Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T00:46:45.888Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Support for the System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Leslie Green
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

So-called ‘general theory’, or ‘systems theory’, is now nearly friendless among political scientists. The charm it once held as an ordering framework for empirical research has given way to that of the economic models of the rational choice school. While the successor paradigm was self-consciously reacting against the ‘over-socialized’ conception of man underlying systems theory and political sociology in general, much of its broader appeal was founded on similar claims: the promise of a testable, empirical theory, and an aspiration to complete generality. Perhaps these two goals will turn out to be irreconcilable; there is some plausibility in the view that, in practical affairs anyway, the idea of a general empirical theory is a contradiction in terms. In this article, however, I wish to examine a problem for systems theory which is not due to this tension, one which has gone unnoticed, and which has survived the decline and fall of the research programme.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , April 1985 , pp. 127 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The phrase is that of Wrong, Dennis, ‘The Oversocialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology’, American Sociological Review, LXXXVI (1961), 184–93Google Scholar. See also Barry, Brian's well-known discussion in Sociologists, Economists, and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).Google Scholar

2 Easton, David, The Political System (New York: Knopf, 1953), p. 305.Google Scholar

3 Parsons, Talcott and Shils, Edward, eds. Toward a General Theory of Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951), pp. 28–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parsons, Talcott, Essays in Sociological Theory, Pure and Applied (New York: Free Press, 1949), p. 40.Google Scholar

4 Easton, David, The Political System, pp. 60–1Google Scholar. But contrast his position in A Framework for Political Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 14–15Google Scholar. I try to account for this weakening of resolve below.

5 Easton, , The Political System, p. 97.Google Scholar

6 Easton, , A Framework for Political Analysis, pp. 35–45.Google Scholar

7 Easton, , The Political System, p. 99, emphasis added.Google Scholar

8 Easton, David, ‘An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems’, World Politics, IX (1957), 383–400, p. 383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Easton, ‘An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems’, p. 384.Google Scholar

10 Easton, David, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965), p. 21Google Scholar. Cf. Framework, pp. 44–5.Google Scholar

11 Cf. Catlin, C. E. G., A Study of the Principles of Politics (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1930)Google Scholar. An explicit retraction of his earlier position is found in the preface to this work.

12 Catlin, C. E. G., The Science and Method of Politics (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1964; first published, 1927), p. 112.Google Scholar

13 Catlin, , The Science and Method of Politics, p. 295.Google Scholar

14 Catlin, , The Science and Method of Politics, p. 311Google Scholar. Cf. Easton, , The Political System, p. 147Google Scholar: ‘Society is not especially concerned with power as a phenomenon in and of itself or with government as such. Its interest is always derived from a prior concern with policy’.

15 Catlin, , The Science and Method of Politics, p. 311.Google Scholar

16 Easton, David, The Political System, p. 117.Google Scholar

17 Catlin, , The Science and Method of Politics, p. 129.Google Scholar

18 Catlin, , The Science and Method of Politics, p. 120.Google Scholar

19 Catlin, , The Science and Method of Politics, p. 146.Google Scholar

20 Catlin, , The Science and Method of Politics, pp. 165–8.Google Scholar

21 Catlin, , Principles of Politics, p. 8.Google Scholar

22 Catlin, , Principles of Politics, p. 13.Google Scholar

23 See Easton, , The Political System, Chaps 7 and 8Google Scholar. By way of contrast, compare Koestler, A. and Smythies, J., eds, Beyond Reductionism (London: Hutchinson, 1969).Google Scholar

24 In The Political System, pp. 126–7.Google Scholar

25 Easton, , The Political System, p. 130.Google Scholar

26 Easton, , The Political System, p. 131.Google Scholar

27 Godwin, William, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, edited by Kramnick, I. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976; first published, 1793), p. 247.Google Scholar

28 Weber, Max, Economy and Society, vol. I, edited by Roth, G. and Wittich, C. (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), p. 263.Google Scholar

29 Easton, , Systems Analysis, p. 24.Google Scholar

30 Easton, , The Political System, p. 5.Google Scholar

31 Easton, , The Political System, p. 141.Google Scholar

32 Easton, David, ‘The Perception of Authority and Political Change’, in Freidrich, C. J., ed., Authority (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), p. 171.Google Scholar

33 Easton, , Framework for Political Analysis, p. 50.Google Scholar

34 Easton, , ‘The Perception of Authority and Political Change’, p. 179.Google Scholar

35 Easton, , A Systems Analysis of Political Life, p. 207.Google Scholar

36 Easton, , ‘The Perception of Authority and Political Change’, p. 179.Google Scholar

37 Easton, , ‘The Perception of Authority’, p. 180.Google Scholar

38 Easton, , ‘The Perception of Authority’, p. 179.Google Scholar

39 Easton, , ‘The Perception of Authority’, p. 180Google Scholar. Austin would add a further condition: an authority does not itself regularly obey others.

