me Fundamental Categories of Analysis < 4 Framework for Political Analysis 1 SPELLED OUT 1N CONSIDERABLE il the assumptions and commitments that would be required ay attempt to utilize the concept “system” in a rigorous fashion. would lead to the adoption of what I there described as a systems of political life. Although it would certainly be redundant the same ground here, it is nonetheless necessary to review ‘Kinds of basic conceptions and orientations imposed by this mode is. In doing so, I shall be able to lay out the pattern of anal- tical Life as an Open and Adaptive System Tsuggested at the end of the last chapter, the question that gives erence and purpose to a rigorous analysis of political life as m of behavior is as follows. How do any and all political systems to persist ina world of both stability and change? Unimatl | search for an answer will reveal what I have called the life proc- \ es of political systems—those fundamental functions without which” ‘system could endure—together with the typical modes of response ough which systems manage to sustain thers. The analysis of these ses, and of the nature and conditions of the responses, I posit ‘a central problem of political theory. ‘Although I shall end by arguing that it is useful to interpret politi- life as a complex set of processes through which certain kinds of sputs are converted into the type of outputs we may call authoritative olicies, decisions and implementing actions, at the outset it is useful take a somewhat simpler approach. We may begin by viewing polit- Where it seems appropriate I shall reiterate, without benefit of quotation marks, few paragraphs from 4 Framework for Political Analysis. At times I find that .at then seemed like the very best way to formulate my thoughts continues to be ‘and there seems little point in modifying the phrasing for the sake of novelty ‘Permission of the publishers, Prentice-Hall, is acknowledged. "78 TE MODE OF ANALYSIS seal life as a system of behavior imbedded in an environmert to the Jnfiuences of which the political system itself is exposed and in tum “reacts. Several vital considerations are implicit in this interpretation and it is essential that we become aware of them. Gast such a point of departure for theoretical analysis assumes without further inquiry that political interactions in society consti tte a system of behavior. This proposition is, howevel deceptive in its simplicity. The truth is that if the idea “system is employed with the rigor it permits and with the implications currently inherent in it, it provides a starting point that is already heavily freighted with conse- quences for a whole pattern of analysis. Second, to the degree that we are successful in analytically isolating political life as a system, it is clear that it cannot usefully be in- Ferpreted as existing in a void, It must be sen surrounded by physical, biological, social and psychological environments. Here gain, the empirical transparency of the statement ought not to be arewed to distract us from its crucial theoretical significance. Tf we svere to neglect what seems so obvious once it is asserted, it would be impossible to lay the groundwork for an analysis of how political sys tree manage to persist in a world of stability oF change, "This brings us to a third point. What makes the jdentification of the environments useful and necessary is the further presupposition that political life forms an open system. By its very NaNhe! ‘a social system Pov has been analytically separated from other social system it must be interpreted as lying exposed to influences deriving from the other systems in which empirically i is imbedded. From them there flows @ Sistant stream of events and influences that shape the conditions Gnder which the members of the system must act. ‘Finally, the fact that some systems do survive, whalers! the buffet- ings from their environments, avwakens us (9 the fact that they must eve the capacity to respond to disturbances and thereby to adapt to The conditions under which they find themselves. Once we 17% willing the Coume that political systems may be adaptive and need not just yeact in a passive or sponge/like way to their environmental influences, veh ghall be able to break a new path threugh the complexities of theoretical analysis. seer pave elsewhere demonstrated? in its internal organization, q critical property that a political system shares with all other social systems is this extraordinarily variable capacity to respond to the con- ions under which it functions. Indeed, we shall find that political systems accumulate large repertoires ‘of mechanisms through which see A Framework for Political Analysis, expecially chapter &SOME FUNDAMENTAL CATEGORIES OF ANALYSIS 19 ‘they may seek to cope with their environments. Through these they may regulate their own behavior, transform theit internal structure, and even go so far as to remodel their fundamental goals. Few systems, ‘other than social systems, have this potentiality. In practice, students ‘of political life could not help but take this into account; no analysis ‘could even begin to appeal to common sense if it did not do so. Never- ‘theless it is seldom built into a theoretical structure as a central com- ponent; certainly its implications for the internal behavior of political ‘systems have never been set forth and explored. Equilibrium Analysis and Its Shortcomings It is a major shortcoming of the one form of inquiry latent but aient in political research—equilibrium analysis—that i neglects fariable capacities for systems to cope with influences from their environment. The equilibrium