Category: Political Science Notes

In an ideal type of democracy, the public should shape its own destiny. But such democracy is rarely available. However, a society not striving for it happens to be less worthy and also dangerous to live in. Practice of democracy is culturally and historically contingent. Globalisation has brought significant shifts in the mode of governance.

Democracy and globalisation both presently are at odd with each other. Both suffer from several inherent deficiencies. The conven­tional liberal democracy based on a territorial state is not an adequate formula for rule by the people. On other side, the decision-taking processes that govern globalisation suffer from shortfalls of public participation and accountability.

Besides these inadequacies, there is widespread ignorance among citizens, the media and legislature about globalisation. This has severely restricted the possibilities of democratic regulation of governance of trans planetary relations. Deeply entrenched structural inequalities hardly permit citizen involvement in the governance of globalisation. There is a great need of evolving a variant of post-territorialist and post-statist democracy.

Already there are many limits of statist liberal democracy. Contem­porary globalisation has further weakened liberal democracy grown around state. Democracy came up when people grouped themselves as distinct nations living in discrete territories, ruled by sovereign states made them subject to popular control.

Globalisation pushed statist democracy to over 117 countries by 1998. But there have been other forces like the student activists, NGOs, rebellion etc. But democracies in many of these countries are only skin-deep and lack real credentials. In many countries, democracies have not proved culturally appropriate. Formal democracies are inherently deficient. Democracy requires more than multiplicity of political parties, periodic elections, legal provisions of civil rights, or neutral bureaucracy.

All these are low-intensity democracies. Territorially grounded democracy cannot serve a state where many social relations are substantially supra-territorial. Global democracy requires to be more than a democratic state. It cannot control its jurisdiction’s involvement with global flows. It needs ideational transformation. The contemporary ‘public’ of a country is not more confined to the nation-state. The ‘public’ or the ‘people’ have many sides, domestic and outside. Globalisation has undermined conventional frameworks of liberal democracy. Its mode of governance has moved from statism towards polycentrism.

A people unaware of this situation cannot pursue meaningful self-determination. They are ignorant of the issues, concepts, principles, policies and the working of globalisation. They know little about globality and it governance. Even the activists confuse the IMF with the World Bank. Formal education at lower and higher levels has no provision for teaching the students on globalisation.

School and university curricula have generally prepared young people poorly for global citizenship. Universities still neglect globalisation and its polycentric governance. ‘Global studies’ are usually put along with ‘international studies’. Print, audio and visual journalism do try to raise citizen awareness in these matters. Big confer­ences on major global challenges find a passing mention in the media. Journalists themselves are poorly educated on global mattes. Only the globally organised big business exploits liberalisation and privatisation in the communication sectors.

They give prominence to news opposite of globalisation. Only Internet is making some positive contribution, but its approach is still very limited. Civil society associations have certainly made efforts for the common man to understand the global problems and policies related to them. They organise teach-ins, lectures, symposia, colloquia, workshops discussion groups, round tables, artistic performances and road shows. In some countries, they have built up publicly accessible libraries and documentation centres.

These have been done only in modest proportions. They lack resources to sustain long-term programmes of large-scale citizen education on global affairs. Rulers have a democratic duty to educate the governed about their governance: what policy decisions are taken on global issues, at what time, where, by whom, from what options on what grounds, with what expected results and with what supporting resources.

Citizens should have ready access to all such information. Elements of confidentiality and secrecy must be minimum. The IMF and the WTO have launched elaborate websites, along with huge arrangement for press releases newsletters, reports, pamphlets, audio-visual productions, in-person contacts, and public exhibitions. However, governments remain tight-lipped about their dealings with global governance agencies and global corpora­tions. Trans-governmental relations stand outside of public eye.

They hardly know that many private regulatory schemes are important for various aspects of global communications, global finance, global investment and global trade. Many governance agencies fall short of effective transparency with respect to their dealings on globalisation. Documents released by governance institutions are opaque for the uninitiated owing to their overwhelming use of technical terms, obscure acronyms, professional jargon and other specialised vocabulary.

Global governance has been suffering from democratic deficit. Democ­racies are poorly equipped with tools, techniques and measures to deal with trans-planetary and supra-territorial connectivity and globalisation. Democ­racies lack processes to conduct polls of the affected public. There are sample public opinion surveys by polling agencies, but have no place in activating democratic participation in global politics. Official public referenda do not figure, save in Switzerland, in the governance of globalisation.

