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SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND ITS CLASSICAL CRITICS

O ne of the editors, Dr. George W. Carey, has invited me to re-spond to E.F. Miller's review of my work in a recent issue

of this journal.' The opening words of this review speak of "anappraisal of David Easton's contributions to political science,"raising the expectation that an overall assessment of my work willbe forthcoming. In fact Miller builds his review on a much nar-rower base. He is less interested in my general contribution topolitical science than in the extent to which I inquire into andapply criteria for the moral evaluation of political systems and inthe extent to which my work, in this respect, compares with thatof Aristotle. Flattering as such a comparison may be, only inci-dentally does Miller assess the utility•of my conceptualization as aninstrument for understanding or explaining the operation of po-litical systems. We might well wonder whether classical criticism ofsocial science is not becoming so well defined today as to constitutevirtually a vocation in itself, one that leads predictably to thiskind of narrowing in range and focus.

The limits imposed on critical analysis by an approach of thisrestrictive sort are regrettable. It leads the reviewer, in this in-stance, to omit major aspects of my work. In addressing himselflargely to the search for ethical criteria, for example, Miller turnsto a matter that I have deliberately and explicitly set aside. Al-though I have always accepted moral evaluation as an enterpriseequal in importance to behavioral understanding, 2 for purposes ofanalysis and research I have also considered the two to be separablealthough seldom, if ever, found separately. In any event Millerseeks to judge my work for failing to do what it was never explicit-ly intended to do. Little wonder, therefore, that he is able to con-clude, as he does, that my work is not very helpful for establish-ing standards for the evaluation of political systems, an outcometo which I would have been ready to confess from the outset of hisfifty page review. Miller is, of course, at liberty to regret that I didnot devote my energies to these moral matters. But it is scarcely

' E. F. Miller, "David Easton's Political Theory," 1 The Political Science Re-viewer (1971) 184-235. Future footnote references to this article will appear as"Miller" followed by a page number.

2 See an early statement, often repeated, in The Political System ( New York:Knopf, 1953, 1st edition).

270 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER

news to accuse me of doing exactly that which I intended to do.Indeed, if after declaring my concern with scientific understand-ing, I had then concentrated on explicating and warranting moralstandards, I could have been justly reprimanded for inconsistencyor intellectual irresponsibility.

Īn the course of making his point, Miller does, however, offer anumber of subsidiary substantive criticisms. It is to these com-ments that I shall direct my response taking into account his ma-jor moral interests only insofar as it is necessary, if I am to dealadequately with what seem to be for him derivative issues.

In support of his main contention Miller makes four points.First, I have not proved consistent about my approval of behavior-al science; in fact, I have supposedly lost confidence in it. Witnessmy Presidential address on the postbehavioral revolution. Second,my methodology is inadequate and leads me directly into, ratherthan away from the relativistic trap of historicism. Third, my con-ceptual framework fails me because I am unable to resolve ade-quately what is political. Fourth, this framework is equally atfault because it does not permit me to handle problems of politicalchange usefully. Miller connects all of these fatal defects with whathe seems to view as my stubborn refusal to grant that values can beas objectively validated as can statements about other social phe-nomena. In fact, from an early sympathy for value construction hesees me as sinking into a kind of decline of maturity in which Icome to depreciate the whole value enterprise.

I

In his first criticism Miller charges me with inconsistency inmy advocacy of behavioral science as a means for meeting the so-cial and political crises of our time. His argument runs as follows.Easton saw the world in a state of crisis at the beginning of the1950's. He recommended behavioral science as a remedy. Eastonsees the world in crisis in 1969. He now recommends postbehavior-alism as a remedy. If behavioralism is not an adequate response in1969, how was Easton able to recommend it in the 1950's. Easton isnot consistent. His prior confidence in behavioralism has clearlybeen shaken.

This loose syllogism about my attitudes towards behavioralismhas, for Miller, a parallel in my interpretation of the value ofmoral inquiry. In my callow youth I was prepared to signalize the

SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND ITS CLASSICAL CRITICS 271

importance of constructive moral theory' as a guide for practicalaffairs, especially for a world in crisis. As social issues recede insignificance for me, moral theory emerges as of importance onlyfor an understanding of the presuppositions of behavioral researchand, therefore, as an aid in understanding the direction taken bysuch research. As I continue to "mature," even this role for valuesdeclines. Empirically oriented theory is now seen to be a response,not to external moral forces but to the criteria and needs intrinsicto the autonomous development of theory itself. Miller feels confi-dent in pointing to a "deemphasis or depreciation of value theorywhich occurs unmistakably in his writings" 5 and to the reductionin my hands of moral inquiry to the position of a mere "hand-maiden to scientific theory." 6