approach is seldom explicitly elabo- jet it infuses a good part of political research, especially group olitics + and international relations. Of necessity an analysis that conceives of a political system as seeking to maintain a state of equilib- xm must assume the presence of environmental influences. It is these sat displace the power relationships in a political system—such as a \ce of power—from their presumed stable state. It is then cus ,, if only implicitly so, to analyze the system in terms of a tend- to return to a presumed pre-existing point of stability. If the em should fail to do so, it would be interpreted as moving on to a ‘tate of equilibrium and this would need to be identified and escribed. A careful scrutiny of the language used reveals that equilib- and stability are usually assumed to mean the same thing. ‘Numerous conceptual and empirical difficulties stand in the way of “°K W, Deutsch in The Nerves of Government (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, ‘has considered the consequences of the response capacity of political sjstems ‘egard to international afsirs, although still in very general terms; some work been done with regard to formal organizations as in the case of J. W, Forrester, ial Dynamice (New York: MIT. Press and Wiley, 1961); see as well, W. R. “The Empact of Environment on Organizational Development” in $. Matlick EH. Van Ness, Concepts and Issues in Administrative Behavior (Englewood "New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1962), pp. 94-109 and the references there. D, Easton, The Political System, chapter 11. “Limits of the Equilibrium Model in Social Research,” 1 Behavioral Seience 96-104, T discuss cifculties created by the fact that social scentsts typically to distinguish between stabilitiy and equilibrium. We often assume that a state dbrium must always refer toa stable condition whereas there are at least two ‘Kinds of equilibria: neutral and unstable.Fr 20 ‘HE MODE OF ANALYSIS an effective use of the equilibrium idea for the analysis of political life® But among these there are two that are particularly relevant for my present purposes. Tin the first place, the equilibrium approach leaves the impression that the members of a system are seized with only one basic goal as they seek to cope with change or disturbances, namely, to reestablish the old point of equilibrium or, at most, to move on to some new one. This is usually phrased, at least implicitly, as the search for stability as though this were sought above all else. In the second place, little if any attention is explicitly given to formulating the problems relating to the path that the system takes insofar as it does seek to return to this presumed point of equilibrium or to attain a fresh one. It is as though the pathways taken to manage the displacements were an incidental rather than a central theoretical consideration. But it would be impossible to understand the processes underlying the capacity of some kind of political life to sustain itself in a society if cither the objectives or the form of the responses are taken for granted. ‘A system may well seek goals other than those of reaching one or ‘another point of equilibrium. Even though this state were to be used only asa theoretical norm that is never achieved,* it would offer a less useful theoretical approximation of reality than one that takes into account other possibilities. We would find it more helpful to devise a conceptual approach that recognized that at times members in a sys tem may wish to take positive actions to destroy a previous equi. librium or even to achieve some new point of continuing disequilib- rium. This is typically the case where the authorities may seek to keep themselves in power by fostering intemal turmoil or external dangers. Furthermore, with respect to these variable goals, it is a primary characteristic of all systems that they are able to adopt a wide range of actions of a positive, constructive, and innovative sort for warding of cor absorbing any forces of displacement. A system need not just react toa disturbance by oscillating in the neighborhood of a prior point of equilibrium or by shifting to a new one, It may cope with the dis. turbance by seeking to change the environment so that the exchanges between the environment and itself are no longer stressful; it may seek {to insulate itself against any further influences from the environment; or the members of the system may even transform their own relation- ships fundamentally and modify theit own goals and practices so as to improve their chances of handling the inputs from the environment. “roid. 1]. A. Schumpeter, Business Cycles (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999), especially chapter 2, uses the idea of equilibrium as a theoretical norm.SOME FUNDAMENTAL CATEGORIES OF ANALYSIS a In these and other ways a system has the capacity for creative and constructive regulation of disturbances as we shall later see in detail. It is dear that the adoption of equilibrium analysis, however latent it may be, obscures the presence of system goals that cannot be de scribed as a state of equilibrium. It also virtually conceals the existence | of varying pathways for attaining these alternative ends, For any social | system, including the political, adaptation represents more than simple adjustments to the events in its life. It is made up of efforts, limited only by the variety of human skills, resources, and ingenuity, to control, modify or fundamentally change either the environment or the system itself, or both together. In the outcome the system may succeed in fending off or