Political System and Society

    Political system has been defined differently by various writers; According to Max Weber, it is “a human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” David Easton defines “Political System as a set of interactions as abstracted from the totality of social behaviour, through which authoritative values are allocated for a society.”
Definition of Political System :
    The term ‘Political System’ refers to the study of a government in its empirical dimensions and also forms an interdisciplinary standpoint. Political System thus becomes ‘a set of interrelated variables conceived to be politically relevant and treated as if they could be separated from other variables conceived to be politically relevant not immediately relevant to politics.’ 
   According to Almond, comprehensiveness, interdependence and existence of boundaries are considered as three major properties of political system. Hence it is clear that the society and political system is having interdependence and intertwined relationships.
   It is a part of the society as a whole in which Parson in his AGIL model considers polity as one of the sub systems which is essential for the proper functioning of the society.

  Almond and Powell defined Political system, “directs attention to the entire scope of political activities within a society,
    regardless of where in the society such activities may be located.” They further explained, “When we speak of the political system we include all the interactions which affect the use or threat of use of legitimate physical coercion. The political system not only includes governmental institutions such as legislatures, courts and administrative agencies, but all structures in their political aspects. Among these are traditional structures such as kinship ties and caste groupings; and anomie phenomena such as assassinations, riots and demonstrations; as well as formal organisations like parties, interest groups and
media of communications.”In short, Political system operates within a social environment in order to eradicate or solve the political problems social factors must be considered.
Characteristics of Political System
1.	Universality of political systems - political systems exists in all societies whether it is developed, under developed or developing or primitive and modern, legitimate pattern of interaction is there for maintaining external and internal order.
2.	 Universality of political structures - All political systems have same structures that perform same functions, although with varying degrees.
3.	 Universality of political functions - Even though all political system performs same functions, the degree and frequency may vary according to societies. There may be difference in their capacity to perform the functions as well.
4.	 Multi-functionality of Political Structures – All political structures, irrespective of the degree of specialization are multi-functional. For example, the model of the western political system has overstressed the functional specificity of political structurewhereas the traditional system has overemphasized the undifferentiated and diffused character of political and social structures.
5.	 Culturally Mixed Character of Political Systems - All Political systems are ‘mixed’ in the cultural sense. All political systems have formal and informal structures. No political system is quite modern or western. It means that all systems combine both traditional and modern elements of culture.