Questions of globalisation find so mention in parliamentary and presidential elections. Most of the supra-state institutions operate without elected popular representatives. Macro-regional parliamentary organs, NATO, ASEAN, IMF or WHO, are not directly elected. Technical means to conduct trans-planetary ballots are currently not available.

Even global political parties, like the Socialist International, are not equipped to launch intercontinental electoral campaigns. Even various private regulatory mechanisms in the governance of globalisation have operated without any kind of public polls. Elected representative legislative institu­tions also do not exercise democratic oversight of the governance of globalisation. Only some members of parliaments monitor certain aspects of the regulation of global relations. Often legislative assemblies escape their duties and overlook global matters.

Devolution of governments has not yielded greater democratic oversight of global governance. Regulation of global regimes does not come in treaty form, and thereby it escapes the need for legislative approval. Governments take decisions on global questions without consulting the legislatures.

It is difficult to obtain official documents on global subjects. Few parliamentarians bring personal expertise to do their job on global issues. There are few professional researchers and advisers to help and guide them. There are some instances of increased legislative activism concerning globalisation: the Global Legislators Organi­zation for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE), 1989, Parliamentarians for Global Action, 2004, Parliamentary Conference on the WTO, 2000 etc. However, such bodies lack number, influence and regularity. Rules to govern trans-planetary connections have proliferated without involvement from popularly elected assemblies.

On the judicial side, avenues to obtain justice are generally not available in the governance of global issues. Citizens normally cannot take grievances regarding global affairs to thei
r national and local tribunals. Courts cannot pronounce on the activities of the state outside its territory or on the activities of supra-state authorities. Global courts are either absent or unavailable for direct citizen’s petitions concerning the governance of globalisation.

The International Court of Justice in the Hague considers cases brought only by states. The same holds true for the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism. There are no official avenues even for public inspec­tions, independent evaluations, and investigations by authorities. Accountability remains modest. Open, outside, independent, published assessment of the performance of the global bodies is lacking.

Civil society associations encourage citizen participation in policymaking on global issues, both from the inside and from the outside, but their activism remains modest. These groups have sometimes fallen short of democratic standards of participation and accountability in their own practices.

Only a small proportion of the world’s population partici­pates in citizen mobilisation. These civil society organisations have small membership and nominal involvement (payment of subscription only). The larger public rally behind a campaign only on a short-term and ad hoc basis. NGOs are mostly the preserve of relatively small number of full-time profes­sional activists.

They lack democratic credentials in their own behaviour. They are run on top-down managerial authoritarianism. In some cases, their jet-setting staff has little touch with their notional beneficiaries as they fly from one global conference to the next elsewhere. They rarely hold regular, independently monitored elections of their officers. They do not publish independent evaluations of their actually conducted activities.

Some of them are not public interest organisations, but fronts for governments, political parties and corporations. There is lack of transparency about who they are, what objectives they pursue, where their funds originate, how they reach their policy positions, how they happen to continue etc. However, some of their leaders do challenge their own democratic practices. Their critical voices demand more participation, transparency and accountability in their own ranks.

Technocracy wins over democracy in the governance of globalisation. Regulation of global affairs often rests with bureaucrats who are largely insulated from public inputs and public controls. Some officials cherish ‘depoliticisation of global governance’ at their own levels. They consider themselves as objective experts who operate global regimes most efficiently without ill-informed public interference. However, some civil society consultation has been built into a number of global policy-making processes.

Accredited organisations do participate in many global governance convoca­tions and inject citizen voices into policy processes on global issues. Some of the activists accept invitations to join state delegations to such events. Civil society associations also arrange public meetings where citizens can express concerns and make proposals regarding globalisation. Other meetings take the form of noisy rallies, marches, petitions, campaigns and boycotts.

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Broadly, analysis can be visualized in four forms:

(i) Full analysis:

All areas that are not susceptible to empirical research and theory fall under the purview of full analysis;

(ii) Background analysis:

All broader concepts, major constants, covering laws, conceptual frameworks etc. analysed before the actual conducting of inquiry belong to this category;

(iii) Data Analysis:

Data collected during the course of survey, investigation or research is put under this category; and,

(iv) End Analysis.

