An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …
Readers following this blog have, in the last posting, been given a
general overview of how the discipline of political science has affected civics
education in the US. With this posting,
that review turns to a more specific treatment of this influence. What follows is still general, but more
granular, descriptions of the two popular models, political systems approach
and a spin-off model, the structural-functional analysis model.
As William T. Callahan
indicates, these perspectives have been the most widely used constructs in the
study of American government and civics in American schools.[2] After the two models are described, there
will be short responses to the questions Eugene Meehan[3]
proposes for analyzing and evaluating constructs.
The political systems model described will be
that of David Easton[4]
and the structural-functional model will be that of Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr. [5] The former model is the topic of this posting
and part of the next, and the latter one will also be addressed in the next
posting.
Given that
the use of the systems’ construct is for curricular purposes, the goal has been
to assist in preparing students to be reasonably successful consumers of
governmental services. To do so, the
approach must prove useful and appropriate in identifying the knowledge such a
goal presupposes. From the description
in these postings, this antithesis[6] holds
that it does so.
The Easton model, supplemented by the Almond and Powell model, speaks
to all the significant structures and processes associated with the political
system. This analysis attempts to
demonstrate the usefulness and appropriateness of this construct and bolsters
the claim that it should be utilized in the development of civics curricular
content.
Easton was primarily concerned with two
questions: what processes constitute a
viable political system and does that system maintain itself? He defined stress to the system as those
forces that motivate a system into action and if sufficiently unsuccessful lead
to possible dissolution. The construct
focuses on what makes some systems successful and others not in the management
and coping of stress.
In all systems, people place demands on their
political systems. Demands or wants
(preconceived demands) can be any sought after general or particular action
requested or desired that citizens want performed by their government. Stresses are the felt intensity levels of
these demands. Demands constitute inputs
into the system. Another type of inputs is
supports. Supports are positive
messaging or assets citizenries provide political systems. High levels of supports help alleviate
stresses and low levels can increase them.
Whether systems can successfully manage
stresses indicates how stable systems are.
Of course, low stabilities can lead to systems’ demises.[7] Any reactions by governments to demands and/or
supports are outputs. Outputs take the
form of policies, laws, pronouncements, proclamations, and the actual actions
that carry out policies. The
citizenries’ responses to outputs are feedbacks. Feedbacks can take the form of additional
inputs affecting future governmental actions and, again, take on the form of
demands and supports.[8]
Within Easton’s model, there are certain character
elements of political systems that are labeled political objects. These are political communities, regimes, and
authorities and as such, these elements, if strong enough, can categorize different
systems. For example, if their authority
element becomes overly descriptive of a system, it might be considered
authoritarian. They make, to the
exclusion of other functions, authoritative allocations of values for
particular societies of groups or people.
To whatever level, those subgroups or congregations
are called political communities. These
communities can be of varying sizes, from classrooms to whole nations, though
Easton wrote of national communities. Beyond
being conceptual tools by which to analyze systems, they do show an element of
community or normative bias in a highly objectified approach to the study of
politics.
The term, regimes, is used to designate the
rules by which political processes are carried out for individual systems. The term usually refers to types of
governments associated with particular sets of rules such as parliamentary, monarchies,
and democracies. And authorities are the
officials who hold government positions and fulfill roles of making binding
decisions, that is, binding on fellow citizens or members of the various
communities.
Another term, legitimacy, that was described in
the last posting, is greatly enhanced by feelings of cohesion, or belonging
together under the auspices of political communities.
The
we-ness or sense of community which indicates political cohesion of a group of
persons, regardless of the kind of regime they have or may develop, consists of
the feeling of belonging together as a group which, because it shares a
political structure, also a political fate.
Regardless of the dissimilarities of customs, religion, socio-economic
status, nationality, and the like, to the extent that there is a feeling
of political community, the members will possess mutual sympathy and loyalty
with respect to their participation in a common political unit.[9]
Communities can and usually do transcend regimes and sets of
authorities. These feelings are
essential in integrating the political system.
As such, they allow political systems to handle a great number of
stresses.
If significant enough portions
of populations lose these feelings or significant members of systems are
disillusioned and do not consider themselves belonging to communities,
political systems are in serious danger of being terminated. A sense of communities might be intact, but
if there is a large lack of supports for individual regimes, these types of
stresses might lead to revolutions.
Revolutions refer to transformations of societal institutions such as
their economies, social arrangements, and/or political systems.
Perhaps there are
sufficient supports for communities and for regimes, but there are serious
antagonisms for authorities. These could
lead to removal of those authorities either through elections, impeachment
processes, or coup d’états. Probably
disgruntled citizens, if disgruntled enough, do not necessarily distinguish
these forms of antagonisms, and their potential support for one of these reactions
is likely intermingled with those of the others. But clear distinctions assist students in
analyzing stresses and political problems that systems might encounter.[10]
And this blog, in the
next posting, will further this last note of concern, stress, and how citizens
who have above average levels of stress react to such situations. What readers should be sensitive to is the
manner in which systems theory considers stress. Yes, there is language, as expressed above,
that cites communal concerns, but it becomes highly objectified as one delves
into the concerns over dysfunctional conditions that political systems must
address if they are to survive. This objectivity
helps pursue accurate analyses of what ail political systems.
[1] This presentation continues
with this posting. The reader is informed that the claims made in
this posting do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or knowledge of this
blogger. Instead, the posting is a representation of what an
advocate of the natural rights view might present. This
is done to present a dialectic position of that construct. This series of postings begins with “Judging
Natural Rights View, I,” August 2, 2022.
[2] William T. Callahan, Jr. “Introduction,” in Citizenship
for the 21st Century, edited by William T. Callahan and Ronald
A. Banaszak (Bloomington, IN: Social
Studies Development Center, 1990 AND Robert Gutierrez, From Immaturity to
Polarized Politics: Obstacles in
Achieving a Federated Nation (Tallahassee, FL: Gravitas Civics Books, 2022). This second cite offers an extensive review
of currently used high school textbooks used in American government courses. The review supports this claim.
[3]
Eugene J. Meehan, Contemporary Political
Thought: A Critical Study (Homewood,
IL: Dorsey Press, 1967). Meehan’s criteria ask: does the construct have scope, power,
precision, reliability, isomorphism, compatibility, predictability, and purpose
or control?
[4] David Easton,
The Political System (New York,
NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953) AND David
Easton, A System Analysis of Political
Life (New York, NY: John Wiley and
Sons, Inc., 1965).
[5] Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental
Approach (Boston: Little, Brown. 1966).
[6] This antithesis to the thesis, parochial/traditional federalism.
[7]
Easton, A System Analysis of
Political Life.
[8] Ibid. More on
feedbacks in the next posting.
[9] Ibid., 185 (emphasis in the original).
[10] Ibid.
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