Political system
A political system is the organizational embodiment of a set of interactions that are stable through which politics is exercised in a context limited by the population. This system is made up of agents, institutions, organizations, behaviors, beliefs, norms, attitudes, ideals, values and their respective interactions, which maintain or modify the order from which a certain distribution of profits results, leading to different decision processes of the factors, which modify the use of power by the political in order to obtain the desired goal. Try to meet the needs of a population.
Conceptualizations
Main definitions of the concept of political system exposed chronologically.
Definition of David Easton
Canadian political scientist David Easton wanted to turn politics into a science by developing abstract models that described the regularities of patterns and processes in political life in general through systems theory, creating an approach to the study of politics as a biopolitical entity. The result of his work becomes the first definition of the concept effectively independent of the prevailing legal and constitutional analysis before the 1950s in accordance with the organicist theory:A political system is a set of political interactions. What distinguishes political interactions from other social interactions is that they are oriented towards the authoritarian assignment of values to a society.David Easton,
The Political System , 1969 .
Thus, taking a country as a study sample, it is configured as a complex system, within which the elements that make it up, considered as groups or as individuals, interact very intensely based on certain behavior patterns. In this way, for Easton, what defines a political system is its function of distributing values that society considers useful such as money, education, power, etc. These interactions operate through flows between inputs and outputs ( inputs and outputs ) through a dynamic change that feeds back ( feedback ).). The inputs are the demands and supports that the system receives from the interests of society. These inputs are transferred from the social environment to the political system responsible for the aggregation and articulation of those demands, functions that the black box fulfills .), formed by those who occupy certain roles, be they individuals or groups, who are capable of guiding the contents of the political process; that act as a system filter, through demand reduction and selection mechanisms. The outputs are the response of the system to those demands, the decisions and actions that are taken after the decision process; that when they interact with the environment, they generate new demands and supports, so the process begins again. This model has been called a feedback loop, or self-reproducing, or self-perpetuating ( feedback loop ) and allows authorities to probe the state of the system and correct errors and disturbances. Its main model was directed by an organicist vision of politics, as if it were a living being. His theory is a statement of what makes political systems adapt, survive, reproduce, and above all change. In this way, with the support of cybernetic theory, Easton creates a closed circuit model whose interior works and interacts, the basic unit of analysis, building it through abstraction; and calling it a political system. This concentrates different elements among which he defines:
- Political community: group of people linked by a political division of labor.
- Political regime: set of conditions that political interactions have, which is made up of:
- Values: guiding principles of action, objectives to be achieved.
- norms: elements that make explicit what procedures are acceptable in the transformation and distribution of demands.
- Authority structures: formal and informal models with which power is organized and distributed.
- Authority: common characteristic possessed by those who occupy active roles in politics who carry out the political management of a system: legitimized power.
Easton is especially interested in the interaction that the system presents with what he conceptualizes as the social environment. This environment is made up of different levels:
| Environment | ||
|---|---|---|
| intrasocial level | extrasocial level | |
| Social level | Non-social or global society level | External level to the global society |
| Economic level | ecological level | International economic level |
| Cultural level | biological level | international political level |
| Social level | ||
| psychological level | ||
| religious level |
The total environment, therefore, can be divided into parts levels: the intrasocial environment and the extrasocial environment. The first refers to all those systems that belong to the same society as the political system. They are functional segments of society. On the other hand, the extrasocial part is formed by the systems that are outside the given society, that is, the global society. And it is that Easton affirms that the political system is surrounded by other environments, contemplating itself as an open system as well, since it is influenced and influences other environments.
Easton interrelates the political system with its socioeconomic and cultural environment through demands and supports. The former reflect the dissatisfaction generated by the system, which requires changes in the distribution of scarce corporate values. The supports allow finding solutions to the demands that make their stability possible. In this way he evaluates the political system in its dynamics and not in its statics, considering the existence of a permanent crisis and instability that in acute moments of conflict and upheaval can lead to a change in the system. He therefore considers both stability and change positively, because this, at a given moment, is the one that can favor feedback from the political system.In this way, the fact that some systems survive is because they generate a capacity to respond to disturbances that is linked to their ability to adapt to them, allowing their survival. If the system survives it is called a stable political system ; if, on the other hand, it goes bankrupt, it is called a dysfunctional political system .