Levels of Political Analysis:

There can be many levels of analysis ranging from specific aspects of social reality to its hierarchical levels:

(a) Aggregate analysis:

Survey sampling belongs to this category;

(b) Relational or group analysis:

It is concerned with interactional patterns between individuals and groups found as networks of mutual relations. In this analysis, a group characteristic is analysed without any reference to individual properties as in bureaucratisation or professionalisation;

(c) Institutional Analysis:

It attempts to compare relationships within and across the legal, political, cultural and economic institutions of society. Relevant properties, attributes or elements may be compared within institutions;

(d) Ecological Analysis:

It is concerned with large, all-covering and contextual explanations as done in field studies of crime and delinquency;

(e) Cultural Analysis:

It concentrates on the association of norms, values, practices, traditions, ideologies, technical objects and other artifacts of culture; and,

(f) Societal Analysis:

which typically uses societal or sociological gross indicators as done in urbanisation, industrialisation and the like. Sometimes these levels overlap. Analysis can be classified on the basis of number of variables used, and, transformation in the nature of phenomena.

Kinds of Political Analysis:

On the basis of number of variables, it can be:

(i) Univariate,

(2) Two-variable, and,

(3) Multi-variable.

Dynamic or transformation study analysis can (a) trend analysis, or (b) panel studies.

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Besides Max Weber’s typology of legitimacy, the need and feeling for justice can be regarded as another source of legitimacy. In fact, ideology of the people, and not of the rulers, is the main source of legitimacy. In democ­racies, legitimacy is indicated by its ideals, popular consent, representativeness, elections, rule of majority, civic liberties and similar privileges available to the people.

Grace A. Jones, with reference to the British political system, has mentioned certain sources of legitimacy in the following manner:

(1) Past visible in political and social institutions;

(2) Tradition of non-violence;

(3) Numerous symbols and rituals;

(4) Belief in the value and validity of existing political procedures, e.g., conventions;

(5) Election-procedure, freedom and consensus justifying laws;

(6) Homogeneous and integrated society, continuity of traditions in family from father to son, e.g., party allegiance; and

(7) Political culture with some degree of adaptability.

Dahl has also indicated various sources of winning legitimacy or earning compliance:

1. To encourage compliance:

(a) By increasing rewards for compliance,

(b) By decreasing disadvantages of compliance,

2. To discourage non-compliance:

(c) By decreasing rewards from other alternatives,

(d) By increasing disadvantages of other alternatives.

He has suggested that internal sources of rewards and deprivations are always better than external sources. More and more internalization gradually replaces the need of external sources. When the political system is widely accepted as legitimate and its policies are regarded as morally binding, the cost of compliance reduces. When legitimacy and authority are in low key, it has to make more use of money, police, privileges, weapons, status and other political resources. Obviously, democracy requires more legitimacy and authority than other systems.

Still legitimacy is not some high level abstract feeling, but a phenomenon existing underlying the whole system. It is related to whole system and its governance. It is not a moral feeling or subjective conceptualization. It is a belief of the people in the rightness of the activities of the government. But it comes out in concrete form also. In the words of Easton, it relates to the allocation of authoritative values for the society. Who, in what form, when, how, in what manner, and where are also the questions related to its legitimacy.

At the interval level, it is related to praise, honour, affection, etc., or their reverse forms like dis-honour, anomie, alienation, etc., At the external level it is connected with material things like land, money, license, status, privileges, immunities etc. They may not actually be given but expectation of getting them or the fear of losing them also works a lot in motivating each form of legitimacy. Material goods, in any system, are never unlimited; therefore, political leaders always try to economise them.

They do so by (i) preferring internal or abstract awards, and (ii) using means like leadership, influence, and propaganda. With the help of these, they are able to get compliance simply on the basis of communicating to them. Material rewards, apart from being limited and scarce, their distribution can also prove dysfunctional. But these internal and external sources should not be treated as separate. They are related with each other. In sum, internal resources are less costly than material resources.

Non-material resources of legitimacy are less expensive than running the political system on the basis of power as physical force. Democracy requires the first two sources, whereas dictatorship mostly operates on physical force. Therefore, cost of running a system on the basis of force is very high, making the system still more fragile, instable, and alienated.

