JUDGING THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, XI

 

An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …

Of late, this blog, in a dialectic style, has reviewed that version of political science thinking that most congealed with the natural rights perspective.  This blog makes the claim that in the US, the natural rights view became the dominant view of governance and politics in the years following World War II. 

This shift encouraged in the 1950s and 1960s changes in political science that first adopted a behavioral approach – with its focus on political individual behavior – and then shifted to take into account topics reflecting contemporary political issues.  In the last ten postings, this blog described and explained the main theoretical bases upon which behavioral and post behavioral studies were – and still are – based. 

That would be political systems – ala David Easton – with a meaningful supplicant, the structural-functional model – ala Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr.  From those models, other mid-range models had been developed – e.g., cybernetics, conflict theory, elitist theory, comparative politics, political culture, etc.  As one might suppose, these upheavals were profound in how the discipline conceptually accounted for politics and in the methods its practitioners utilized.

David A. Lake gives his readers a sense of this tumult as it applies to the study of international relations.

 

This [the upheaval within the discipline] is not an unreasonable characterization, given the attention devoted to the clash of paradigms in this era. As implied above, this debate or set of debates is better understood in my view as a continuation of the first debate. Others see the third debate (sometimes the fourth or fifth debate) as pitting the ‘positivists,’ as the successors to the behaviorists are sometimes called, against ‘reflectivists,’ giving it a more ontological [ethics based] cast. It is this what I will call ‘final’ debate that I want to focus on here. The term positivist was always something of a misnomer, as few were naive methodological falsificationists in the sense outlined by [Karl] Popper. An alternative label, ‘rationalists,’ fit equally poorly. Rather, positivists were a grab bag of approaches grouped by a general commitment to social science as a method and the assumption that individuals and other political actors are intentionalist and calculating in their actions.  By the 1980s, these so-called positivists constituted the ‘mainstream’ of the discipline of International Relations. Reflectivists, in turn, were hardly a single school either. Broadly united by a belief in the potential openness of various ‘taken for granted’ aspects of world politics, several strands of theorizing competed, including at least constructivism, post-modernism critical theory, and feminism. Several of these approaches share the normative positions of idealism; others are more social versions of realism.[2]

 

And he goes on for those who are interested, but the point is what his title suggests:  there is now an eclecticism prevailing within the discipline of political science with a good dose of tolerance among the disagreeing participants or practitioners.

            But for civics teachers – as reflected in their assigned textbooks – they are to abide by the political systems view (with a structural-functional format).  So, therefore, this blog has taken pains to present that view – from the perspective of an advocate.  And in that dialectic language, this posting begins that portion of its review of how this model addresses Eugene Meehan’s concerns or questions[3] regarding theory as that model relates to the commonplaces of curricular development.[4]

Viability of the Systems Construct

          In general. Meehan’s questions should, therefore, with the interests of individual students in mind, be geared to preparing those students for the political competition that confronts them during their adult years.  In that, the first Meehan question addresses the scope of the construct:  Does this construct explain as many phenomena as possible which are classified under its concepts and generalizations? 

The political systems construct can be better described as an approach.  It gives one a generic understanding of the needs of any political system, pointing out how allowances need to be made for different types of systems.  One does not find specific information within the construct about aspects of the American political system.

But it does provide a series of issues and questions that can be applied to any political system.  Once applied and answered or addressed, the process yields critical information about how the political system is organized, how it proceeds with its concerns, and with what needs it must fulfill in order to continue its services.  It is that specific information that students need to know and understand so that they may be viable citizens.  If comprehensibly applied in this manner, the construct has great scope.

Included in its scope are concerns and issues ranging from the cultural foundation of the political system to the decision-making processes in which political authorities engage.  The construct can be applied to any level of government or any internal agency of the government.  The power of the construct, therefore, is enhanced because it identifies the central motivational concern, relative to the system, of those in power, i.e., it focuses on those factors that if not attended to, can affect the health of the system.

