System theory or the input-output approach is one derivative of the systems analysis.

David Easton
has been one of the early political scientists to have introduced the systems approach to politics.
Easton presented his conceptual framework in his The Political System (1953). He elaborated it
further, in 1965, in his two books, A Framework for Political Analysis, and A Systems Analysis of
Political Life. He has been able to provide "an original set of concepts for arranging at the level of
theory and interpreting political phenomena in a new and helpful way" (Davies and Lewis: Models of
Political Systems). He selects the political system as the basic unit of analysis and concentrates on
the intra-system behaviour of various systems.

This approach describes the relationship of political life with other aspects of the social setting and
signifies that a political system operates within a social environment. Consequently, advocates that it
is not possible to analyse political events in isolation from other aspects of the society. in brief the
model stresses that the influences from the society, be it economic, religious or otherwise, do shape
the political process through the political system, which he defines as "those interactions through
which values are authoritatively allocated and implemented for a society".

In this model, the changes or features of the social or physical environment produces ‘demands’
from different parts of the society such as demand for reservation in the matter of employment for
certain groups, demand for soothing working conditions or minimum wages in the political system.
Different demands have different levels of ‘support’ expressed through support groups or interest
groups or other such structures of the society. Easton said that both ‘demands’ and ‘supports’
establish ‘inputs.’ The political system receives theses inputs from the environment. After
considering various factors through the process of selection, limitation, or rearrangement, the
government decides to take action on some of these demands while others are not acted upon. via
‘the conversion process’ of the political system, the inputs are converted into ‘outputs’ by the
decision makers in the form of policies, decisions, rules, regulations and laws. The ‘outputs’ flow
back into the environment. With the a ‘feedback’ mechanism, those demands which were not taken
in by the system or the criticism of the inputs created can come back as new inputs, again giving rise
to fresh ‘demands.’ Accordingly, it establishes a recurring process. this cyclic process of input, output
and feedback mechanism constitute the Easton’s analysis on how political decisions are made for
the society.
Explanation of the diagram:

diagram consists of two sets of inputs, one output, one political system and feedback mechanism
linking the output and the inputs. On the input side, Easton includes demands and supports.
Demand is the name of pressure which flow from the environment to the political system to bring
about a change in the allocations of score values. And support is the second input, which is the
energy in the form of actions or orientations promoting the demand. The central box represents the
political system where the conversion process of inputs to outputs happens, the feedback arrow in
the environment represents the process of reactions on the outputs or the unmet demands which
become the new demands in the next cycle.

limitations

Easton's political system approach has been severely attacked.

1.Professor S.P..'Verma regards it as an abstraction whose relation to empirical politics (which is “.

classic) is impossible to establish. Eugene Meehan says that Easton does less to explain the theory
and more to create the conceptual framework. His analysis, it may be pointed out, is confined to the
question of locating and distributing power in the political system.

2.david Easton’s model seems to be concerned more with questions such as persistence and
adaptation of the political system and regulation of stress, stability and equilibrium and thus
advocating and analysing only the status quo situation. There is much less, in Easton's formulation,
about the politics of decline, disruption and breakdown in political system as Young points out.

3. this political system approach is designed and only truly works for macro-level studies; David
Easton has not been able to go beyond North America and the Western World.

4. Easton's political system or input-output would deal only with the present and has, therefore, no
perspective of future and has less study of the past.

The merits of the input-output or political system approach cannot be ignored. The approach has
provided an excellent technique for comparative analysis. It has also provided a set of concepts and
categories which have made comparative analysis more interesting and instructive. Political scientist
young admitted that Easton's analysis is "undoubtedly the most inclusive systematic approach so far
constructed specifically for political analysis by a political scientist"

It is widely believed that Easton has produced one of the few comprehensive attempts to lay the
foundation for systems analysis in political science and to provide a general functional theory of
politics.