With my renewed awakening to the presence of deep socialcrises in the late 1960's, however, he now sees me, in my Presiden -

tial address of 1969, returning to the "position that he [Easton]had taken in his early writings but later abandoned." 7 I am saidnow to be pleading once again, inconsistently, for the need topay greater attention to the tasks of constructive moral theory as aguide for action in a deeply troubled world.' Hence Miller is ableto conclude that the neglect of moral concerns brought about bythe behavioral revolution has demonstrated its own shortcomings,something that I am presumed to have indirectly confessed by mycall for constructive moral theory.

Although it undoubtedly makes for a happy ending to see meas returning to the traditional moral fold, Miller misreads myanalysis of the significance of the postbehavioral revolution. In-deed, in his interpretation he commits what I would call the atem-poral fallacy in critical analysis. 9 This fallacy takes two forms. Itmay involve the interpretation of a person's ideas as though theydid not change over time. Or it may consist of attempts to interpreta set of ideas as though the same facets must appear with equalprominence at all times and places. Miller's fallacy is of the secondtype.

3 "The Decline of Modern Political Theory," 13 Journal of Politics (1951) 36-58.4 Miller, p. 188.k Miller, p. 188.6 Miller, p. 190.7 Miller, p. 206.8 Miller, p. 208.9 Here I borrow an idea from a colleague in philosophy, Pall S. Ardal of Queen's

University, although I extend it for my own purposes.


My thoughts on many matters have developed and changed,hopefully for the better, over the years. I have not felt constrainedto deny these changes.'° I would not make a special plea for con-sistency, a code word at times for inflexibility. But it does happenthat the scenario laid out by Miller about the place of values inbehavioral research deals with one area in which my views haveremained relatively stable. One of the keys to understanding hisperception of inconsistency is that he does not locate my discus-sions about values, over the years, in the time frame in which theyoccur. If he had, he might have avoided his atemporal fallacy.

In the 1950's the nature of the social crisis still provided time,in my judgment, despite the gravity of conditions, to nurture thedevelopment of pure research in political science. It is true thatMcCarthyism, the Korean War, the Cold War, and the ever presentatom bomb did create a deep sense of urgency. Nonetheless, ahopeful resolution could still be contemplated. In the 1950's andearly 1960's there still seemed time for our fund of basic and morereliable knowledge to catch up with the critical needs of the day.An appropriate strategy for science seemed to be to call for an in-creased share of our resources to be devoted to the encouragementof basic research about political processes.

By the late 1960's the nature of the social crisis had changed. Ithad become compounded by a new awareness of the depth of racialand ethnic conflicts, of the appalling inequities in the distributionof goods and services, of the population bomb, of the rate of de-struction in the environment, and of the wretchedness and loss ofhope in many developing areas. It is apparent that the world isfaced with an even more serious set of social problems, what hasbeen called a crisis of crises. Many countries, including the U.S.,face the extraordinary difficulty of seeking to cope with a largenumber of interrelated crises simultaneously. This situationcreates a critical condition of its own. It has led me to question,not the adequacy of the scientific assumptions of politicalresearch-my confidence in an evolving scientific method for ob-taining reliable knowledge remains firm-but our strategy andpriorities for research.

If mankind is not to be overtaken by catastrophes terrifying tocontemplate, we must now realize that we have less time at our dis-posal for remedial action than appeared true in the 1950's. As a

10 See, for example, Epilogue B to The Political System (New York: Knopf, 1971),2nd edition or the Postscript to the French edition of A Systems Analysis of Politi-cal Life.


profession we cannot conscientiously devote as large a portion ofour time and energies to pure research, the payoff from which mayneed to be postponed because of the nature of this kind of research.Today, I have proposed, while maintaining the earlier commit-ment to scientific method, we must reorient our priorities and as-sign larger parts of the collective time and resources of social sci-ence to problems of application. We need to address ourselvesexplicitly to practical problems on an increasing scale while at thesame time maintaining a continued, although temporarily dimin-ished, concern for pure research. ll Part of the tasks of applicationdemand renewed attention to the goals and broader purposes towhich our knowledge is to be put. This led me to renew my callfor increased attention to creative moral speculation linked toscience.

