'Conflict' means different things to different people. In this book it means revolutionary conflict: rebellion, the internal challenge to the security of the State.
Brian Crozier argues that the State is necessary, but rebellion against it is inevitable. Because the State is necessary, it will defend itself whether it is good or bad. But rebels are a special breed of people, who find prevailing conditions intolerable whether or not they are acceptable to others. Rebels rebel because they are rebels. And because they are rebels, the harder the State defends itself, the more rebellious they feel.
This book is at once urgently topical and timeless. Air Crozier's examples include some of the most burning issues of the day: the Allende experiment in Chile, Vietnam, Ulster; the Greek colonels, the Tupamaros of Uruguay. But he places them in the historical perspective of the theory and practice of the State from prehistoric times to the present.