Underlying the whole systems approach is this concern for systems’ survival.  It is not only important as an underlying factor to the whole of systems, but to any parts within them, including the individuals involved.  This motivational aspect or drive creates a central dynamic in the world of politics which has to do with establishing and maintaining a balance of forces – an equilibrium.[5] 

As such, it introduces students to a realistic political world in which they need political resources to win – i.e., to have their demands satisfied.  The next posting will continue this sense of power by adding a thought or two, but this current posting will end with a general comment on how non-judgmental this model is.  Notice the lack of any “oughts” or “shoulds” in this general description of the models.  It is that notion with which the next posting will begin.

[Reminder:  Readers are reminded that they can have access to the first 100 postings of this blog, under the title, Gravitas:  The Blog Book, Volume I.  To gain access, they can click the following URL:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zh3nrZVGAhQDu1hB_q5Uvp8J_7rdN57-FQ6ki2zALpE/edit 

OR

click onto the “gateway” posting that allows the reader access to a set of supplemental postings to other published works by this blogger by clicking the URL: http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/ and then looking up the posting for October 23, 2021, entitled “A Digression.”]

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[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 A. Lake, “Theory Is Dead, Long Live Theory:  The End of the Great Debates and the Rise of Eclecticism in International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations, 19, 3, 567-587 (2013), accessed September 4, 2022, https://quote.ucsd.edu/lake/files/2014/02/Lake-EJIR.pdf, 570-572.

[3] Here are Meehan’s concerns:  Does a construct explain as many phenomena related to the area of concern as possible; control the explanatory effort by being valid and complete in its component parts and in the relationships among those parts; specifically and precisely treat its concepts, making them clear in their use; explain its components and their relationships the same way time after time; contain a one-to-one correspondence with that portion of reality it is trying to explain; align with other responsible explanations of the same phenomena; predict conditions associated with the phenomena in question; and imply ways to control phenomena in question?  See Eugene J. Meehan, Contemporary Political Thought:  A Critical Study (Homewood, IL:  Dorsey Press, 1967).

As readers of this blog might know, this blogger adds two pedagogic questions:  is a construct of such abstraction level that students will be able to comprehend it and is its content motivating to students?

[4] The commonplaces are subject matter, teachers, learners, and milieu.  See William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).

[5] Morton Kaplan, “Systems Theory,” in Contemporary Political Analysis, edited by James C. Charlesworth (New York, NY:  The Free Press, 1967), 150-163.

JUDGING THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, X

 

An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …

This blogger has commented extensively on the tumbled history of political science since the mid-point of the last century.  From historical based to behavioral to post behavioral to now critical theory-based research, that discipline has experienced an array of viewpoints by which its research has been guided.  As for its effect on civics education, the behavioral/popular values approach with a political systems/structural-functional model guidance has dictated its content in most classrooms.

          Whether in the behavioral or post-behavioral stage, the field is/was concerned with how political systems meet the needs of their individual members.  This view has maintained its popularity among secondary school educators.  They, the educators, see systems as overall sets of institutions that are formulated to be neutral to vying interests.[2]  One still observes, even in the post behavioral age, that approach in general government curricular literature and in classroom materials (for example, see the bestselling textbook, Magruder’s American Government[3]). 

That is, systems are depicted, to varying degrees, as meeting consumer needs or political demands of their respective citizenries.  And this general approach to the study of politics should be kept in mind as students of politics consider or critique this approach.  As the analysis in upcoming postings answers the questions posed by Eugene Meehan[4] to analyze the viability of this construct, this consumer/citizen orientation should be kept in mind.

Under the liberal/natural rights perspective, importance lies in the ability of schools to prepare students to make sure that their individual rights are understood and that they can pursue their individual interests with reliable knowledge and effective skills.  Their government instruction at the secondary level should be to provide that knowledge and skills.

If successful, students, as adults, can enter the political fray with reasonable chances of success.  This leads to what Robert Putnam advocates:  social capital.[5]  The natural rights perspective, therefore, is a highly practical approach.  In this vein, its focus should be where political powers lie. 