There is little reason for or justice in characterizing as inconsis-tent my effort to reshape the research strategy of behavioral scienceso that it might more adequately meet the needs of changing con-ditions. Far from "shaking my confidence" in behavioral science,it is the very success, albeit limited, of the application of science inthe pursuit of reliable knowledge about politics, that now makes itplausible to recommend that these very skills and findings be putto use in helping to alleviate some of the ills of our day. Just asbehavioralism was part of the continuing search in traditional po-litical science for reliability and understanding, I see in major as-pects of postbehavioralism a new change in direction for exactlythe same purposes.

It is clear that the relative emphasis to be given to one or an-other aspect of theory and science in 1953 and then in 1969 wasdictated by a strategy that I felt to be appropriate to the needs ofthe time. Only a bias toward atemporality in critical analysis couldobscure so obvious a point.

Without placing consistency above the correction of error, itdoes so happen that my basic position about the relationship ofvalues to research and about the necessity of moral inquiry has

11 When I first offered this opinion in 1969 there was little inclination in the so-cial sciences to recognize the need. As we look around the world today, however, wefind that my earlier prescription has now come to pass. An increasing numberof voices have been heard bearing the same message. In the United States alone,in the last few years there have sprung up in the neighborhood of a hundred "insti-tutes" and the like devoted to matters of public policy and its consequences. See, forexample, Knowledge into Action: Improving the Nation's Use of Social Science.Report of Special Committee on Social Sciences of the National Science Board( Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1969).


changed little over the whole of my writings. The constancy of myposition here is so fundamental to all my thinking about empiri-cal and moral theory that however otiose it may be for those whohave read my works carefully, Miller's misconstruction persuadesme that my views might profit from a brief restatement.

All knowledge is value based, ultimately, and this includesempirically-oriented theory. We seek understanding about man insociety so that we may apply it for the attainment of human goals.These ends need not be the actual motivation behind each individ-ual scientist's commitment to science but they represent the ulti-mate conditions under which society would likely tolerate theenormous expenditures of time and energy required by science,social and natural.

If the goals in the pursuit of which science is used are not elab-orated at the most sophisticated and rational level, their selectionmust be left to chance or ignorance. There has never been anyquestion in my mind, even in my role as a social scientist, thatclarity about one's values are significant not only because they arehelpful in understanding how research happens to take the direc-tion that it does, but also as a source of guidance for social action.I made this point explicitly in "The Decline of Modern PoliticalTheory" 12 in 1951. I repeated it in my Presidential address almosttwo decades later, not as Miller would have us believe, because Ihad lost sight of it but precisely because I had retained my convic-tions and the times once more required that they be vigorouslyasserted. 13

Priorities in research need to be established. By my example Ihave only been suggesting for the last two decades that greater at-tention to the attainment of reliable empirical knowledge was nec-essary. My unwillingness personally to engage in the task of con -

structive value formulation reflected not a depreciation of theimportance of the enterprise but only a preoccupation with othermatters. In fact, Miller's own words inadvertently reveal thisdifference. He states that "we see early evidence [in my work] of

12 See footnote 10.13 If decisive evidence is really required, I would refer the reader to my article,

"Political Science," in the New International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences(New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1968). This piece was written around 1966,well before anyone was fully aware of the dimensions of the changes that wereabout to take place in political science (and in the world as a whole). Yet, as thatarticle reveals, my belief in the need for creative moral inquiry continued unabated,quite independent of my later linkage of it to the needs of the postbehavioralrevolution.


that deemphasis or depreciation of value theory. ..."14

The shiftin words is meaningful. Deemphasis is not the same as deprecia-tion. From the correct assessment that I had deemphasized moraltheory in my work, Miller felt compelled to switch immediately tothe notion that I depreciated it, an inference warranted neither inlogic nor in substance.

Today, as in the past, I have felt that if all political scientistsdid nothing but formulate visions of the good life, we would berich in goal options but poor in means. This has indeed been alegacy which modern social science inherited from earlier cen-turies. As in all cases of research, strategic priorities need to be es -

tablished. For reasons elaborated in The Political System and else-where, I opted in favor of seeking to contribute to the growth ofreliable knowledge about politics without, however, implying ineven the remotest way that this enterprise was intellectually supe-rior to inquiry into moral judgments. I have always placed theseareas of investigation on an equal footing, allowing the times, in-ternal needs of the discipline, and personal predispositions, to dic-tate the priorities and emphases.