incorporating successfully any influences stressful for it. Minimal Concepts for a Systems Analysis A systems analysis promises a more expansive, more inclusive, and more flexible theoretical structure than is available even in a thor- oughly self-conscious and well-developed equilibrium approach. To do so successfully, however, it must establish its own theoretical impera- tives, Although these were explored in detail in A Framework for Political Analysis, we may re-examine them briefly here, assuming, however, that where the present brevity leaves unavoidable ambigui- ties, the reader may wish to become more familiar with the underlying structure of ideas by consulting this earlier volume. In it, at the outset, 4 system was defined as any set of variables regardless of the degree of] interrelationship among them. The reason for preferring this defini- tion is that it frees us from the need to argue about whether a political system is or is not really a system. The only question of importanc ‘about a set selected as a system to be analyzed is whether this set con- stitutes an interesting one, Does it help us to understand and explain some aspect of human behavior of concern to us? To be of maximum utility, I have argued, a political system can be | designated as those interactions through which values are authorita- tively allocated for a society; this is what distinguishes a political system from other systems that may be interpreted as lying in its envi- ronment. This environment itself may be divided into two parts, the (27 intra-societal and the extra-societal. The first consists of those systems | > |” in the same society as the political system but excluded from the latter by our definition of the nature of political interactions. Intra-societal systems would include such sets of behavior, attitudes and ideas as wea2 ‘THE MODE OF ANALYSIS might call the economy, culture, social structure or personalities; they are functional segments of the society with respect to which the polit- ical system at the focus of attention is itself a component. In a given society the systems other than the political system constitute a source of many influences that create and shape the conditions under which the political system itself must operate. In a world of newly emerging political systems we do not need to pause to illustrate the impact that a changing economy, culture, or social structure may have upon polit- ical life. The second part of the environment, the extrasocietal, includes all those systems that lie outside the given society itself. They are func- tional components of an international society or what we might d scribe as the suprasociety, a supra-system of which any single society is part, The international political systems, the international economy or the international cultural system would fall into the category of extra: societal systems. Together, these two classes of systems, the intra- and extra-societal, that are conceived to lie outside of a political system may be desig- nated as its total environment. From these sources arise influences that are of consequence for possible stress on the political system. The total environment is presented in Table 1 as reproduced from A Framework for Political Analysis,$ and the reader should turn to that volume for a full discussion of the various components of the environment as indi- cated on this table. Disturbances is a concept that may be used to identify those influ. ‘ences from the total environment of a system that act upon it so that it is different after the stimulus from what it was before. Not all disturb- ances need strain the system. Some may be favorable with respect to the persistence of the system; others may be entirely neutral with respect to possible stress. But many can be expected to lead in the direction of stress. When may we say that stress occurs? This involves us in a rather complex idea, one that has been treated at length.? But since it does stand as a major pillar underpinning the analysis to be elaborated in the succeeding chapters, I must at least broadly sketch out its implica- tions. It embodies several subsidiary notions. All political systems as such are distinguished by the fact that if we are to be able to describe them as persisting, we must attribute to them the successful fulfillment of two functions. They must be able to allocate values for a society; they must also manage to induce most members to accept these alloca- Chapter V. "In A Framework for Political Analysis,‘TABLE 1 COMPONENTS OF ‘TH TOTAL ENVIRONMENT OF A POLITICAL SYSTEM ‘The total environment of a politcal system The intra-societal environment “The extra-societal envionment ‘Che International Society) Personality Social ‘The interational The inernational__ The international Ecological Biological system system systems) systems poltical systems ecological systems sacal systems aa Cultural Social Economic Demographic Other system — structure system system subsystems | NATO. SEATO United _ther_—nternational ‘International. International International Other NNalions subsystems "eultursl" "socal 'econamic’ damographie subsystems system structure system = system24 THE MODE OF ANALYSIS tions as binding, at least most of the time, These are the two proper ties that help us to distinguish most succinctly political systems from other kinds of social systems. ~ By virtue of this very fact these two distinctive features—the alloca- tions of values for a society and the relative frequency of compliance with them—are the essential variables of political life. But for their presence, we would not be able to say that a society has any political life, And we may here take it for granted that no society could exist without some kind of political system; elsewhere I have sought to demonstrate this in detail° One of the important reasons for identifying these essential varia- les is that they give us a way of establishing when and how the disturbances acting upon a system threaten to stress it, Stress will be said to occur when there is a danger that the essential variables will be _pushed beyond what we may designate as their critical range. What this means is that something may be happening in the environment— the system suffers total defeat at the hands of an enemy, or widespread disorganization in and disaffection from the system is aroused by a severe economic crisis, Let us say that as a result, the authorities are consistently unable to make decisions or if they strive to do so, the decisions are no longer regularly accepted as binding. Under these conditions, authoritative allocations of values are no longer possible and the society would collapse for want of a system of behavior to fulfill one of its vital functions. ‘Here we could not help but accept the interpretation that the polit ical system had come under stress, so severe that any and every possi- bility for the persistence of a system for that society had disappeared. But frequently the disruption of a political system is not that com- plete; the stress is present even though the system continues to persist in some form. Severe as a crisis may be, it still may be possible for the authorities to be able to make some kinds of decisions and to get them accepted with at least minimal frequency so that some of the problems typically subjected to political settlements can be handled. That is to say, it is not always a matter as to whether the essential variables are operating or have ceased to do so. It is possible that they may only be displaced to some extent as when the authorities are partially incapacitated for making decisions or from getting them ac- cepted with complete regularity. Under these circumstances the essen- tial variables will remain within some normal range of operation; they may be stressed but not in a sufficient degree to displace them beyond "In D. Easton, A Theoretical Approach to Authority, Ofice of Naval Research, ‘Technical Report No. 17 (Stanford, California: Department of Economics, 1958).SOME. FUNDAMENTAL CATEGORIES OF ANALYSIS 25 ‘a determinable critical point. As long as the system does keep its essential variables operating within what I shall call their critical range, some kind of system can be said to persist. ‘As we have seen, one of the characteristic properties of every systern | is the fact that it has the capacity to cope with stress on its essential variables. Not that a system need take such action; it may collapse” precisely because it has failed to take measures appropriate for hand- ling the impending stress. But it is the existence of a capacity to respond to stress that is of paramount importance. The kind of re- sponse actually undertaken, if any, will help us to evaluate the proba- bilities of the system's being able to ward off the stress. In thus raising the question of the nature of the response to stress, it will become. apparent, in due course, that the special objective and merit of a systems analysis of political life is that it permits us to interpret the behavior of the members in a system in the light of the consequences it has for alleviating or aggravating stress upon the essential variables. ‘The Linkage Variables between Systems But a fundamental problem remains. We could not begin the task of applying this kind of conceptualization if we did not first pose the following question. How do the potentially stressful conditions from the environment communicate themselves to a political system? After all, common sense alone tells us that there is an enormous variety of environmental influences at work on a system. Do we have to treat ‘each change in the environment as a separate and unique disturbance, the specific effects of which for the political system have to be inde- pendently worked out? If this were indeed the casc, as I have shown in detail before,4t the problems of systematic analysis would be virtually insurmountable. But if we can devise a way for generalizing our method for handling the impact of the environment on the system, there would be some hope of reducing the enormous variety of influences into a relatively few, and therefore into a relatively manageable number of indicators. This is precisely what I have sought to effect through the use of the concepts “inputs” and “outputs.” How are we to describe these inputs and outputs? Because of the analytic distinction that I have been making between a political sys- tem and its parametric or environmental systems, it is useful to in- terpret the influences associated with the behavior of persons in the “Chapter VII of A Framework for Political Analysis.——— 26 ‘THE MODE OF ANALYSIS it environment or from other conditions there as exchanges or transac tions that cross the boundaries of the political system. Exchanges can be used when we wish to refer to the mutuality of the relation- ships, to the fact that the political system and those systems in the environment have reciprocal effects on each other. Transactions may bbe employed when we wish to emphasize the movement of an effect in ‘one direction, from an environmental system to the political system, oF the reverse, without being concerned at the time about the reactive behavior of the other system. To this point, there is little to dispute, Unless systems were coupled together in some way, all analytically identifiable aspects of behavior in society would stand independent of each other, a patently unlikely condition, What carries recognition of this coupling beyond a mere truism, however, is the proposal of a way to trace out the complex exchanges so that we can readily reduce their immense variety to theoretically and empirically manageable proportions. “To accomplish this, I have proposed that we condense the major and significant environmental influences into a few indicators, Through the examination of these we should be able to appraise and follow through the potential impact of environmental events on the system. “With this objective in mind, I have designated the effects that are transmitted across the boundary of a system toward some other system. ‘as the outputs of the first system and hence, symmetrically, as the inputs of the second system, the one they influence. A transaction or fan exchange between systems will therefore be viewed as a linkage between them in the form of an input-output relationship. Demands and Supports as Input Indicators The value of inputs as a concept is that through their use we shall find it possible to capture the effect of the vast variety of events and conditions in the environment as they pertain to the persistence of a political system. Without the inputs it would be difficult to delineate the precise operational way in which the behavior in the various sec: tors of society affects what happens in the political sphere. Inputs will serve as summary variables that concentrate and mirror everything in the environment that is relevant to political stress. Thereby this con- cept serves as a powerful tool. The extent to which inputs can be used as summary variables will depend, however, upon how we define them, We might conceive of “For a detailed analysis of boundaries see A Framework for Political Analysis, chapter V.SOME FUNDAMENTAL CATEGORIES OF ANALYSIS ay them in their broadest sense. In that case, we would interpret them as including any event external to the system that alters, modifies or affects the system in any and every possible way.18 But if we seriously considered using the concept in so broad a fashion, we would never be able to exhaust the list of inputs acting upon a system. Virtually every parametric event and condition would have some significance for the operations of a political system at the focus of attention; a concept so indlusive that it does not help us to organize and simplify reality would defeat its own purposes. We would be no better off than we are without it, But as I have already intimated, we can greatly simplify the task of analyzing the impact of the environment if we restrict our attention to certain Kinds of imputs that can be used 5 indicators to sum up the r contributions to stress, that ross the boundary from the parameiric t ‘way we would free ourselves from the need to deal with and trace out separately the consequences of every different type of environmental event. As the theoretical tool for this purpose, it is helpful to view the major environmental influences as coming to a focus in two major inputs: demands and support. Through them a wide range of activ- ities in the environment may be channeled, mirrored, and summa- rized and brought to bear upon political life,|as 1 shall show-in detail in the succeeding chapters. In this sense they are key indicators of the way in which environmental influences and conditions modify and shape the operations of the political system. If we wish, we may say that it is through fluctuations in the inputs of demands and support that we shall find the elfects of the environmental systems transmitved to the political system. Outputs and Feedback In a comparable way, the idea of outputs helps us to organize the consequences flowing from the behavior of the members of the system rather than from actions in the environment. Our primary concern is, to be sure, with the functioning of the political system. In and of themselves, at least for understanding political phenomena, we would have no need to be concerned with the consequences that political 1 am confining my remarks here to external sources of inputs. For the possibil- ity of inputs deriving from incernal sources and therefore constituting “withinputs, see A Framework for Political Analysis, chapter VII.28 ‘THE MONE OF ANALYSIS actions have for the environmental system. This is a problem that can or should be handled better by theories secking to explore the oper- ations of the economy, culture, or any of the other parametric systems. ‘But the fact is that the activities of the members of the system may well have some importance with respect to their own subsequent ac- tions or conditions. To the extent that this is so, we cannot entirely neglect those actions that do flow out of a system into its environment. ‘As in the case of inputs, however, there is an immense amount of activities that take place within a political system. Flow are we to sort ‘out the portion that has relevance for an understanding of the way in which systems manage to persist? Later we shall see that a useful way of simplifying and organizing \ our perceptions of the behavior of the members of the system, as re: fected in their demands and support, is in terms of the consequences | of these inputs for, what I shall call the political outputs, These are the ‘decisions and “actions of the authorities, Not that the complex + political processes internal to a system, and that have been the subject of inquiry for so many decades in political science, will be considered in any way itrelevant. Who controls whom in the various decision- making processes will continue to be a vital concern since the pattern fof power relationships helps to determine the nature of the outputs. But the formulation of a conceptual structure for this aspect of a political system would draw us into a different level of analysis. Here Tam only seeking economical ways of summarizing the outcomes of these internal political processes—not of investigating them—and 1 sum suggesting that they can be usefully conceptualized as the outputs fof the authorities. Through them we shall be able to trace out the consequences of behavior within a political system for its environment. ‘There would be little point in taking the trouble to conceptualize the results of the internal behavior of the members in a system in this way unless we could do something with it, As we shall see, the sig- nificance of outputs is not only that they help to influence events in the broader society of which the system is a part; in doing so, they help to determine each succeeding round of inputs that finds its way into the political system. As we shall phrase it later, there is a feedback loop the identification of which will help us to explain the processes through which the authorities may cope with stress. This loop has a (Crumiber of parts. It consists of the production of ouipuis by the ax- thorities, a response on the part of the members of the society with Fespect to them, the communication of information about this re sponse to the authorities and finally, possible succeeding actions on the part of the authorities, Thereby 2 new round of outputs, responseSOME FUNDAMENTAL CATEGORIES OF ANALYSIS 29 information feedback and reaction on the part of the authorities is set in motion and is part of a continuous neverending flow. What hap- pens in this feedback loop will turn out to have the deepest signifi- cance for the capacity of 2 system to cope with stress. A Flow Model of the Political System It is clear from what has been said that this mode of analysis enables and indeed compels us to analyze a political system in dynamic terms. _ Not only do we see that it gets something done through its outputs but ‘we are also sensitized to the fact that what it does may influence each successive stage of behavior. We appreciate the urgent need to inter pret political processes as a continuous and interlinked flow of be | havior. If we apply this conceptualization in the construction of a rudi- ‘mentary model of the relationship between a political system and its environment, we would have a figure of the kind illustrated in Dia. gram I, Readers of A Framework for Political Analysis are already familiar with this figure but it is useful to recall its details. In effect it conveys the idea that the political system looks like a vast and perpetual conversion process. It takes in demands and support as they are shaped in the environment and produces something out of | them called outputs. But it does not let our interest in the outputs terminate at this point. We are alerted to the fact that the outputs influence the supportive sentiments that the members express toward the system and the kinds of demands they put in. In this way the outputs return to haunt the system, as it were. As depicted on the diagram, all this is still at a very crude level of formulation, It will be our task to refine these relationships as we proceed in our analysis, But let us examine the model a little mote closely since in effect this yolume will do little more than to flesh out the skeleton presented there, In interpreting the diagram, we begin with the fact that it shows 2 political system surrounded by the two classes of environments that together form its total environment. The communications of the many events that occur here are represented by the solid lines connecting eee Per ine client syetcan heey beseech lines show the direction of flow into the system, But rather than at- tempting to discuss cach disturbance in the environment uniquely or even in selected groups or classes of types, I use as an indicator of the impact that they have on the system, the way in which they shape two special kinds of inputs into the system, demands and support, This is“The total environment Ecological _ stem | system Leann he ina neil envronment Personaity systems Social systems, leternational pltcal systems International ecological 4 ‘ystems International st Spstoms The ena sodetl envionment ects fem the environments ‘ie iow of Feedtack loop oe pale Sten erate “edback conversion of “Semana no Sats infartion teetack DIAGRAM. 1A DYNAMIC RESPONSK MODEL OF A POLITICAL SYSTEM ‘ahora =SOME FUNDAMENTAL CATEGORIES OF ANALYSIS 3 why the effects from the environment are shown to flow into the box Iihelled “inputs.” We must remember, however, that even though the esi for simplicity in presentation does not permit us to show it on Gre diagram, events occurring within a system may also have some Share in influencing the nature of the inputs.1* ‘As is apparent, the inputs provide what we may call the raw materi- als on which the system acts so as to produce something we are calling Gutputs. The way in which this is done will be described as a massive ‘By the ser- aerwersion: process cavalierly represented on the diagram by the ser cae Tne Win We politcal stem. ‘The conversion proces ne within the political system. The conversion processes move toward the authorities since it is toward them that the de mands are initially directed, As we shall see, demands spark the basic fetivities of a political system. By virtue of their status in all systems, quthorities have special responsibilities for converting demands into outputs. If we were to be content with what is basically a static picture of a political system, we might be inclined to stop at this point. Indeed Inuch political research in effect does just this. It is concerned with exploring all those intricate subsidiary processes through which deci- sions are made and put into effect. This constitutes the vast corpus of tical research today. Therefore, insofar as we were concerned with how influence is used in formulating and putting ito effect” various Kinds of policies or decisfons, the model to this point would ‘be an adequate if minimal first approximation. jar the critical question that confronts political theory is not just the development of a conceptual apparatus for understanding the fac- tors that contribute to the kinds of decisions a system makes, that is, for formulating a theory of political allocations. As I have indicated, theory needs to know how it comes about that any kind of system can persist Tong enough to continue to make such decisions. We need a Fisry of catens peristence as Well. Flow does a system of systems persistence as well, How does a system manage to ‘eal with the stress to which it may be subjected at any time? It is f this reason that we cannot accept outputs as the terminal p either of the political processes or of our interest im them. Thus it is” ‘important to note on the diagam, that the outputs of the conversion process rave the characteristic of feeding back upon the system and iaping SESS ESO Much ater Tahal See To der Subsequent Behavior. Much Tater T shall seek to denvon- strate that it is this feature together with the capacity of a system to take constructive actions that makes it possible for a system to seek to adapt or to cope with possible stress. On the diagram, this feedback is depicted by the line that shows the See footnote 18 of this chapter.32 THE MODE OF ANALYSIS effects of the outputs moving directly back to the environments, As the broken lines within the environmental boxes indicate, the effects may reshape the environment in some way; that is to say, they influence conditions and behavior there. In this way the outputs are able to modify the influences that continue to operate on the inputs and thereby the next round of inputs themselves. But if the authorities are to be able to take the past effect of outputs into account for their own future behavior, they must in some way be apprised of what has taken place along the feedback loop. The broken lines in the box labeled “The political system” suggest that, through the return flow of demands and support, the authorities obtain infor- mation about these possible consequences of their previous behavior. This puts the authorities in a position to take advantage of the infor. mation that has been fed back and to correct or adjust their behavior for the achievement of their goals. It is the fact that there can be such a continuous flow of effects and information between system and environment, we shall see, that ulti- mately accounts for the capacity of a political system to persist in a world even of violently fluctuating changes. Without feedback and the capacity to respond to it, no system could survive for long, except by accident, In this brief overview, I have summarized the essential features of the analytic structure to be developed in the following chapters. If we condensed the diagram still further, we would have the figure shown on Diagram 2, It reduces to its bare essentials the fundamental proc ot Po FT tm ¢ 4 *, | i ee cmc ay, os eng ot DIAGRAM 2 A SIMPLIFIED MODEL OF A POLITICAL sysTEMSOME FUNDAMENTAL CATEGORIES OF ANALYSIS 33 cesses at work in all systems and starkly reveals the source of a system's ‘capacity to persist. It may well stand temporarily as the simplest image, to carry in our minds, of the processes we are about to discuss in detail. ‘To summarize the conceptualization being reviewed here, our anal- ysis will rest on the idea of a system imbedded in an environment and subject to possible influences from it that threaten to drive the essen- tial variables of the system beyond their critical range. To persist, the system must be capable of responding with measures that are successful in alleviating the stress so created, To respond, the authorities at least must be in a position to obtain information about what is happening so that they may react insofar as they desire or are compelled to do 50. In A Framework for Political Analysis each of these concepts and interrelationships was attended to in varying degrees of detail. Here it will be my task to begin to apply them in an effort to construct a much more elaborate structure for the analysis of political systems. In doing so, we shall find ourselves confronted with a series of major questions. What precisely are the nature of the influences acting upon a political system? How are they communicated to a system? In what ‘ways, if any, have systems typically sought to cope with such stress? What kinds of processes will have to exist in any system if it is to acquire and exploit the potential for acting so as to ameliorate these conditions of stress? In posing this series of questions I have in effect outlined the major topics that will be dealt with in the rest of this volume. To begin, therefore, we shall have to turn directly to one set of influences that move toward a political system and that can be revealed through the ‘impact that they have upon demands, the first of the inputs that needs to be considered, We shall need to explore the varying consequences that these demands, in turn, may have for the persistence of a system.