For Easton, the ultimate goal of any political system is to achieve its persistence, that is, the ability to preserve itself and survive in the midst of an environment that constantly generates tensions. He does not understand this concept as mere stability or maintenance of the status quo, but the ability to adapt and evolve with the environment ("persistence with change and through change" ) .
This definition of political system has been criticized arguing that, in the author's desire to create a concept of political system applicable to any form of social organization at any historical moment and in any geographical space, it has remained diffuse and indeterminate. In search of a greater precision elaborates the concepts of parapolitical system or also called internal political system. By acknowledging the existence of parapolitical systems, he accepts that the evidence that politics occurs everywhere where a power that seeks to achieve an objective develops. On the other hand, its continuous direction towards stability and isolation to which it subjects the system fails to explain breaks or conflict and rejects any accident or inputexterior that can distort the systems. It also highlights that its model of competition and adjustment to the changes to which the system is subjected does not consider models stable to said changes due to the lack of political competition (totalitarianism and dystopias). Despite not being falsifiable, this theory notably influenced pluralist translation in political science until the end of the 1960s, where Harold Lasswell and Robert Dahl stand out.
Definition of Jean William Lapierre
Jean William Lapierre makes a definition based on Easton's work but trying to reduce its generality:A political system is a set of decision processes that concern the entirety of a global society.Jean William Lapierre,
L'analyse des systèmes , 1976 .
Implicit in this concept is the distinction between two large categories of decisions: those related to the coordination or regulation of relations between particular groups, and those corresponding to collective actions that commit or mobilize the entire global society , being the second, the one that configures the political system. However, this statement has been criticized for appearing to be a prescriptive objective rather than a description of reality since there are decisions that we call collective, and therefore they are part of the political system, they do not affect or involve the entire global society .
Definition of Gabriel Almond
Gabriel Almond devised his own definition of the political system in accordance with functionalist theory:A political system is a system of interactions, existing in all independent societies, that performs the functions of
integration and
adaptation , both within the society and in relation to others, through the use or threat of use of physical violence. more or less legitimateGabriel Almond,
A functional approach to comparative politics , 1976 .
- Socialization and political recruitment: Formation of certain attitudes, values and beliefs for the subsequent incorporation of subjects into the system.
- Political communication: Application of the same reflecting the feedback process, in such a way that the legitimized power or not is related to the objective.
The main criticisms of this definition argue the lack of specificity regarding the consideration of a society as an independent society , the limitation within the achievement of the objective of the ways of violence as a system and that his work responds to a scheme of concepts instead of a theory on political systems of an explanatory nature .
Definition of Karl Deutsch
Karl Deutsch was based on the cybernetic theory in line with the mechanistic one to build a model of political system seen as if it were a communication system in which the actor who seeks to obtain executive power is considered a decision-making center. To do this, he takes up Easton's ideas and proposes the idea of a political system as a whole capable of self-direction based on the information it receives from the environment with which it interacts through flows.
This simplified model consists of a diagram that represents the flow that starts from receivers that capture, select and process internal and external information. Decisions in the system are made based on this information, related to the memory and values of the system, simplification of elements that make up the system, and are translated into certain results or consequences that feed back the flow of information .
The fundamental concepts of this approach according to its author are load, load capacity, delay, forward and gain. These allow the measurement of flows and the construction of system performance indicators .
- The load is the total amount of information that is taken at a given time.
- The carrying capacity is defined as a function of the number and class of available channels.
- The lead is the ability of the system to react in advance based on forecasts of future consequences.
- Delay is a measure of the delay in reporting and acting on information regarding the consequences of the decisions made.
- The gain is the extent of the system's response to the information it receives.
