Amitai Etzioni was a German-born Israeli-American sociologist, best known for his work on socioeconomics and communitarianism. He founded the Communitarian Network, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to supporting the moral, social, and political foundations of society. He established the network to disseminate the movement's ideas. His writings argue for a carefully crafted balance between individual rights and social responsibilities, and between autonomy and order, in social structure. In 2001, he was named among the top 100 American intellectuals, as measured by academic citations, in Richard Posner's book, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline.