Far from depreciating the long history of moral inquiry, a care-ful reading of my work should have revealed that I take a positionvery different from most social scientists about the relationship ofthis kind of inquiry to science. I am far more hospitable to moralspeculation, contrary to the careless myth that Miller perpetuates.For example, I share with Weber his well-known analysis aboutthe possible impact of values on the problems we select forresearch and on the interpretation of our findings. 15 Most socialscientists, however, including Weber, would exclude all construc-tive value formulation (as contrasted with mere value explicationor clarification) from science. The familiar grounds are that sincethere is no way in which values can be tested or verified, they donot belong in the same forum with the observational and theoreti-cal statements of science.

I have maintained, however, that the decision to banish moralformulation from the classroom is itself amoral position, as Weberwas the first to admit. Hence the principle of exclusion is a moralone, not a purely logical one, This has led me to seek to warrantan alternative position. On grounds of the need for sophisticatedattention to moral guidance, of the special competence of social

14 Miller, p. 188.15 See The Political System, chapter 9.


scientists about what is possible, and of their special moral respon-sibilities, I have argued that they are in a good position to elabo-rate alternative visions of the world and that they ought to do so. Ihave thereby found it necessary to interpret value theory as an ap-propriate undertaking of the political scientist while continuingfirm in my conviction that values are not subject to the criteria ofvalidation normal to science.

Contrary to implications in Miller's review, my quarrel withvalue objectivists has not been over the legitimacy of moral in-quiry but, rather, about other matters: first, the cognitive status ofvalues and second, the confinement of the search for reliableknowledge about politics to the notoriously unreliable conceptsand tools of common sense alone. I regret that Miller misses thesecond point of difference entirely. He fails to confront the issue ofthe kind of communicable methodology that classical philosophyoffers for attaining, not an image of the good life, but reliable un-derstanding of political phenomena with potentialities forprediction.

II

In a second criticism of my work Miller questions whether myepistemological position permits me to defend myself againstthose "powerful intellectual currents [that] have arisen in thetwentieth century to deny that the scientific method can obtainknowledge . . that is generally reliable." 16 This "powerful" cur-rent he identifies as historicism, the idea that all knowledge is his-torically conditioned and therefore relative to time and place. Heattributes to it the belief that "final or objective knowledge is ren-dered impossible by the relativity of values." 17 In his judgmentthere are apparently two major weaknesses in my defenses againsthistoricism. I shall discuss each of these in turn.

A. My first weakness is associated with what Miller considers tobe my unwillingness to accept the possibility of value free re-search. Here I appear to him to share the historicist position thatall research must be conditioned by the values of the observer. Ifso, truth will vary from age . to age as these values themselveschange. Each generation will construct a different image of itsproblems and, perhaps, Miller might have added, of the evidence it

is Miller, p. 209.' 7 Miller, p. 211.


considers acceptable. If the definition of research problems andeven of the criteria of verification fluctuate with historical condi-tions, there can be little hope for the gradual accumulation of abody of valid knowledge, an ultimate goal of science. The pursuitof universal truth might just as well be abandoned.

Miller perceives only two escape routes for social science fromthis historicist impasse. The one is to agree that the mind can ob-tain reliable knowledge about principles of evaluation at least. ForMiller, acceptance of the possibility of such objective values alsoopens the door to objective knowledge about the factual world. Heeven goes further and seems to argue that some types of objectivevalues are more likely to lead to a better understanding of the phe-nomenal world than others. Since I am unable to accept the ex-istence of objective values this route is closed to me, as he correctlypoints out.

But even if I were prepared to adopt an objectivist view aboutvalues, it is not clear from Miller's remarks why this would neces-sarily free a person's observations and intellectual activity from theinfluence of his values or culture. Whether relative or objective,values could still shape and limit perception and analysis. Nor is itintuitively acceptable, as Miller implies by his failure to developthis point, that the adoption of one rather than another kind ofobjective value, is more likely to lead us to descriptive and ex-planatory truths. We are presented with no evidence to demon-strate that there need be any kind of relationship between theobjectivity of values and the universality of truth about humanbehavior and institutions.

The second escape route is to accept the possibility of a socialscience freed from the influence of values. For Miller, adoption ofthe position that knowledge is and must be value free in this sense(a point of view he mistakenly attributes to Max Weber), opens thedoor to the acquisition of objective knowledge. But since I rejectvalue free social science, this route is also closed to me, accordingto Miller.

Miller sees me as inventing a third route, one in which histori-cally conditioned values shape research and yet in which universalknowledge is nonetheless attainable. He argues that this is a con-tradictory position, indefensible in logic or fact. Hence I havefailed to protect the search for a valid and universal general theoryabout political systems from the onslaught of historicism.