On that front, readers should keep in mind that the US has a federal system of government in which the power of the overall state is divided between the central and state governments.  But the balance between the two levels has through the history of the republic shifted in the direction of the central government.  This shift has been caused by a variety of reasons: 

 

·      the nationalization and now globalization of the economy,

·      the inability of state governments to meet the challenges of economic disasters such as the Great Depression,

·      the demands posed by foreign powers in the age of industrialized and nuclear warfare,

·      the increased sensitivities to egalitarian ideals and the consequent demands for uniform treatment by public and private entities,

·      the incorporation by the federal courts, beginning with the Warren Court, of the Bill of Rights’ guarantees against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment,

·      the multiplicity of problems in the modern economy which are truly national in scope,

·      the inability or unwillingness of states to tackle social problems such as segregation of the races or poverty, and

·      the cultural expression that has grown within the population to look toward Washington for solutions to social and natural problems.[6]

 

A secondary course in American government or civics should reflect these realities. 

Therefore, such courses should divide their attention so that the major concern be with the federal government and its operations.  Any issues that they analyze, and study should for the most part be national and international ones.  While state and local governments should not be totally ignored, they should not be given nearly the attention of that of the central government.

Political frays of the day are ones in which there are many competing cultural views and in which many important decisions are made by national institutions far from the control of either common individuals or local communities.  In this environment, as Maurice P. Hunt and Lawrence E. Metcalf wrote in 1968,

 

… we say that the chief role of education in a democracy is intelligent or critical transmission of cultural heritage, during the course of which disagreements among individuals and incompatibilities in personal outlook are exposed and resolved creatively.[7]

 

People have rights concerning their heritage in a diverse population such as that of the US.  The government that oversees this competing and conflict-ridden environment needs to, in the name of fairness and respect for individual and group rights involved, manage those contentions that such an environment is bound to generate.

          That is, it needs to manage the contentious arenas in an unbiased and procedurally neutral manner.[8]  How well is America doing?  Here are partial findings from a Pew Research Center study,

 

Despite these criticisms [referring to mixed feelings of support on the current quality of democratic rule], most Americans say democracy is working well in the United States – though relatively few say it is working very well. At the same time, there is broad support for making sweeping changes to the political system: 61% say “significant changes” are needed in the fundamental “design and structure” of American government to make it work for current times.

The public sends mixed signals about how the American political system should be changed, and no proposals attract bipartisan support. Yet in views of how many of the specific aspects of the political system are working, both Republicans and Democrats express dissatisfaction.

To be sure, there are some positives. A sizable majority of Americans (74%) say the military leadership in the U.S. does not publicly support one party over another, and nearly as many (73%) say the phrase “people are free to peacefully protest” describes this country very or somewhat well.

In general, however, there is a striking mismatch between the public’s goals for American democracy and its views of whether they are being fulfilled. On 23 specific measures assessing democracy, the political system and elections in the United States – each widely regarded by the public as very important – there are only eight on which majorities say the country is doing even somewhat well.[9]

 

Through the years, America has been considered one of the least – if not the least – statist or authoritarian nation.  Yet Matthew C. MacWilliams reports,

 

What I found is that approximately 18 percent of Americans are highly disposed to authoritarianism, according to their answers to four simple survey questions used by social scientists to estimate this disposition. A further 23 percent or so are just one step below them on the authoritarian scale. This roughly 40 percent of Americans tend to favor authority, obedience and uniformity over freedom, independence and diversity.[10]

 

With that cautionary note, one that an advocate of natural rights would deem as highly worrisome and serving to advance a commitment to support the natural rights approach in civics, this posting marks an end to this review of that approach.  Next will be the application of the approach – given Meehan’s concerns – as it affects the commonplaces of curricular development.

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[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] Michael J. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).

[3] Daniel M. Shea, Magruder’s American Government (Boston, MA:  Prentice Hall/Pearson, 2019).

[4] Eugene J. Meehan, Contemporary Political Thought:  A Critical Study (Homewood, IL:  Dorsey Press, 1967).

[5] Social capital, using the thoughts of Robert Putnam, is characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.  See Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000).  This state exists to the extent a citizenry chooses to adopt the entailed values.