Apart from the consideration of cost, it must be pointed out that authority is the most efficient form of influence. It is legitimacy which enables political actors to transform influence into authority. Power, influence, and authority, standing on the ground of legitimacy, do not require to spend much political resources. In the context of Third World countries, it can be stated that legitimacy plays a key role in getting along with their political system. They have scarce economic and political sources.

They have to telescope centuries into decades, and attain modernisation as early as possible. Only an attitude of ‘rightness’ or belief in the legitimacy of their structures, functions, procedures, leaders, and decisions can come to their rescue. Even, with less amount of power or a weakened government, a developing society can attain its goals. It keeps majority as well as minority communities bound to each other. No majority can keep a considerably big minority under coercion.

It has to win them over by propagating values, ideology, and role-expectations. So is the case with the minority groups and communities, as they too have to stand at par on the common levels of legit­imacy. Within the bounds of this legitimacy, political leaders, parties, groups, and individuals are allowed to compete among themselves. As legit­imacy is deeply entrenched into cultural values, secession or separatism cannot burst out so easily.

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The basic unit of Easton’s system analysis is ‘interaction’. Interaction is generated from the behaviour of the members of the system when they play their role as such. When these myriad interactions, in the perception of the scholar, become a ‘set of interrelations’, they are considered as a ‘system’. Easton’s subject matter of analysis is only the set of political interactions.

There are four major premises or broader concepts of his flow-model or input-output analysis:

(i) System;

(ii) Environment;

(iii) Response; and

(iv) Feedback.

In the analysis of politics, one has to make use of these concepts.

1. System:

His system is a ‘political system’, the basic unit of analysis. It is a ‘system of interactions in any society through which binding or authoritative alloca­tions are made and implemented.’ Easton is interested in studying political life which is seen as a system of behaviour operating within and responding to its social environment while making binding allocations of values. The making of binding and authoritative decisions distinguishes the political system from other systems (existing both within and outside the overall society) that form the environment of that political system.

Within this political system, there are many political groups and organisations, called para-political systems. But he is more concerned with ‘political system’ standing as the most inclusive unit of political life. Political system, as such, is found everywhere. It is the inclusive whole of all political interactions. Easton analyses the nature, conditions, and life processes of political life operating in form of an analytic system.

By adopting the concept of ‘system’, Easton has free Political Science from its traditional, legalistic, institutional, and formal moorings, and proposes to view it as it really is. This ‘system’ is made of interactions of those persons who take part in public life, and are related with making and implementing of public policies.

Easton is not satisfied to see ‘political activity’ merely as ‘direction of man by man’ (de Jouvenel), or as ‘relating to control or will’ (Catlin), or ‘relation between influencer and the influenced’ (Lasswell). It is also not adequate to see politics related to authority, power, government and rule (Dahl). His concept of system is more inclusive.

In a sense, his concept of ‘system’ is integrative involving values, culture, authority, governance, implementation, participation, process, etc. ‘System’ is a very wide term, which includes all forms of formal and informal processes, interactions, functions, structures, values, behaviour, etc. The political system allocates values for the whole society and its decisions stand obligatory. A ‘system’, thus, can be any set of variables, whatever be the form or intensity of interactions or interrelationship operating among them. A political system is a subsystem of the societal system, but it has a binding power of its own. Even within a political system, there are many subsystems.

Easton’s political system is both open and adaptive. Exchanges take place between a political system and its environment which is made of many systems and their subsystems, including even para-political systems. All these, and other various events and influences make up the conditions under which members of a political system act and react.

The latter can find these as favourable or obstructive to its survival. As such, it must have the capacity to face those obstructions, and adapt itself to those conditions. Most often, a political system has a trait or capacity to adapt itself to changing environment. Political systems contrive mechanisms to regulate their own moves, transform internal structures, and even reformulate goals.

A political system, like any other system, has boundaries. These bound­aries relate to the formation of political interactions and go on changing. The political system, somehow, tends to maintain its systemic boundaries, and boundary conditions. In other words, it has to carefully look after and protect its life-processes or capacity to respond effectively to external environment or internal influences. It has to operate as an effective trans­forming process. In case, it is unable to maintain its boundaries, it may lose its identity, even merge into other systems.