Along this third route Miller complicates his criticism some-what by presuming to see me as taking each of three exits almost


simultaneously. But for him each leads to the same inescapablefate, historicism.

(1) The exit of value-conditioned research: Insofar as I believeI am escaping historicism by adopting the very point of view as-sociated with historicism, namely, that knowledge may in factbe value-conditioned, I only succeed in boxing myself in, accord-ing to Miller. It is fair to say that he is correct in one respect. I dorecognize the validity of the historicist claims that we see theworld through value-colored lenses, although Miller seems to re-strict the argument too narrowly. Our cultural perspectives, socio-economic status, ideological predispositions, and even the struc-ture of our language may all help to shape our perceptions andinterpretations. The pure empiricist tradition, in which the rawdata of experience impinge directly on the mind, has been sothoroughly demolished by modern psychology of perception thatthe question raised by historicism can no longer be one of whetherwe directly perceive phenomenal events. Few would take to thelists in defense of immaculate perception today. Given the necessarily conditioned nature of observation, the only significant ques-tion now concerns the effect that this has on the objectivity of theknowledge.

The discussion around this central theme is vast, subtle, andcomplicated as the literature in that part of epistemology calledthe philosophy of science alone testifies. For most scholars, experi-ence with the accumulation of valid knowledge is too immediateto encourage denial; the task is rather one of providing an accept-able logical basis for explaining how, despite socially conditionedperceptions, the door is still open to objective knowledge. There isa vast gulf separating the mere identification of the influence ofvalues on the knowing process from the assertion that objectiveknowledge is thereby destroyed. .

In the limited space available here, it is fruitless to try to dealadequately with the complex epistemological problems raised bythis issue. Elsewhere a lengthy effort by Miller to fault current phi-losophy of science for its presumed failure to recognize the chal-lenge being offered by historicism has been dealt with harshly butauthoritatively.1 8

For my own part, as early as 1953, I explicitly recognized thehistoricist critique but nonetheless sought to defend the possibility

18 E. F. Miller, "Positivism, Historicism and Political Inquiry, " 66 AmericanPolitical Science Review (1972) 796-817, especially the Comments by D. Braybrookeand A. Rosenberg, pp. 818-26 and R. S. Rudner, pp. 827-45.


of objective knowledge in the face of the historical conditioning ofresearch. 19 Here I need only add a few remarks. Historicism has atleast two options in defense of its position. As the first, it can pos-tulate that cognitive relativism constitutes a true assertion aboutall knowledge with one exception, namely, the relativist principleitself. This is the well-known liar's paradox in a different guise."All men are liars" can be a true statement only if the statementexcepts itself from its universe of discourse. Similarly we can makesense of a proposition about the relativity of all knowledge only ifthis principle itself is not included as part of the knowledge towhich reference is made. We might call this the historicist'sparadox.

Here, however, the substantive nature of the statement beingmade about knowledge distinguishes the historicist's paradox fun-damentally from the liar's paradox. Historicism refers to the na-ture of knowledge of which its own relativist principle is one ex-ample. If historicism is willing to make an exception for its ownbasic proposition, however, then clearly at least one universallyvalid statement can in fact be made. In the case 'of liars, it is con-ceivable (although not likely) that all men except the speaker areindeed liars. This would violate no logical rule. But in the case ofthe nature of knowledge itself, if there is at least one objectivetruth, then there is no reason in principle why there cannot beothers. Historicism can offer no logically acceptable justificationfor this exception. If this is so, the sluice gates are opened to othersuch universal statements, and the historicist position is irrepara-bly undercut.

A second option, accepted by some, such as Nietzsche, seeks tomeet this historicist paradox by denying that even this historicistposition can be validated. All one can do is assert that knowledgeis relative. In this event we end up in a non-rationalist position;no proof is possible or necessary about any proposition of this sortthat we choose to make. One can rest his discovery only on the rad-ical assertion of a claim.

The historicist position must, therefore, end up either in a con-tradiction or in irrationality. It has not been able to demonstratethat the social conditioning of the process through which knowl-edge about man in society is obtained must necessarily preventthe discovery of objective understanding.