[6] As these words are written, the City of Jackson, Mississippi, is seeking federal assistance to solve its water problems.  Currently, the water cannot be drunk safely.

[7] Maurice P. Hunt and Lawrence E. Metcalf, Teaching High School Social Studies:  Problems in Reflective Thinking and Social Understanding (New York, NY:  Harper and Row Publication, 1968), 35.

[8] Sandel, Democracy's Discontent.

[9] “The Public, The Political System and American Democracy,” Pew Research Center (April 26, 2018), accessed August 31, 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/04/26/the-public-the-political-system-and-american-democracy/.  To give readers a sense of the referred to measures, they include “Rights and freedoms of all people are respected” and “Elected officials face serious consequences for misconduct.”

[10] Matthey C. MacWilliams, “Trump Is an Authoritarian. So Are Millions of Americans,” Politico (September 23, 2020), accessed August 31, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/09/23/trump-america-authoritarianism-420681.

JUDGING THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, IX

 

An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …

Tracing Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell’s structural-functional model,[2] the last posting described the model’s treatment of how political systems handle inputs from their environments.  Inputs take the form of demands and supports and readers are encouraged to review the last several postings to see how this blog accounts for those elements.  This posting will shift to outputs, the policies, regulations, proclamations, and other forms of governmental actions that systems produce.

          Outputs are described as the result of combinations of several factors:  the product of rational decision-making in trying to meet expressed demands, attempts of political systems to adjust to changes in their environments, and those in power trying to maximize their interests given the political realities at given times and conditions.

          These writers, Almond and Powell, do emphasize the rational factors and utilize the concept of capabilities when referring to systems’ actions as a whole.  Analyses of capabilities measure the behaviors or accomplishments in the following categories of performances:  extractions, regulations, distributions, symbolisms, and incidents of responsiveness.  These analyses can be applied to both domestic and international political conditions or situations.

          Political systems depend on their respective societies, i.e., their citizens, to willingly contribute both human and natural resources so that they can achieve societal goals.  Almond and Powell employ the term extractive capabilities to describe systems’ abilities to bring to bear those resources.  These can be financial resources, as when people pay their taxes, or labor, as when people serve in the armed forces.

          When political systems are able to exert control through regulations and enforcements, Almond and Powell call these regulative capabilities.  Of course, in comparing different kinds of systems, democratic systems have very limited regulatory capabilities as compared to totalitarian or highly authoritarian systems.  For example, in the area of speech, the political system of the US is highly limited in this capability.

          Distributive capabilities refer to allocating values, a prime function of the political system.  The focus here is to whom are the values distributed, what values are distributed, when and how will the values be distributed.  These decisions are related to the famous notion Harold Lasswell first introduced to the political science world in 1936.

In that year, his book, Politics:  Who Gets What, Where, and How[3] which defines politics to many, was published.  This type of outputs refers not only to direct distributions of resources by governments, but to decisions and laws that affect who will benefit, and who will not, in the economic and social arenas of nations.

Moving on, with symbolic capabilities, Almond and Powell write about legitimate powers of systems, i.e., how well systems can elicit patriotic or nationalistic feelings of support.  Here, authorities use national symbols extensively, such as flags and anthems, to generate these feelings.  They also question the patriotism of their opponents.  Using David Easton’s terminology, the authorities are trying to increase diffuse support by this type of outputs.[4]

The responsive capabilities are probably the most important to average citizens.  The concern with them is how outputs relate to inputs, particularly demands.  Whose demands are getting satisfied and to what level of satisfaction are they being met are concerns that are being addressed with analyses of this type of capabilities.

In order to get clear views of these concerns, investigators must study entire demand flows within systems.  Several methods of demand responses are identified by the model.  These are incidences of repressions, indifferences, and accommodations.  Some might judge this element of the model, demand flows, as the most telling in terms of what sort of systems a specific system is.

Authorities ignoring demands constitute indifference.  Accommodations consist of satisfying, to some degree, demands and the level that systems demonstrate this capability is the level they demonstrate responsiveness.  At times, especially with recurring demands with high levels of popular concern, accommodations can become institutionalized, and the responses become automatic.  For example, in the case of natural disasters in the US, all relevant levels of government respond almost automatically.