It may be reiterated that Eastonian framework of systems theory is conceptual and analytical. His ‘political system’ is born of concepts, and is conceptual or ‘constructivist’, used as a set of variables selected for description, explanation, and research. It is different from, and not, a concrete or natural system. An actual, concrete or natural system, also called as membership-system, consists of human beings or actual individuals. Easton’s analytic system is made of abstractions that focus selected elements of human behaviour.

His system, thus, is a set of particular interactions, which is related to allocation of values that are binding for society and their implementation, within that membership or concrete system, called society. Binding nature of the set of interactions is another quality separating political system from other systems. This abstract analytic system interacts with its environment, converting its inputs into outputs through processes or within puts, and feedback as shown in the following diagram:

2. Environment:

Easton’s political system is a complex set of certain processes or interactions which transforms particular inputs into outputs of authoritative policies, decisions, and implementation. This conversion takes place in some environment. As an open system, it must have the resilience to respond to that environment, facing all obstacles, and adjusting itself to conditions.

Only by doing so, it can survive or exist over a period of time.

Analytically, environment can be of two types:

(i) Extra-societal, and

(ii) Intra-societal.

As given in the Diagram above extra-societal environment involves interna­tional political systems, like various political systems, alliances, UNO, etc.; international ecological systems; and, international social systems, as cultural, socio-structural, economic, demographic, and other systems. Intra-societal systems include ecological, biological, personality-oriented, social, cultural, socio-structural, and demographic systems operating within the political system.

Conflicts, strains, and changes emerging out of environment can prove functional or dysfunctional to that political system. Therefore, the latter should have, for its survival, persistent capability to respond to that environment. Easton rightly puts more emphasis on the capacity of the system to cope with the environment. Countries of the Third World can find a lot of useful material in Easton’s concept of ‘environment’, and required ‘capacity’ to deal with it.

Easton has pointed out that system theorists have spoken a lot on the first two concepts – ‘system’ and ‘environment’. As regards the third and fourth concepts of ‘response’ and ‘feedback’, he can be said to have made his own contribution to systems theory. In fact, the latter concepts, instead of being singular ones, are clusters of many concepts. So is the case with the first two concepts also.

3. Response:

A political system has to respond to its environment in coping with crises, stresses, and other difficulties. It has also to perform, o
n its own, some other functions, such as, maintaining order in the society and to uphold its own form and identity amid ever-changing environment. All of them have been put under the generic concept of ‘response’.

Specifically, the political system has to perform three main categories of functions:

(a) Allocation of values for society,

(b) To motivate its members to accept the allocations as binding, and

(c) To cope with stress and challenges coming to the system.

The first two are essential parts of political life. Without them neither can the political system exist nor the society survive without the political system as such. Easton gives the central place to ‘systemic persistence’ which usually remains under ‘stress’ for several factors. The system has to look into the sources of stress and modes or processes of regulating stress. A political system is a set of interacting essential variables which fluctuate within a certain limit or range. It cannot go beyond its ‘critical range’. The system is considered under ‘stress’, if the essential variables push it to cross over the critical range.

The system tries to remain within critical range, but at times, it is compelled to go beyond. For its survival and persistence, it has to respond in many ways – at the level of demands or support, or at output or feedback levels. The political system collapses in case it is unable to cope with coming stresses and crises Therefore, it is always necessary constantly to evaluate the nature of stresses, capacity of the system to cope with, and the means and methods to do so.

The political system is driven by:

(a) ‘Demands’ and challenges made on it, and

(b) ‘Support’, it gets from its members.

It meets the challenge of demands with the help of supports, but it can manipulate and regulate both. It receives them in form of ‘inputs’ from its environment, the society at large. These inputs are converted into ‘outputs’, but the system also keeps a watch over effects and consequences of its outputs through ‘feedback’, which helps it constantly to modify its inputs as well as outputs. Easton’s political system, in a way, is a conversion process in which inputs are transformed into outputs, helped and guided by feedback.

All the systemic responses are broadly divided into two categories:

(a) Inputs, and

(b) Outputs.

(a) Inputs:

Inputs are responses entering into the system.

They consist of:

(1) Demands, and

(2) Supports.

Demands put strain or stress on the system, whereas support provides energy to sustain it. Though the two are of different nature, still they make up one category of ‘inputs’ to be converted into ‘outputs’ through within-puts or the conversion process. Easton does not discuss the nature or form of within-puts. The political system receives both demands and supports from society or environment. It is driven by demands, and sustained by supports.

