In the concept structural functionalism the students must know both the structures and the functions. From the structural-functionalism we come to know about the operational process of the political system. The second is, the student will be able to assess the various aspects of the political system. One is a student of political science will be able to compare various political systems. This is essential at least for two purposes. The structural functionalism enables us to have a clear conception about the role of the various structures. This is a very common picture of every political system. But this overlapping should not be over-emphasised. So far as the functions are concerned there is certain amount of overlapping among the function of the structures. In every political system there are certain structures and these cannot be confused with each other. In the opinion of Stephen Wasby, “In structural-functional analysis, one determines the important structures and then attempts to trace out the functions of these structures”. In structural functionalism the structures of the political system (such as political parties, interest groups, legislatures, executives, bureaucracies and courts) are not clearly defined and properly patterned and yet inspite of this their importance is immense. Almonds’ conceptualisation process has really revolutionised the political science in general and comparative politics in particular. He wants to revolutionise the system and study of political science. It reflects an underlying drift towards a new and coherent way of thinking about and studying politics that is implied in such slogans as behavioural approach…… We are not simply adding terms to an old vocabulary, but rather are in the process of developing or adapting a new one”.Īlmond claims that the new terms do not constitute a corpus of conceptual vocabulary but they indicate a new dimension of the nature of political science. In this way Almond has made strenuous efforts to acquaint his readers with the new concepts and he has expressed his intention of doing this.Įlaborating his intention Almond has said: “the search for new concepts is not an ad hoc matter. Even the word “function” is more comprehensive. The concept function can conveniently be used. Almond further says that “power” is a legal term and for that reason he cautiously avoids the use of the term state. But political system includes many other ideas besides legality.

In his opinion the term state is mainly a legal concept. He uses political system instead of state. His innovative terms do not end with structure.

So he wants to adopt such terms as will enable him to analyse and compare all (or at least major) political systems. Why has he changed the names? The reason forwarded by Easton is that he wants to adopt concepts and categories which will be suitable for analysing political systems which are radically different from each other.

Almond claims that all these were previously called institutions. Every political system has several institutions such as political party, legislature, executive, judiciary, etc. What is structure? Here the word structure is used in a sense different from sociological sense. He says that though there are differences between developed and developing countries so far as structures are concerned, the structures perform almost similar functions. In his noted work The Politics of the Developing Areas Almond has drawn our attention to an interesting issue. He has, in fact, stressed that every political system has some structures and these structures perform certain functions meant for it. It is so called because Almond has explained his views keeping these structures of political system in mind. Almond’s model is popularly known to the students of political science as structural functionalism. In fact there are a number of political scientists who are actively associated with general systems theory and one of them is Gabriel Almond who died in 2003 at the age of 91. But Easton is not the only political scientist who can be credited with being associated with this model or concept. We have already analysed in details the general systems theory as propounded by David Easton which is also called Easton model.

Structural functional systems theory