Chapter 5 Political Systems States and Nations This chapter focuses on how large groups operate as a political entity or political system The State State A territorially bound sovereign entity Sovereignty The premise that each state has complete authority and is the ultimate source of law within its own boundaries Can be questioned when there is a disagreement over rulers AND when a government is committing serious human rights violations State usually refers to the set of organizational units and people that perform the political functions for an entire national territorial entity Each state has territorial integrity whereby it can resist any aggression invasion or intervention within its territorial borders This can be a fuzzy area when it comes to disputes over borders A Structural Functional Definition of the State Organized institutional machinery for making and carrying out political decisions and for enforcing the laws and rules of the government Max Weber a great political sociologist mentioned that only the state has the ability to enforce laws through violence The state pursues national interest The classical version of Almond s structural function approach has 8 functions a state must perform Political Socialization Political Recruitment Political Communication How info travels through the society Interest Articulation low level communication by individuals and groups of what thety need or want from the state Interest Aggregation transformation of political needs wants into a smaller number of coherent alternatives Policymaking Policy Implementation Policy Adjudication interpretation and resolution of disagreements regarding what policies mean Major Goals Security Stability Survival Autonomy Influence Prestige Dominance Order Maintenance Political Development concentration of political authority Democratization Prosperity Economic Growth Economic Development Welfare Distribution Priority is given to security because survival is the most important part of a country In every state there is a debate about the appropriate boundaries for state action and the best ways to achieve particular goals The Nation A state of people with a deeply shared fundamental identification This can include descent religion geography language or economic order Nationalism A powerful commitment to the advancement of the interests and welfare of an individual s own nation Identity politics some key traits lead a significant group of people to see themselves as distinctive with a shared political agenda Often indigenous peoples are given a distinction in this area Nation and State The best situation for governance is a nation state an area that has both the territorial borders of a single state and a citizenry who all share the same primary national identity Very few modern states can have this claim Japan is the best example Stateless nations are common And sometimes a nation can be split in two N and S Korea The most common however is a multi national state significant groups whose fundamental identities are associated with different nations Think of India which after being granted independence from Britain has had a host of issues that can be traced to differences in nationalities The Political System The authoritative allocation of the values for the collectivity This means that the political system makes policy decisions for that are binding with regard to things that have importance to the people it serves Values things that have great significance and importance to people Political Values those within the domain of res publica Can be broad liberty freedom material homes goods services health care education conditions clean air security symbolic status Allocation the process by which decisions and actions are taken to grant values to some and deny others Usually made in face of competition and conflict Authoritative When decisions are accepted as binding Power v Authority Power is the ability to influence while Authority is the voluntary compliance Power can be coercive induce behavior that would otherwise not be done economic manipulating resources to get a voluntary response from another or soft where one is admired to the point where their behavior is influenced Authority can be through law tradition charisma or contract For a collectivity Political systems that works for the society Can be individual states or among many states Conceptualization of the Political System Easton s conceptualization where politics is a large systems of inputs and outputs The environment of the political system Everything that isn t part of the system s domain Inputs Demands wants or desires for particular value allocations Supports actions by individuals groups or systems that indicate either favorable or unfavorable orientations towards the political system Input leads to Conversions The process by which political actors assess demands and determine which values will be allocated to whom Once policy has been implemented it leads to Outputs Outcomes The impacts of decisions taken and implemented by the political system Final component is feedback dynamics through which info about the changes alter the environment and the demands and supports It loops back to the beginning THREE MAJOR CONCEPTS State emphasizes legal standing and power of sovereign entities the necessary functions they perform and the domain of their actions Nation indicates mental state characterized by a sense of shared identity Political System attempts to provide political scientists with a basic analytic concept for building a general theory of political entities and processes