This model has been harshly criticized for being especially mechanistic, static and conservative, arguing the inadequacy of the analogy made between the political processes carried out by humans, considerably more complex than the information processes of machines, and the latter, and the expectation that it makes around the processes of information flow, leaving the results of political decisions in a secondary plane. In the same way, about its indicators it is affirmed that they leave aside many substantive and qualitative aspects of the process .
Definition of Maurice Duverger
Maurice Duverger, 20th century French jurist, political scientist and politician, starts from the existing distinction between the concepts of political institution, political regime and systems.A political system is the whole of the social system studied in its political aspects.Maurice Duverger,
Institutions politiques et droit constitutionnel (I. Les Grands Systèmes Politiques) , Paris, 1955 .
For Duverger, the political system is the entity in which political actors converge. Political institutions are, in turn, the integral parts of a political subsystem that is what is called a political regime. Duverger considers the political regime as a coordinated set of political institutions. In this way, the political system, in addition to Analyzing political institutions also studies the relationships between that political regime and the other elements of the social system, such as economic, technical, cultural, ideological or historical, among others
Definition of Samuel Phillips Huntington
Samuel Phillips Huntington was an American political scientist and professor of political science at Harvard University in the 20th century.A political system is a set formed by certain political institutions, which have certain formal expressions identifiable in the legal regime, in relation to a certain level of participation that is manifested in empirically observable behaviors and referred to the exercise of political power through government institutions and acts.Samuel Phillips Huntington,
Political Order in Changing Societies New Haven, 1968 .
According to Huntington, the level of institutionalization of any political system could be defined by the adaptability, complexity, autonomy and coherence of its organizations and procedures.
Definition of David Ernest Apter
David Ernest Apter is an American political scientist and Professor Emeritus of Comparative Politics and Social Development at Yale University. David starts from a behavioral definition criticizing the systems approach stating that it is too cumbersome and far from reality, so he elaborates a definition that tries to approach it considering social and behavioral patterns .A political system is a formation that results from the relationship between the norms of a society and the prevailing patterns of authority.David Ernest Apter,
The Politics of Modernization Chicago, 1965 .
Apter predicted that the future of Political Science lay more in neo-behaviorism than in neo-institutionalism. This prediction has been criticized on the grounds that it seems that Political Science cannot give up the study of institutions. However, political analysis has incorporated a system vision from behavioral science, which allows it to observe those phenomena that are not visible from the strict point of view of public law and constitutional law .
Systematizations
As there are various definitions of the concept, there are also various typologies of political systems. These are built for schematic or comparative purposes and have the same obstacles as those that have the defining line to which they belong. The greatest difficulty is concentrated in knowing how to elaborate a synergistic model between the exact theoretical generality and the effective empirical reality.
Scheme of Samuel Phillips Huntington
The scheme developed by the American political scientist Samuel Phillips Huntington is due to the intersection of two variables that the author identifies as key to explaining political development: the level of institutionalization of power and the level of political participation in the decision process . This reasoning is reflected in his work On him Political Order in Changing Societies ("The political order in changing societies") .
Depending on their level of institutionalization, political systems are configured with power exercised through laws or through people . On the other hand, participation can be low , being restricted to a small group of people who concentrate legitimate power (bureaucratic elite, aristocrat, wealthy, rational, demagogue...); it can be middle , when groups from the middle classes enter politics; or it can be high , when popular sectors are added to these two types of social groups.
The relationship between both variables is not only intended to create classification schemes, but rather obeys a hypothesis that aims to explain the stability of the model. This hypothesis assumes that there is a directly proportional relationship between political participation and institutionalization. From this, Huntington deduces differences between two basic types of political systems: civic and praetorian.