(1) Demands:

Demand is ‘an expression of opinion that an authoritative allocation with regard to a particular subject matter should or should not be made by those responsible for doing so’. It can take the form of stress, effects, demands, agitations, crises etc. all coming from environment. They all intend to influence, move, modify, or change the political system, and can be undifferentiated wants, articulated recog­nizable demands, or specific issues. Mostly, they are of collective or public nature. Demands are, after their determination, satisfied through ‘allocation of values’.

Demands can take several forms, such as, provision for certain things, services, and conveniences; regulating public behaviour; participating in the political system, for making symbolic expressions, etc. A system may not be in a position to convert all demands into outputs. It looks into quantity, nature of contents, source, kind, volume, intensity, etc. Only a few demands reach the output stage. Excessive demands put stress over the system, and cause ‘overload’. Overload may ‘be due to the volume, intensity, velocity, urgency, and contents of the demand.

In order to deal with the problem of overload or excessive demands, the political system can make use of several ‘regulatory mechanisms’:

(i) Structural mechanism:

It is located at the boundary of the system and regulates the flow of articulation of demands. Unimportant demands are scrutinised and regulated by and through various gate-keeping roles. They may not even be allowed to enter the system.

(ii) Cultural mechanism:

On the basis of prevailing socio-cultural norms, certain demands can be designated as incompatible with them, thus, lessened in considerable manner, if not rejected altogether. Sometimes they become the basis or constraints of political demands.

(iii) Communication channels:

Through the use of TV, radio, corre­spondence, press, etc. demands may be strengthened or weakened or diluted to a considerable extent.

(iv) Reduction processes:

Demands may be reduced to a limited number through a process-selection, scrutiny, grouping, etc. Some criteria, general or restricted, may be added to it.

(2) Support:

A political system also receives support from its environment. After subtracting demands from inputs, we get supports which operate between the system and its environment. They are positive responses towards specific objects or level of a political system. Support can be towards (a) the political community which means the acceptance of political division of labour; (b) the regime which embodies basic values, political structures, and norms underlying the political system; and (c) the political authorities or persons holding power in the given context. Support can be given at some particular or all levels.

Support to political community reflects paying regard to the general form and arrangement of power in the society, and acceptance of the demar­cation between the political and non-political. Support to a regime broadly means legitimacy of the system, its constitutionality, basic structure, and inherent values. The last level invokes holding of respect, loyalty, and obedience to the particular persons wielding political authority. It includes administrators and officials.

The support can be rendered in many ways – by paying taxes, obedience to law, participation in the form of voting, discussion, comments, and constructive suggestions, or deference towards public authorities. The form and style of expressing support can be overt or covert, positive or negative, diffuse or specific, and so on. Often the political system obtains support by and through allocation values and implementation thereof, manipulation of outputs, socialisation, and other political means.

Without support at a certain minimum level, no political system can persist. There can be many causes of failure, as is the case with some Third World countries for not getting support from their populace, such as inadequate use of regulatory mechanism, non-generation of support, and neglect of outputs.

(b) Outputs:

Outputs are the decisions and actions of the authorities. They produce effects and consequences which have direct relation with the members’ attitude and behaviour for the system. Easton calls them as ‘authoritative allocation of values’, ‘binding decisions and actions’, or ‘exchange between the system and its environment’. Output is turnout or production made by the political authorities. It is the flow of those responses which go from the system to environment.

Outputs are converted inputs or finished goods prepared from the raw material of inputs. Even the political authorities themselves can also take initiative in the making of outputs. They are the results of the t
ransformation process of the political system.

Outputs reveal many forms – realisation of taxes, regulation of public behaviour and conduct, distribution of honours, goods, and services, allocation of values, display of symbolic outputs, etc. They are reflected in verbal or written statements from the authorities as well as concrete actions. They can be the effects or results of immediately authorised decisions.

If they relate to decisions taken in distant past, they would be called as ‘outcome’. In case they are not binding, they would be named as co-outputs. Outputs can be inter or intra systemic. In all cases, they release support-stress. They can be regarded as a primary source to get specific support, but a satisfactory flow of output over a period of time tends to produce all-out or diffuse support.