From the point of view of social research, however, even if we

19 The Political System, pp. 31-6.


were to accept this criticism, it would not end our interest in thesocially conditioned nature of knowledge. In fact, it is perfectlysensible for the social scientist to assume exactly that which isproblematic for the philosopher. The social scientist can andusually does operate on the assumption that valid knowledge is at-tainable. This leaves him free to go about the task of generatingsuch knowledge leaving to the philosopher the responsibility forfinding a logical justification.

This division of labor, however, does not end the social scien-tist's interest in the consequences of the socially conditioned na-ture of his knowledge. As I have sought to show in my writings, amajor source of this continuing interest derives from the desire tounderstand the degree to which research may be subject to error,distortion, and omission, not only from mere ignorance or obtuse-ness, but from historically conditioned bias. Without taking thispotential bias into account we would be left at a loss to understandan important source of error.

In brief, then, it has seemed to me that the idea of valuationallyneutral research does not represent a tenable position. We simplycannot cleanse ourselves of all preconceptions, moral, ideological,or otherwise. But there is no intrinsic relationship between theconditions that shape our discovery and analysis of data, on theone hand, and the objective validity of findings, on the other. Con-ditions may indeed lead to error and distortion; they may also leadto insight and truth. But in each instance the specific outcomeneeds to be demonstrated. The task of the social scientist is to seekto understand the relationship between social conditions and thevalidity of knowledge, not to assume on some a priori groundsthat the one denies the possibility of the other. Hence my thirdroute out of the historicist impasse, a route that leads me to de-marcate clearly the difference between the value relevance of re-search and its objective validity, still seems a safe and credible oneto me. 20

20 Miller unfortunately misconstrues Weber as an advocate of value free researchin the sense referred to in this discussion. Weber went.to great legnths to prove justthe opposite, and it is difficult indeed to understand how he could be so strangelymisread. Weber did not believe that it was possible to participate in any aspect ofthe research process, from the acquisition of data to its final interpretation, freedfrom the influence of values. In this respect I have followed Weber. Weber did ve-hemently argue on behalf of Wertfreiheit. By this, however, he meant the exclusionof the defense of alternative value positions from the classroom or from the analysisand interpretations of research. For reasons clearly related to the political conditionsunder which he lived, Weber sought to prevent the continued use of the classroom,the university, and social research as a forum or political platform for the defense


(2) Survival as an exit: By a logical process that unfortunatelyeludes me, Miller attributes to me the notion that somehow themore general the value associated with a political system, thegreater the likelihood that the scientist will be able to discover thetruth about its operations. In this way we are more likely to beable to rise above historicism. "In his mature writings, Eastonappears to hold that political theory can achieve reliability by ab-stracting from those values that are controversial from [sic] onepolitical system to another." 21

Here Miller ascribes to me two separate value positions. Thefirst is that I propose survival as a desirable goal for political sys-tems and adopt this value as central to my own theory about pol-itics. "It seems that political theory must be guided by one valuethat is common to all political systems, namely the survival of thepolitical system as such." 22 The second is that I interpret politicalsystems as in fact being guided by a desire to survive. "The fun-damental goal of the political system is to insure its own survivalor persistence. The input-output exchange must therefore be con-sidered in the light of the effort to persist over time." 23 The fact is Ineither adopt survival as a generally desirable goal for a politicalsystem nor do I describe it as a universally observable goal of allpolitical systems.

For the moment, however, let us assume that survival is indeedan attributable goal of, as well as my preferred goal for politicalsystems. Nowhere does Miller demonstrate that this belief in itselfcould have any plausible relationship, at least in my writings, tothe discovery of objective knowledge. There is a simple reason forthis. The thought has never occurred to me that there could besuch a relationship. When such a possibility is now brought to myattention and I have had an opportunity to consider it, I must re-ject it out of hand. I am even puzzled about how a person couldbegin to go about demonstrating that the attribution of survival-istic goals to political systems could thereby improve our chancesof obtaining non-relativistic knowledge.

or denunciation of a given policy or value position. When he spoke of value freeresearch, accordingly, he did not mean that it was possible to free oneself from theconditions (including values) under which one lives but only that scientific researchshould be free from explicit moral disputation. Since, in Weber's view, differencesin value positions are not resolvable by the same sort of evidence normally ap-plied to empirical matters, the one should be confined to the pulpit or politicalplatform, the other to the laboratory.

2, Miller, p. 215.22 Miller, p. 216.23 Miller, p. 200, my italics.