A final set of functions in the Almond and Powell model needs to be included.  These functions are political socialization and political recruitment.  More specifically,

 

·      political socialization, as Easton describes it, refers to the internalization of political cultures by respective populations or nations.  This function is carried out through the instruction of members of the systems, particularly the young, in their respective cultural values, beliefs, attitudes, and customs of political systems.[5]  And

·      political recruitment refers to the need to find and select individuals for authority positions.  These identified people will carry out the processes of political systems.

 

Another function is communications; they tie together the other functions, processes, and structures within and without systems.  Oftentimes, stresses are either caused or augmented by faulty communications.

          That concludes a general description of the systems model of analysis in political science.  Within the discipline, this approach was dominant from the 1950s through the 1960s.  Its insights into how political systems operate still have a large influence under the parameters described by Stephen L. Schechter and Jonathan S. Weil,

In the twentieth century, both politics and political science have experienced a profound shift in emphasis from government to the individual.  Politics and political science became increasingly separate and specialized pursuits … Political science became a social science guided by the behavioral question posed by Harold D. Lasswell in the subtitle of his book Politics:  Who Gets What, When, and How?  The large shift in political science from the study of government to the study of the individual was followed by another shift in emphasis from the study of political institutions to the study of political behavior.

          On the threshold of the 21st century, political science has experienced yet another shift in emphasis – this time, from the study of political behavior to the study of decision-making. … Political scientists in the so-called post-behavioral age are beginning to accept the concern for values, qualitative judgments, and the ends of politics as legitimate considerations of political science. [6]

 

The judgment here is that this claim is still viable today with the only qualifier that this value orientation of today has shifted (yet again) toward critical theory-based concerns.

          The concern here is that the influence of political science on civics education as reflected by the textbooks public school systems employ, has been stuck at the point of the above development that reflects the political systems model that this and the last ten or so postings have described, more specifically in the behavioral/popular values stage.  This blogger makes this argument in his recently published book, From Immaturity to Polarized Politics (available through Amazon).[7]

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[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] Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little, Brown. 1966).

[3] Harold D Lasswell, Who Gets What, When, and How (New York, NY:  McGraw-Hill, 1936).  Current distributor of this book is Papamoa Press.  Accessed April 16, 2020, https://www.google.com/books/edition/Politics_Who_Gets_What_When_How/UlekDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover .

[4] David Easton, A System Analysis of Political Life (New York, NY:  John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1965).

[5] Just as a point of interest, readers should take note of the role civics education plays here.

[6] Stephen L. Schechter and Jonathan S. Weil, “Studying and Teaching Political Science,” in Teaching the Social Sciences and History in Secondary Schools:  A Method Book, edited by James C. Schott and Laurel R. Singleton (Belmont, CA:  Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1996), 138.

[7] Robert Gutierrez, From Immaturity to Polarized Politics:  Obstacles in Achieving a Federated Nation (Tallahassee, FL:  Gravitas Civics Books, 2022).

JUDGING THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, VIII

 

An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …

The last posting left readers with a review of three orientations regarding interest articulation and interest aggregation.  Interest articulation and interest aggregation are two of the functions Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr.’s structural-functional model identifies[2]; that is, how Americans go about generating, communicating, and targeting their demands at and supports of their respective political systems. 

Of special note is what Daniel Elazar offers as he identifies and describes three subcultures that have, in general terms, characterized American politics and are aligned – coincidentally – with Almond and Powell’s orientations.[3]  The subcultures arose in the historical development of the US.  They are

 

·      The traditional subculture that could and still can be found in the states evolving from the Confederate states. 

·      The absolute-value (moralistic) subculture, in a more moderate form, in the “moralistic” states which evolved from the New England, Puritanical tradition. 

·      And the pragmatic bargaining (individualistic) subculture which was most strongly prevalent in the political/social orientation of the mid-Atlantic states that bolstered a commercial outlook. 