Outputs have several aspects – economic, social, cultural, political, etc. From the viewpoint of political system, political aspects of the outputs are more important. They influence the broader society or environment, and also determine the need and form of each succeeding round of inputs. Even the form, need, and quality of support depends on it.

4. Feedback:

‘Feedback’ is another important concept in Easton’s systems theory. Capacity of a political system to persist over time depends on feedback. It is a dynamic process through which information about the outputs and the environment is communicated to the system which may result in subsequent change or modification of the system. Information about demands and supports may enter the system as inputs in usual manner.

When infor­mation relating to converted inputs, or outputs comes in, then there is a kind of re-communication of information, or re-inputation of inputs already converted into outputs. By doing so, the political system gets an opportunity to modify or transform its behaviour conducive to that feedback. In this manner, it can make it more effective or persist in a better way. In the absence of feedback, it is likely to operate in the usual unresponsive manner, and lose support.

Information about environment reaching as inputs in usual manner may enter the system too late. It may reach there in a distorted form, as it happened with Indira Gandhi Government (1977) and the Shah of Iran (1979)- ‘Loop’ means a curve that rejoins the main line farther on. ‘Feedback Loop’ connotes a process wherein information is obtained; actions, reactions or responses are made on it; then to see the result, and re-collect the same; and, to be benefited by it to achieve the goal.

It includes the arrangement and linking of information channels for the aforesaid purpose. Feedback involves a continuity by linking of obtaining information, reacting, and knowing the effects further to improve upon Systems behaviour and responses. It is a ‘output-information-reinputation- recommunication-reoutputation’ process.

Feedback process, in this way, is concerned with input sequence, demands and support emerging out of environment, conversion processes, outputs, and feedback mechanisms. Feedback mechanisms carry effects and consequences of the outputs into the system again as inputs. They make the system dynamic, purposive, and goal-oriented. Interactions and their various forms within a system confront the problems of stress, maintenance, etc., by counter-balancing, by reducing, or by removal. But their interac­tion-circuits may remain incomplete or breakdown at any point, e.g., stoppage at the level of demands. A demand has to go along with the long conversion process.

Its shape, size and content may considerably change till it reaches the output-stage. Sometimes, the demand dies out by then completely. Similarly, information coming from the environment may not be considered as a ‘demand’ by the authorities. Ultimately, the latter have to decide whether some allocation of values should be made to meet that demand or not. But reaction or response to every such breakdown of the circuit has to be taken into consideration for further action and implemen­tation by the system.

Easton presents the concept of ‘feedback loop’ as the basis of the capacity of the outputs to generate specific support. It connects the conse­quences of the outputs with the inflow of inputs: demands and supports. Thus, it establishes a circulatory relationship between inputs and outputs. There is all-round impact of this dynamic process – on support, stress, survival and persistence. It completes the political circuit through its input – conversion – output – feedback process. In a political system, several feedback processes operate at various levels. But Easton relates the feedback processes pertaining to the whole political system.

For analytical purposes, there are two forms of feedback:

(i) Negative feedback – it relates to the information regarding the system and the regulation of errors; and

(2) Goal-transforming feedback – it is concerned with the purposeful redirection of the system.

In all conditions, feedback is a regulatory demand of political systems. However, feedback itself can suffer from many pathologies, regarding accuracy, responsiveness, time-lag, etc. Several mistakes can take place in the process of communication. Even delayed information can cause great harm to the survival of a political system.

The feedback loop can be analysed from several angles. From the view of system-maintenance or gaining specific support, its operation can be divided into four stages:

(1) There are situations of feedback, which can come out of authorised direction, associate outputs, or outcomes. They all are part of the political system. But its estimation depends on its perception or observation.

(2) There are feedback-responses which can be in the form of satisfying the demands, or positive or negative support.

(3) In the third stage feedback-responses are communicated to the political authorities.

(4) In the last stage, after completion of the feedback-circuit the authorities deliberate, discuss, and arrive at certain decisions. Much depends on variables like responsiveness of authorities, time-lag, availability of infor­mation-resources for decision-making, etc. Here, resources of the system as a whole are involved. The feedback loop, in Easton’s input-output analysis, interlinks authorities and its members in a manner that the former may take steps soon after they get information through the feedback.

