THE POLITICAL SYSTEM/

THE STATE
UNIT 4
 THE STATE
• Michael J. Sodaro (2008:124). A state is the
totality of a country’s governmental institutions
and officials, together with the laws and
procedures that structure their activities.
• Andrew Heywood, (2007:91). A state is a political
association that establishes sovereign
jurisdiction within defined territorial borders and
exercises authority through a set of permanent
institutions.
• The definitions emphasise institutions.
The Political System
• It relates to an application of system theory to
the study of political science. Easton seeks to
construct an empirically oriented general theory
of politics and to that end, he seeks to define the
kinds of functions and characteristics of any
political system through a systematic frame
work for political analysis.
• He examines the basic processes through which
a political system, regardless of genetic and
specific type, is able to persist as a system of
behaviour in a world either of stability and
change.
 Definition
• "[A] political system can be designated as those
interactions through which values are
authoritatively allocated for a society." (Easton,
Systems Analysis, 1965, p. 21)
• “System” is the concept that refers both to a
complex of interdependencies between parts,
components, and processes that involves
discernible regularities of relationship, and to a
similar type of interdependency between such a
complex and its surrounding environment.
Social System
• A social system, like all living systems, is
inherently an open system engaged in processes
of interchange (or “input-output relations”) with
its environment, as well as consisting of
interchanges among its internal units.
• By interdependence we mean that when the
properties of one component in a system change
all the other components and the system as a
whole is affected.
• The boundary of the political system means that
every political system has its circumscribed
frame work in which it performs. In this way it
has become easier to understand the meaning of
a political system
• The political system is thus, broadly, the political
arrangement of a society, embracing all factors
influencing collective decisions.
• The political system thus includes processes of
recruitment and socialization, parties, voters and
social movements, which not formal parts of
government.
• In a political system there are some fundamental
units (substructures and sub systems) and
boundaries that differentiate it from other
systems. The political system is composed of
different structures (substructures) and
functions.
• The sub systems are assigned specific functions
to do. These may be authoritative assigned
function.
 Functions
• The functions in a political system cater for the
demands of the people to ensure development.
There are two main types: input and output.
 INPUTS
• Every political system has three fold functions.
• 1.     Entertaining demands
• 2.     Ensuring efficacy
• 3.     Change or development
• There are generally three sources from where
demands originate.
• (a) Society/domestic environment.
• (b) Political elite  
• (c) International environment
• There are four types of demands as indicated by
David Easton.
a) Demands for goods and services
b) Demands for the regulation of behaviour
c) Demands for participation in the political
system
d) Demands for communication and information
• Demands for goods and services
• These demands focus on wages and salaries,
laws, educational opportunities, recreational
facilities, roads and transportation.
• Demands for the regulation of behaviour
• The demands intend to regulate the behaviour of
the people such as the provision of public safety,
control over markets and labour relations and
behaviours pertaining to marriages and family
laws.
• Demands for participation in the political system
• Such demands focus on right to vote, to hold
office in the legislative assemblies, right to have
freedom of association and organizing a political
party etc.
 Support

• Inputs further manifests in the form of support

for the political system. Inputs demands are
never fulfilled by a political system without the
support function. It means supports inputs are a
coercive force behind the demands input.
 Forms of Support
• 1 Material supports
• 2 Obedience to laws and regulations
• 3 Participatory support
• 4 Manifestation of deference
• 1 Material supports
• Material support relates with the payment of taxes,
levying the duties, the provisions of services.
• 2       Obedience to laws and regulations
• Such support intends to obey laws and regulations
of the state and assure cooperation with the political
elite
    
• Participatory support
• These supports focus on voting, political
decisions and other forms of activity
• 4       Manifestation of deference
• Such supports manifest deference to public authority,
symbols and ceremonials. Epitomizing the whole
phenomenon of inputs, it is derived that demands and
supports have a stress upon the political system and
these two kinds of input pass through a conversion box.
• In the conversation box political elite and other
different structures discuss those inputs and
make decisions and make formulate policies for
running the political machinery successfully.
• Demands for communication and information
• Those types of demands remade for the display
of majority and power of the political system in
the period of chaos or stability. Such inputs
demands for affirmation of norms. In the pretext
of above mentioned categories of demands.
 OUTPUTS

• Decisions:
Environment:
• Domestic
• international
Feed Back: