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An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

David Easton
David Easton
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

IN an earlier work I have argued for the need to develop general, empirically oriented theory as the most economical way in the long run to understand political life. Here I propose to indicate a point of view that, at the least, might serve as a springboard for discussion of alternative approaches and, at most, as a small step in the direction of a general political theory. I wish to stress that what I have to say is a mere orientation to the problem of theory; outside of economics and perhaps psychology, it would be presumptuous to call very much in social science “theory,” in the strict sense of the term.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , April 1957 , pp. 383 - 400
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1957

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References

1 New York, 1953.

2 My conceptions relating to system theory have been enriched through my participation in the Staff Theory Seminar of the Mental Health Research Institute at the University of Michigan. There has been such thorough mingling of ideas in this Seminar that rather than try to trace paternity, I shall simply indicate my obligation to the collective efforts of the Seminar.

3 The concept support has been used by Talcott Parsons in an unpublished paper entitled “Reflections on the Two-Party System.” I am pleased to note that in this article Professor Parsons also seems to be moving in the direction of input-output analysis of political problems, although the extent to which he uses other aspects of system theory is not clear to me.

4 See Mills, C. W., The Power Elite, New York, 1956.Google Scholar

5 I am happy to say that, since I wrote this statement, the neglect has begun to be remedied. My colleagues at the University of Chicago, Robert Hess of the Committee of Human Development and Peter Rossi of the Department of Sociology, and I have undertaken a questionnaire-interview study of the development of the political attitudes, opinions, and images held by children and adolescents. This research is an attempt to develop some useful generalizations about major aspects of the processes of politicization in the American political system and to formulate a design that, for comparative purposes, could be applied in other political systems as well.

6 In primitive systems, politicization, not outputs of decisions, is normally the chief mechanism.