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Directly or indirectly, all areas within the purview of sensory organs can be studied in a behavioural manner. Though limitations of time, resources, skill and technological advancement are there, yet according to Heinz Eulau, all segments of Political Science can be treated behaviourally.

Still, some specific areas preferred by the behaviouralists are:

1. Individuals engaged in face-to-face relationship.

2. Small groups and organisations.

3. Systems and subsystems like political parties, legislatures, pressure groups, etc.

4. Voting behaviour.

5. Concepts, such as the will, power, processes, decision, structures and functions, system, etc.

6. Processes.

7. Policies and values.

8. Comparative politics.

9. New tools and techniques.

10. Theories, approaches, and other frameworks.

Van Dyke has pointed out that behaviouralism (or behavioural sciences) is an all-inclusive term. It includes all those sciences which study the behaviour of man or other living creatures. In ‘political behaviour’, we include all political activities of man. It is not only the behavioural aspect of politics, but all political behaviour. Simple use of the term ‘behaviouralism’ usually means ‘political behaviouralism’. It involves all activities of man related to public decisions or distribution of power in society.

Behavioural approach aims at reaching empirical generalisations and developing a theory. Observation of behaviour leads us to certain unifor­mities or regularities of behaviour. Wider the uniformities, greater the validity of generalisations. These generalisations are to be testable or verifiable. In this sense, behavioural approach is more than a method.

Political behaviour analysis has four important characteristics:

(i) It studies individual person’s behaviour even while analysing groups, the elite, and movements, etc.;

(ii) Chooses a frame of reference, often taken from other disciplines;

(iii) Starts with theoretical propositions for the purposes of empirical research; and,

(iv) Adopts scientific methods and techniques.

Areas of political behaviour analysis can be broadly divided into two parts:

(a) Behavioural studies conducted in situational or institutional contexts, such as voting behaviour, legislative, judicial, or administrative behaviour, etc., and

(b) Studies undertaken around specific organising concepts or the broader conceptual schemes.

They are generally known as approaches, but do not rise to the level of a general theory, e.g., system analysis, group approach, decision-making analysis, communication theory etc.

These centralising concepts obviously have two levels:

(i) Specific and lower, such as, group, power decision, conflict, etc., and

(ii) General and higher, such as system, field, process, communication, etc.

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Political technologies, as conceived here, are not readily available. They have to be searched, surveyed and discovered and further processed for use. If they are not available, the user has to identify and process them keeping in view the current needs and requirements of the political situation.

Such political technologies can come out of the experience, confrontation, and searching solution of the problems. This source can prove to be a laboratory to test and explore the newer ones and turn out finished and final goods of ‘political technology’ after processing them in adequate manner.

‘Identification’ means ascertaining of particular patterns of goal-oriented political operations and behaviour. They should be dispas­sionately observed, studied and discerned for future use. Identification of political technologies should not be person, place and time specific.

Identifi­cation or discovery does not mean that they were already available to the original users in the past or were manufactured by them in a final and finished form. In fact, in the past, the operators of these technology-like acts, the rulers or governing elite, might not have consciously created them, or have had openly sought help and guidance from political scientists, engineers, and scholars.

The users of technologies might have overlooked many other factors. In some cases, the leaders of the ruling coterie might have imitated blindly the acts or steps of their predecessors. In other cases, the genesis of the political technologies may not have been as transparent as was in case of Mahatma Gandhi. He instead of imitating others liked to act upon his ‘inner voice’ and fabricate a large number of new political technol­ogies. Hundreds of leaders now make an attempt to follow him earnestly.

Political technologies come out of patterns of specific political activities or operations. Only those activities which fit in or stand within the param­eters of the concept of ‘political technology’ can be considered as such. The seven cluster-variables elaborate this concept. From this point of view all other political variations such as policy, strategy, tools, technique and methods are different from political technology. The latter is not problem or person specific. In a political technology there is a sense of power sharing.

Political technology, besides the above, is a four-directional patterned operation. On the left, there is the context of some political problem or demand. On the right, there is adversary or opposition. While going on front side, there stand your own resources and personality variables.

On the back, there is the outcome, success or failure. It may be pointed out that the items of the cluster-variables, including the variables of a cluster are inter­changeable. A political leader may invest his resources equitably or proportionately. He might put in only one or two types of resources and spend them all. It could be his all-out operation.

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