An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …
This presentation goes on with its review of a political systems approach
that represents a natural rights bias in the study of politics. Central to this review is describing David
Easton’s theorizing.[2] Within that theorizing, initiators of
political action are demands and supports.
The former is what citizens want and was addressed in the last posting. Supports are just what the term suggests, being
positive messaging or sharing of assets.
Easton writes of two types of supports: specific and diffuse.[3] Specific supports refer to positive reactions
among the citizenry directed at those individuals responsible, or perceived
responsible, for actions deemed favorable by those members expressing the
support. For example, an authority
figure who favors and works for lowering taxes would be in line for specific
support from many members of the system.
Specific supports tend to be limited in
time. On the other hand, a more lasting
support are diffuse supports which are more like reservoirs of support for past
positive experiences and feelings. These
reservoirs of credit can be drawn upon by those in power when times are not so
good.
Sometimes diffuse supports
could take the form of supporting the office instead of the individuals who are
holding the positions at a given time.
Often these positive feelings are the product of early political
socialization of individuals and are further reinforced by media messages and possibly
by acquaintances and friends. In many
cases, widespread family socialization practices have become so ingrained among
the citizenry that they have become part of the culture.
In any case, family
attempts to encourage certain political attitudes or perspectives are usually
highly effective. Of course, this
includes attitudes and even values that are directed beyond supporting
individual authority figures. They can
include supports for democratic practices and beliefs.
If so inclined, these lessons can have lifelong
influences on those who receive such messaging, especially as young people grow
up in households where such messaging is common. Of course, such socializing can also be anti-democratic
and of concern for those who wish to maintain the nation’s democratic institutions.[4]
And then there are
feedbacks. Easton emphasizes how the
loop of information concerning how people react to outputs (policies, laws,
proclamations, etc.) serve as self-correcting mechanisms on systems. They are, as those in authority hear and see
how people react to past or ongoing policies and actions, instrumental in potentially
adjusting governmental actions or correcting perceived mistakes. Obviously, those situations entail issuing
newer outputs that are more in line with what the members of the system
support.
Readers might be tempted
to relate systems analysis to the school of psychology known as behaviorism. That is, political systems, like organisms,
are merely responding to stimuli in their environments. They will engage in outputs that have proven
to be rewarding and avoid those that are deemed punishing. Easton writes,
In the intervening
years since behaviorism was first enunciated, most psychologists have come to
recognize that, between external stimulus and observable response, subjective
experiences occur that influence the interpretation and effect of the stimulus
and, thereby, the nature of the response.
The original behavioristic paradigm, S-R (stimulus-response), has
yielded to the more intelligible one of S-O-R (stimulus-organism-response) in
which feelings, motivations, and all the other aspects of the subjective
awareness and reaction of the organism are taken into account as potentially
useful data. This has, of course,
spelled the doom of pristine behaviorism and as a term, although not
necessarily as a point of view, it has just about disappeared from
psychology.[5]
While Easton writes of motivational factors by
those in government,[6] he
does not provide an insightful view of how inputs convert into outputs. He treats governmental decision-making, where
such conversions take place, as a “black box.”[7]
Structural-Functional Model
And with that “black box”
analogy, this review naturally moves on to describing the structural-functional
model. And that focus will take up a
good deal of attention – beyond this posting and into probably more than one
subsequent posting. Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell provide a model[8] that
builds on Easton’s ideas and augments them by depicting the functions that
political systems must perform or satisfy in order to survive, i.e., it takes
the student into the “black box.”
A good place to begin describing the
Almond and Powell model is still within the environment of the system, i.e., with
their account of political culture.
Political cultures are environmental elements in which political systems
find themselves. Here, references are to
the general feelings or orientations that the members of political systems have
for systems themselves. These orientations
consist of values, attitudes, beliefs, and habits of people and how they affect
the political processes, decisions, and actions of governments and their
authorities.
Political cultures can be viewed as
subsystems of general overall cultures of societies. They can also be described as
sociopsychological fields that help condition political behaviors. For example, political cultures discourage or
even place limits on the types of demands that systems’ members will be
socially allowed to place on their respective systems. Types of political behavior are judged by
cultures’ values and in turn their “sanctioning” processes are highly
instrumental in affecting the strategies employed by participants in resolving
conflicts.
In terms of inputs, the Almond and
Powell model first identifies systemic functions by which demands are
communicated to respective political systems and then are narrowed so that
political systems can deal with them. There
are two functions that are involved with inputs. They are interest articulation and interest
aggregation. Interest articulations have
to do with communicating wants and demands to political systems.
Through interest aggregations,
priorities are placed on demands and some demands are given high priority and
moved through systems quickly, while others are given little opportunities to
be considered. Of course, governmental
decision-making requires that a limiting and concessionary process take place
and not all demands can be either satisfied or even addressed.
This posting ends with this “intro” to
interest aggregations. Such questions about
what sorts of aggregations are effective will be addressed in the next posting
and other functions’ concerns will also be addressed. Overall, though, these functions provide
students mental tools by which to address what happens in those “black boxes”
generally thought of as governments.
[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]
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).
[3]
Easton, A System Analysis of
Political Life.
[4] Currently, the news media is reporting that among
conservative populations of the US there is a train of thought being socialized
that one can call Christian nationalism.
Part of that messaging is the claim that America is not a democracy but
a republic. Further, such reasoning is justifying
voting restricting policies.
[5]
David Easton, “The Current Meanings of ‘Behavioralism,’” in Contemporary Political Analysis, ed.
James C. Charlesworth (New York, NY: The
Free Press, 1967), 11-31, 12. Emphasis added.
[6]
Easton, A System Analysis of
Political Life.
[7] “Fig 3 – uploaded Adam M. Wellstead,” Research Gate
(n.d.), accessed August 17, 2022, https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-black-box-model-of-political-system-Source-adapted-from-Easton-1965_fig3_270712271.
[8]
Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little,
Brown. 1966).
No comments:
Post a Comment