Civic political systems are political systems that enjoy a level of institutionalization that is adequately proportional to the level of participation. Praetorian political systems are those that have low levels of institutional development and high levels of participation, in such a way that Praetorianism is the result of a higher level of participation than that which the institutions can face. Based on this two-variable model, Huntington identifies up to six types of political systems that make up the main characteristics of various forms of government:
| Political participation | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| low (traditional) | Medium (transitional) | high (modern) | ||
| Relationship of institutionalization and participation | High (civic) | organ system | progressive system | Participation system |
| Low (Praetorian) | oligarchic system | root system | mass system |
This scheme shows how the study of politics from the perspective of the behavior of the political system gives autonomy to Political Science. Thus, a perspective is offered for the study of the problems of stability, order and change of developing States and societies that is virtually impossible to carry out from the more traditional perspective of the study of forms of government. In this way there was an important change of perspective about the relationship between modernization and political stability by showing that greater political participation does not necessarily lead to a developed and sustainable political system .
In addition, in said work he makes another scheme shuffling two other variables: the scope of the institutions and the strength of the institutions . In this way, it considers the influence of characteristics such as the level and distribution of wealth, the level and distribution of rural and urban areas, and the level of corruption, among other factors, determining four other types of political systems :
| Scope of state institutions | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| high | Short | ||
| Strength of state institutions | high | stable political systems | Weak political systems |
| Short | strong political systems | unstable political systems |
Huntington's typology highlights the importance of analyzing aspects of political behavior with institutional aspects, but his concepts sometimes stray too far from the institutional realities of the countries he studies.
Scheme by David Ernest Apter
The American political scientist David Ernest Apter conceptualizes political systems according to two variables: what values dictate the norms of a society influencing the decision process and how this legitimized power or authority is exercised. In his model, values can be represented as ideologies or ethical precepts or as concrete social goals; that is, in an instrumental way or in a consummatory way . Authority can be exercised hierarchically or pyramidally . Thus, from the intersection of the two Apter variables, four types of systems are derived:
| Authority | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| hierarchical | Pyramidal | ||
| Rules | consummatory values | Mobilization systems | theocratic systems |
| instrumental values | bureaucratic systems | Reconciliation systems |
Mobilization systems have a universalist political ideology that allows issues of interest to be agreed upon as issues of value. The form of government corresponding to this political system is totalitarianism that includes a charismatic or prophetic leader who mobilizes with a proselytizing ideology. The system favors the use of techniques such as demonization, disinformation or messianism. The leader has to face the problem that Weber identified as the ritualization of leadership that leads, in turn, to the decline of beliefs and the search for personal interest over community interest.
Conciliation systems are those political systems in which the decision process is produced based on the search for a conciliatory solution for all, taking special importance for the legitimation of power, the negotiation mechanisms, on which the system depends. In this way, an attempt is made to influence the decision using various techniques to ensure that the rest of the interlocutors are satisfied with their decision. It takes shape in decision-making models such as March and Simon's garbage can or Pfeffer's horizontal power .
Bureaucratic systems are those political systems in which the decision process is carried out considering that legitimacy appears by virtue of norms already established and institutionalized through tradition as a rational process. They tend to favor interest-based representation claims and regulate them according to institutionalized and recognized patterns. The ideal form of government by definition for this system is the bureaucracy.
Theocratic systems are those political systems in which the decision process is produced based on already established and institutionalized norms according to beliefs of a religious or merely ideological nature. The most suitable form of government by definition for this system is theocracy.
This typology sometimes turns out to be particularly vague, but it shows the value of taking into account aspects of the functioning of the system, in addition to the institutions; and can serve as a basis for the study of political phenomena such as populism .
Scheme of Maurice Duverger
The French jurist, political scientist and politician Maurice Duverger analyzes what he calls "the great political systems", which correspond to the political systems on the rise during the historical moment in which he wrote his work, the 20th century. Duverger makes his typology based on the system conducive to the ideally adaptive result of two variables: the political regime (democracy or dictatorship) and the economic system (socialism or capitalism). From the combinations in which these regimes can appear and develop within a system, four types of political systems are obtained:
| Democracy | Dictatorship | |
| Capitalist economy | liberal system | capitalist dictatorship |
| Socialist Economy | socialist democracy | totalitarian system |
Duverger's typology is strongly influenced by the historical situation that he analyzed to build it, being his theoretical elaboration less developed with respect to the previous ones. The value of it is that it highlights the importance of taking into account the actually existing institutions when theorizing about political systems.