Systems Analysis in Political Science: David Easton and Beyond

Abstract

Increasing societal pluralization and new communication ecologies pose significant challenges to contemporary political theory and analysis. Diversification amidst growing interconnectedness presents political research with problem sets that can befuddle traditional approaches and concepts. Systems theoretical approaches can offer ways to deal with these challenges, especially those that focus on how complex systems adapt and evolve. Systems analysis is not new in political science and can be traced back to the pioneering research of David Easton in the mid twentieth century. While Easton’s work was often conflated with the systems theoretical project of Talcott Parsons, Easton in fact laid the basis for a quite different and innovative analytical perspective. In particular, Easton generated an approach that focused on the specificity of the political system per se, and not as a subset of the social system à la Parsons. Rather than reflecting existing societal goals, Easton considered the political system in terms of teleonomy, of goal-seeking processes. He casts the political system as a dynamic and adaptive set of processes in which human beings interact and exercise their capacities to control, modify and even change the environment and the system itself. This panel will examine Easton’s contribution to systems analysis in political science, its reception across time, and its contemporary resonances and analytical adequacy. This will be situated within current developments in systems theoretical approaches more generally including the foremost contribution of Niklas Luhmann.

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