A key puzzle in David Easton’s systems analysis is how a political system persists in the context of stability and change. Easton approaches this issue by linking the political system to its environment in an input-output relationship. The emphasis is on the system’s behaviour regarding incoming demands and support, and the effects of these inputs as political outputs. The aim of this focus is to make it possible to map out the consequences of behavior within a political system for the system itself and not just for its environment. The looping of inputs with outputs enables us to investigate how a system copes in a dynamic manner with the challenges of environmental stimuli. This looping is not simply a servant of a control centre for monitoring and adjusting goal seeking activities in the environment. Systemic feedback flows from the system as a whole and may return through the system, dispersing its effects in the system via the chains of feedback loops within the system. Easton describes his approach as a flow model of the political system in which political processes are understood as continuous and interlinked flows of behaviour. This presents the political system as a communication system with a capacity to adapt and evolve. This paper will examine the information dynamics entailed in Easton’s political systems analytic and considers their efficacy in the face of newly-emerging communication ecologies. A central question of the paper is to evaluate the theoretical adequacy of Easton’s approach to contemporary conditions.