 

Overall, these subcultures were carried by settlers – east to west – as the nation developed toward the Pacific Ocean.  Today, though, dominant orientation in the US is the individualistic subculture.

          Before continuing with the rest of the functions of the political system, a word about interest aggregation should be added.  Excessive stresses can be experienced if many diverse interests are not successfully aggregated to a manageable number; even if they are narrowed, problems may still be present.  Even if there are few alternative demands being articulated at a given time that are extremely far apart in content, i.e., mutually exclusive and uncompromising, the ability to find a suitable resulting policy might be impossible.

          In such cases, any decision might be very unacceptable and considered illegitimate by large portions of the community.  A current issue that takes on this sort of division is abortion or abortion rights.  Almond and Powell call this “fragmentation in aggregation patterns.”  These stresses are most likely to occur in conditions or demand-sets associated with the absolute-value oriented (moralistic) subculture.

          Now it is time to move on to the other Almond and Powell functions.  The next function from their model to be described here is rulemaking.  This function definitely takes students of politics into the “black box” of policy decision making.  Naturally, rules are part of the make-up of any society.  Certain questions or points of analysis are designated by this structural-functional approach to analyze rulemaking.

          These include:  What are the sources of a society’s rules?  What are their natures?  How flexible are the society’s rules?  What are the structures associated with rulemaking and how do they interact or relate with each other?  How does the rulemaking function relate to the other functions of the system?  In the American system, of course, these types of questions lead to the processes associated with the different branches of government at all levels of the federal system.

            Rulemaking is primarily associated with the legislative branch in which Congress, at the national level, legislatures, at the state level, or city or county commissions at local levels, basically decide what government will do by the enactment of laws or ordinances.  The interaction of the executive and judicial branches with the legislative branches, from the central to local governmental platforms, has a large role in what those laws or ordinances will be or how they will actually function. 

For example, more rules are added as legislation is put into operation, mostly done by the executive branches or interpreted by resulting court action in the judicial branches.  So important are these last sets of activities that they constitute separate functions in the Almond and Powell model; that is, the rule-application function and the rule-adjudication function.

Given the more secular character of rules, these separate functions – with their separate structural elements – are more suitable in modern societies.  In premodern societies, rules are usually intertwined with religious beliefs and other institutional values, by which they enjoy high degrees of legitimacy and, therefore, almost complete adherence.  In modern societies, this support is absent – or almost absent.  Currently, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, there seems to be ample antagonism to what many see as religious based policy to ban abortions.

If those sorts of policies were enacted – laws against gay marriage, against the sale of contraceptive medication, along with the sale and provision for end of pregnancy medications and procedures – due to lack of legitimacy, they would necessitate large bureaucratic set ups to police obedience.  Add that to modern, pragmatic bargaining induced policies such as Social Security, and such traditional biases might make the affected governments overwhelmed or highly taxed.

The same can be said of the rule-adjudication function.  Questions associated with whether rules are broken, who broke them, what should be done if they are broken, or even if the rule or law is a legal rule or law to begin with, are all issues that modern societies through their judiciaries must face.  That is, the main structure to deal with these questions is the courts, but there are other structures that share in adjudicating activities.

These include police, regulation inspectors, and regulatory commissions.  Of special concern with the adjudicating function is the issue of impartiality.  It is essential that the function be satisfied in such a way that the members of political systems believe them to be fair.  Impartiality, or the belief in it, goes a long way in encouraging the trust that systems are fair.  Autonomy, in turn, from other structures gives adjudicating structures the advantage of not being unduly influenced by partial (political) forces.

From these descriptions, readers can get a feel for how interactive the parts of systems are – making them true systems.  And this is without considering outputs.  A lot happens within the “black box” and what students should remember is that those processes are continually taking place.  The next posting will focus on outputs and further identify and describe these interactions.

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[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] Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little, Brown. 1966).

[3] Daniel J.  Elazar, American Federalism:  A View from the States (New York, NY:  Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1966).  He further develops this claim in this book’s edition published in 1986.  The subcultures, a federalist view, Elazar identifies were theorized independently from the work of Almond and Powell or even of that of David Easton.