We do not need to pursue this will o ' the wisp very far how-ever. The fact is that nowhere do I ever assume that survival is thegoal of political systems or that it ought to be. I do adopt the per-sistence, in society, of a set of processes for the authoritative alloca-tion of values, as a central problem for the development of ageneral conceptual framework. But I am extremely careful in mylanguage to avoid any imputation that persistence (which is notsurvival in the loose sense used by Miller) of these processes is anattributable goal of any system or a goal I would wish to foster onany system. In systems analysis the idea of persistence is only atheoretical tool and explicitly not a value.

As I spell out in a number of my writings, I adopt persistenceof political processes in a society (or in parallel groups for para-political systems 24 ) as a central problem for theory developmentbecause I believe that it permits us to open up major new lines ofanalysis for understanding the functioning of political systems.These new kinds of questions deal with persistence under stress oc-curring from specifiable inputs of demands and support and withthe ways in which the members of systems cope with such stress.Nowhere do I even ask the reader to assume that the members ofpolitical systems seek to perpetuate some kind of processes for al-locating values authoritatively. Indeed the members of some sys-tems might well prefer to destroy the capacity of a society to actpolitically rather than accept one or another regime. It is possible,indeed likely, that Miller has interpreted my use of persistence forheuristic purposes as the expression of a preference or the descrip-tion of a system goal. If so, I would encourage a careful re-examin-ation of my work. It will reveal that this interpretation is not real-ly tenable.

(3) Humane values as an exit: Miller does not rest his case onsurvival as the only road to truth. He proposes that at the sametime I apparently hedge my bets in pursuit of objective knowledgeby adopting "humane values" as the single generalized set ofvalues that will permit untrammeled access to the truth about po-litical systems.

Here he picks up the position I had formulated in my Presiden -

tial address. In it I had argued against a prevalent tendency in poli-tical science, even during its behavioral phase, for scholars to over-identify with their national political systems. Their selection of

24 See A Framework for Political Analysis ( New York: Prentice-Hall, 1965)p.52ff,


topics and analyses are often severely restricted or impaired by na-tional bias. As a statement of my own ethical position, I proposedthat social scientists ought to shun so narrow a moral perspectivein favor of the adoption of a broader view incorporated in thosehuman values "known to most men." Underlying this suggestionis the notion that values do help to determine the kind of researchwe undertake.

Once again, Miller forces my words and reasoning to shapethem to his own purposes. He interprets my position to mean thatidentification with humane values will thereby in itself contributeto the discovery of unconditioned knowledge about political sys-tems. Nothing was further from my thoughts. In the section of thespeech from which he quotes I am not concerned with the problemof historicism. Rather I am speaking about a moral issue-andtherefore one which presumably ought to have found favor withMiller. "If the political scientist is to evaluate the uses to which hisknowledge is being put," I ask, "and if he is himself to bring hisknowledge to bear on social issues, what criteria are to guide hischoices? Here postbehavioralism returns to the humanist concep-tion of the intellectual as the guardian of those civilized, humanvalues known to most men." 25

The issue I discuss here is not a cognitive one; I am not ex-amining the conditions of truth probability. Rather, if, to useWeber's phrase, the political scientist cannot help but serve somemaster, if he ought not to act as a moral eunuch even if he wishedto do so, then in my moral judgment I am stating that he ought toserve mankind as his master, not the far narrower interests of aparticular national system.

Miller is free to disagree with my moral position, to challengehumane values as a viable moral concept. But he is scarcely at lib-erty to recast my words so as to make it appear that I am offering abelief in humane values as a higher order of value which, becauseof its status, will somehow improve the chances of the politicalscientist for discovering truth relationships. I am dealing with theproblem of knowledge and action, not knowledge and truth. Im-portant as the latter relationship is, and recognizing that actionand truth are not unrelated, this issue was not relevant to my con-cerns at that moment. 26

25 The New Revolution in Political Science," 63 American Political Science Re-view (1969) 1051-61, at p. 1059.

26 See, for example, ibid., p. 1059ff.


In conclusion, then, Miller has not persuaded me that I leavemyself exposed to the challenges about cognitive relativism thathave been made in the last half century or more by historicism.The rejection of value free research does not seem to me to be in-consistent with the pursuit of objective knowledge. And in spite ofMiller's efforts to trace in my writings various routes of escapefrom historicism that lead me to a belief in a higher order of valuesappropriate for the discovery of objective truth, his conclusionscarry little conviction. The values of the research worker may onlytoo frequently bar the path to truth or lead him into error. Butthey do not necessarily rule out the possibility of discovering validrelationships among phenomena.

