Input-Output Approach

Dr. Preeti Singh

Department of Political Science

Vasanta College for Women

Rajghat, Varanasi

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Core Concerns

• Easton aims at evolving a unified theory of politics which can explain and compare the behaviour of both national and international political systems.
• Easton is concerned with the issue of survival and persistence of political system.
• Easton aims at studying political system in both theoretical and applied perspectives while he conceives the former as the ‘life process of the system’ or a ‘structural analysis’ and the latter as the ‘persistence of politics’.

• Easton concentrates on political system which he defines as “that system of interaction in any society through which binding or authoritative allocations are made and implemented”. However he also talks of para-political system (i.e.internal political systems of groups and organizations).
• Easton treats all political systems as both open and adaptive systems and focuses on the study of the nature of the exchanges and transactions that take place between a political system and its environment.

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• Political system works in an environment (intra-societal as well as extra-societal)and it has immense potential to adjust itself to the environment in which it works. Political systems have mechanisms through which they try to cope with their environment. In the Input-Output Analysis Easton attempts to focus on the mechanisms and process through which political systems persist.

Inputs

• Demands: ‘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.
• Support: is the energy in the form of actions or orientation enabling the political system to convert the demands into authoritative decisions and policies.
• Overt Support
• Covert Support

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• Objects of the Support of the Political System:
• Political Community
• Regime
• Authorities
• Support may be to one or two or all of these various components of the political system. Easton is of the view that the systematic persistence depends on ‘the maintenance of a minimum level of attachment for each of the three identified political objects.’

Stresses

• Demand Stress: It may be caused due to System’s failure in coping with the information feedback from its original output or due to ‘demand overload’. Demand Overload may occur when demands are excessive in quantity, or, though few in number but very exacting in number or when there is time constraint.
• Support Stress: When the input of support falls it causes support stress.

Mechanisms to Cope with Stress

• Regulatory Mechanisms to deal with Demand Overload:
• Gate-keeping
• Cultural Mechanism
• Communication Channels
• Reduction Process
• Methods of Coping with Support Stress:
• Change in the Structural Elements, Representational System, Party System etc.
• Counterbalancing the lack of specific support by generating diffuse support through a sense of legitimacy
• Promotion of the feeling that there is common or public interest which will be promoted by the persistence of the political system

Input-Output Model

Output

• The outputs of a political system are ‘the decisions and actions of the authorities’ and help in organizing ‘ the consequences flowing from the behaviour of the members of the applied system for its environment’
• Feedback Loop: It is essentially a communication process which produces action in response to information about the state of political system, or some part thereof, or its environment, to structures within the system in such a way that the future action of those structures is modified in consequance.

Critique of Input-Output Model

• It takes note of change and dynamism in the system.
• It provides the researchers in the field of comparative politics with standardized set of concepts and categories which help in bringing broad and comparable overviews of entire political systems

Critique of Input-Output Model

• Easton’s conceptual model is too abstract which is far from the empirical realities
• It is conservative and status-quoist.
• It talks about persistence of the political system but is silent on fairness of the political system.
• It focuses only on the input, output and feed back and fails in explaining the complexities of the conversion process.