giveri to issues in contemporary capitalist societies. Drawing on both Easton's systems analysis and Bachrach and Baratz's non-decision-making thesis, Offe maintains that "In advanced systems of state-regulated capitalism, political stability can be more reliably ensured through the systematic exclusion and suppression of needs which if articulated would endanger the system' (1976, p. 397). According to Offe various exclusion rules which are an intrinsic part of the institutions and structures of capitalism operate to select certain issues for attention and omit others. Selection mechanisms include those discussed by Saunders ideological and procedural-as well as repressive and structural mechanisms. The former comprise the application or threat of acts of repression by the police, armed forces and judiciary, while the latter include formal and informal limits as to what matters can be dealt with by the state. These mechanisms act as "a system of filters' (1974, p. 39), narrowing the scope of political events and screening out non-capitalist demands. Offe contends that the difficulty in researching these mechanisms and in demonstrating a consistent pattern of bias in the filtering which occurs results from the fact that the capitalist state has to deny its class character and claim neutrality as a condition for its survival. Nevertheless, he argues that the state does intervene to support capitalist interests, and in this sense there is a systematic bias in what the state does. At the same time, echoing the views of corporatist theories, Offe points out that autonomous action is increasingly a feature of state intervention under conditions of late capitalism