Before understanding the concept of POLITICAL SYSTEM, it is important to know the meaning of `POLITICAL’, `SYSTEM’.
The word `POLITICAL’ reflects power or authority. Any association become political when its rules or d
cisions are obeyed by its members with the use or threat of physical force. It includes power, influence,
control or authority to a significant extent. The word `SYSTEM’ is a complete whole, a set of connected
things or parts, organised body of material or immaterial things.
Political System includes all interactions, activities and structures which include
taking authoritative decisions and their implementation. Only political system has control over the
legitimate physical dictatorial authority and its decisions are permanent and everybody is bound
to obey the rule. In case, anybody disobey the decisions, he has to be punished.
There are several definitions of the term political system: 1) Max weber says that a political system
is a human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical
force within a given territory. He identified the modern state as the institution or body that
claimed the sole authority over the use of physical violence.
2) Kaplan and Lasswell consider the shaping and sharing of power as the main concern of political
system with the help of threatened.
3) Robert A. Dahl defines political system as any persistent pattern of human relationships that
involves power, rule or authority.
4) Gabriel A. Almond expands political system to mean that system of interaction to be found in all
independent societies which performs the functions of interactions by employment or threat of
employment of more or less. In other words, he wants to say that political system includes all
interactions which affect the use of legal power and if anybody disobey it, how to punish him.
Features and Characteristics of political system:
According to Almond, it has three main properties of comprehensiveness, interdependence and
boundaries and it has essential characteristics-universality of political system, universality of
political structure, universality of political functions, multifunctionality of political structure and
culturally mixed character of political system.
1) Comprehensiveness – political system includes all the interactions – inputs as well as
outputs – that affect with the use of political coercion. According to Almond, political
system is not only concerned with the structures based on constitutional legal foundations
as parliaments, courts but also with the structures like status and caste groups, cultural and
religious bodies, as well as anomic phenomenon like violent riots.
2) Interdependence – political system also includes the political aspects of sub-systems.
Interdependence of various sub-systems is one of the most important aspects of political
system.
3) Boundaries- it implies that there are points where political system ends and other system
begins. The boundaries between society and polity differ from each other. The boundaries
between political system changes from time to time.
Besides there are three properties of political system,
1) Universality of political system – all political systems whether primitive or modern or
developed or developing have political structures that is they have a legitimate pattern
of interaction by means of which internal and external order is maintained.
2) Universality of political structure - all political systems have same structures that
perform same functions though with varying degree of frequency.
3) Universality of political functions – According to Almond, the approach of student of
comparative Politics should not be structure-bound, rather it should be function-
bound. Every political system must perform the following functions:
a) input functions- political socialisation, interest aggregation, political
communication, interest articulation.
b) Output functions- rule making, rule application, rule adjudication.
4) Multifunctionality of political structure- it means that political system not apply one
type of function but many types of functions.
5) Culturally mixed character of political system- all political structures are mixed in the
cultural sense. No political system is quite modern or western in the same sense no
individual is fully mature.
Robert A.Dahl has mentioned eight characteristics of political system:
1) Uneven control of political structure- A political resource is a means in which a
person in-fluence the behaviour of other persons. It also includes money, food,
social-standing, votes, making laws, etc. There are four reasons why control
over political resources is unequally distributed in every societies:
1) Efficiency in work and this efficiency enables access to political resources.
2) Basic difference from birth as a result of which some people fail and some
people have access to political resources.
3) Difference in social and physical heritage.
4) Difference in the capacity to the initiative and in objective.
2) The quest of political system- in each political system, there is a general
tendency of each person to gain influence on the administration and decision-
making process of government to fulfil his interests and those of his colegues.
3) Uneven distribution of political influence-Only few people have large resources
by which they can exercise their influence on government to get decisions made
in their favour, on the other hand, the few persons have limited resources so
they fail to get things as they wish.
4) Resolution of conflicting interests- conflict and consensus are the main
resources of political systems. The people living together have never similar
interests. In this way, there are conflicting interests of the individuals in a
political system, but they are always ready to solve their problem.
5) The acquisition of legitimacy- While solving these problems, the rulers should
take care of that the means should be based on moral principles not on
violence, fear. Leaders in political system also try to establish legitimacy in their
action. This is a democratic system.
6) Development of an ideology- The rulers in a political system develop the system
of ideas to prove the legitimacy of their acts. This ideology can be socialistic,
democratic or any other, but it is not essential that every individual member of
the system understand or knows that ideology.
7) Influence of the political system- every political system is influenced by other
systems. In modern age, no system can develop in isolation. It has to take
international law, agreements, institutions.
8) The inevitability of change- All political system undergo change. From
immemorial political observers have pointed out the changing of political
systems. In the entire history political institutions, no political system has been
immutable.
Functions of political system:
1) Input functions – these are performed by non- governmental sub-system society, and
general environment. Almond has suggested four input functions.
1-Political socialization
2-Interest articulation
3-Political communication
1)POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION AND RECRUITMENT: In childhood, one has no interest in
politics. A child has no knowledge about politics, but when he grows up he start
understanding the concept of politics and starts to play his role. This is the process of
political socialization. According to ALMOND AND POWELL `Political socialization is the
process through which political cultures are maintained or changed`. Political parties and
pressure groups, which are main agencies of political socialization who are involved in
making the people conscious about their values.
2)INTERESET ARTICULATION: It is the process of making demands in a system. According to
POSWELL AND ALMOND, ` the process by which each individual and groups make demand
upon decision maker, we call and interest articulation`. It is an important process because
unless the groups or individuals present their demand before the rulers, no policy can be
formulated to make their decisions. If the groups or individual are not allowed to present
their demand, it may lead to violent activities.
3)INTEREST AGGREGATION: The process of combining the demands of various groups is
known as interest aggregation. According to ALMOND AND POSWELL, `The functions of
converting demands into general policy alternatives is called interest aggregation`.
4)POLITICAL COMMUNICATION: It is the most important function of a political system. It is
through this process that other functions are performed. Everybody has to depend upon
information, because all activities in a system are to be regulated on the basis of
information. Means of communication have a definite impact on a political system.