40 Easton, , A Systems Analysis of Political Life, p. 208, n.9.Google Scholar

41 Easton, , The Political System, p. 135.Google Scholar

42 Easton, , ‘An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems’, p. 384.Google Scholar

43 Easton, , A Systems Analysis of Political Life, p. 14.Google Scholar

44 Easton, , A Systems Analysis of Political Life, p. 22–4.Google Scholar

45 Following Leslie, Peter, ‘General Theory in Political Science: A Critique of Easton's Systems Analysis’, British Journal of Political Science, II (1972), 155–72, pp. 159–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Leslie, , ‘General Theory in Political Science’.Google Scholar

47 As a crude measure, of the 500 pages of his Systems Analysis, Easton devotes about one-fifth to demands, while fully three-fifths are given over to support. Moreover, nearly all his empirical research (and that of his collaborators) has been on support. See also Leslie, , ‘General Theory in Political Science’.Google Scholar

48 Easton, , ‘An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems’, p. 390Google Scholar. Cf. A Systems Analysis of Political Life, p. 159.Google Scholar

49 Easton, David, ‘Theoretical Approaches to Political Support’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, IX (1976), 431–48, pp. 438–9, emphasis added.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Ignoring the unimportant complication that (2) requires that support be general and regular.

51 See Easton, , ‘Theoretical Approaches to Political Support’.Google Scholar

52 Easton, David and Dennis, Jack, Children in the Political System (New York: McGraw Hill, 1969).Google Scholar

53 Easton, , The Political System, p. 131Google Scholar. Was it the realization of this that led Easton, at one stage, to retract his broad definition of support? In ‘A Re-assessment of the Concept of Political Support’, British Journal of Political Science, V (1975), 435–57Google Scholar, he denied that diffuse support is coextensive with compliance since the latter can result from fear rather than from an ingrained (i.e. socialized) sense of the legitimacy of the system.

54 See Sen, Amartya, ‘Behaviour and the Concept of Preference’, Economica, N.S. XL (1973), 241–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55 See, for example, Kornberg, Allan, Clarke, Harold D. and LeDuc, Lawrence, ‘Some Correlates of Regime Support in Canada’, British Journal of Political Science, VIII (1978), 199–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 See Reading, R. R., ‘Is Easton's Systems-Persistence Framework Useful?’ Journal of Politics, XXXIV (1972), 258–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 Frears, J. R., Political Parties and Elections in the Fifth French Republic (London: Hurst and Co., 1977), p. 9.Google Scholar

58 Anthony Giddens cautions us against thinking that there is a general problem of order in social theory. See his Studies in Social and Political Theory (New York: Basic Books, 1977), pp. 208–12.Google Scholar

59 For a useful typology see Ullmann-Margalit, Edna, The Emergence of Norms (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).Google Scholar

60 Weber, . Economy and Society, vol. I, p. 31.Google Scholar

61 Pace Pitkin, Hanna, Wittgenstein and Justice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 280–4.Google Scholar

62 Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, edited by Macpherson, C. B. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), p. 303Google Scholar; see also Hart, H. L. A., ‘Commands and Authoritative Legal Reasons’, in his Essays on Bentham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 243–68.Google Scholar

63 MacIntyre, Alasdair, ‘Is a Science of Comparative Politics Possible?’ in Laslett, P., Runciman, W. G. and Skinner, Q., eds, Philosophy, Politics, and Society, Fourth Series (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), p. 17.Google Scholar

64 Barry, Brian, ‘Methodology and Ideology: the “Economic” Approach Revisited’, in Elinor Ostrom, Strategies of Political Inquiry (Beverley Hills: Sage, 1982), p. 145.Google Scholar

65 I am grateful to Vernon Bogdanor, Keith Dowding, and the Editor and referees of this Journal for their helpful comments.