The field of sociology also offered also its contributions to the new thinking about developing nations. We have already mentioned the great German sociologist Max Weber and his idea that societies go through three successive stages on the route to development: traditional authority, charismatic authority, and then rational-legal authority. Weber’s translator (from German to English) and major disciple in the United States was Talcott Parsons of Harvard University; other major figures in sociology who wrote about developmental themes included Daniel Lerner, Seymour Martin Lipset, and (although a political scientist, he often used sociological approaches) Karl Deutsch.