B. According to Miller, my second major weakness, in the faceof historicism, derives from my constructivist conception of theory.In this view, he argues, what we select as a political system willdepend on our definition of what politics is all about. Since I holdthat the definitions themselves will vary from age to age, so willthe nature of the systems. Any objectively and universally validview of the nature of political life thereby becomes impossible.

Furthermore, in The Political System, Miller points out, I wasat least prepared to maintain that political systems are given innature and our task is but to identify them. But in The Frameworkfor Political Analysis I propose that any set of variables may con-stitute a system. I now consider systems to be "constructs of themind," Miller writes, "rather than entities given in nature." 27

From this analysis Miller sees me as "vacillating between a view ofthe theorist as a pioneer, blazing new paths in causal and moralknowledge, and a view of the theorist as an unwitting spokesmanfor the prevailing assumptions of his age." 28 In his final judgmenthe seems to feel that for me no objective knowledge is really pos-sible. At the very least my defense against historicism is weak anduncertain.

It is clear that Miller finds it very troublesome when, he thusstrives to categorize me first as a cognitive objectivist and then as acognitive relativist, as though the world must be divided into thesetwo classes alone. Unable to pigeon-hole me so neatly, he fallsback on the rather indecisive accusation of vacillation between thetwo extremes. If, for no other reason, the need to have recourse tohis device should have alerted him to the possible profit of anal-

27 Miller, p. 227.28 Miller, p. 221.


yzing my work more carefully. He might then have discovered thatthis reliance on this kind of ambiguous description was perhaps afunction of his failure to recognize the distinction I make betweenwhat can be called cognitive relativism and cognitive "relation-ism," a word I borrowed long ago from Mannheim.

Miller is correct in one respect. In The Political System I didon occasion interpret systems as existing in nature with the task ofthe social scientist merely one of searching out the "correct" sys-

tem for identification. For reasons fully elaborated in AFramework for Political Analysis I later sought to improve my for-mulation by moving to what I have called a constructivist posi-tion. Notwithstanding Miller's opinion to the contrary, I now donot deny the existence of natural systems; I just reinterpret themeaning we are to attribute to the term "natural system" so as tomake it harmonious with an operationally more useful way ofconceptualizing what we mean by system. 29

Change is not vacillation however. What apparently puzzlesMiller is my claim that knowledge can reflect social conditions andyet transcend them. Perhaps his difficulty arises from his failure toappreciate my distinction between relativistic and relational typesof knowledge. 30 The belief that knowledge, including even rules oflogic and tests of validity, is totally a product of any time andplace, is truly relativistic. With a belief such as this about the con-ditioning of knowledge, it is difficult to conceive how one couldhold out the hope of attaining an understanding of phenomenathat is objectively valid across time and space.

This is a very different matter, however, if we hold that knowl-edge is only relational, not relativistic. The relationism of knowl-

29 I explicitly set forth this new interpretation in A Framework for PoliticalAnalysis, p. 33. "Perhaps in this context alone it might be meaningful to speak ofpolitical life as a natural system. In this event all that could be meant is the follow-ing: Through experience, insight, and wisdom, it has become apparent that, giventhe kind of questions to which answers are being sought, the observer will probablynot be able to resolve them without considering a specified set of variables. It islikely that these will fall somewhere within a range of phenomena with respect tothe relevance of which most students of political life would agree. These comprise anatural system in the sense that they appear to cohere significantly. Without them itdoes not appear likely, on a priori grounds, that an adequate explanation of themajor aspects of political phenomena could be obtained. The interconnectedness ofthe variables seems clear and obvious, at least until dispelled by subsequent in-quiry; in this way alone may they be considered `given' in or by nature. But this isjust another way of saying that they form what I have been calling an interesting,as against a trivial, system."

99 See The Political System, p. 260ff.


edge need not interfere with its objectivity. It is not only possiblebut, in my judgment, correct to hold that the problems we consid-er important, our concepts of analysis, the techniques we use, eventhe interpretations we offer, may be and in fact are often all influ-enced in one way or another, not only by our moral presupposi-tions as Miller would have us believe, but, as I have already sug-gested, by our social perspectives, class positions, ideologies, andeven by our language. Whether or not any specific area of knowl-edge is so affected, and in what way, is an empirical matterhowever.

The reason for this influence is clear. Knowledge is the productof a process between perceiver and the perceived. The perceiver se-lects or abstracts from the total events of the phenomenal worldthose aspects relevant to his interests. What is perceived andknown is ordered through what the perceiver brings to the know-ing process. What the perceiver brings may in turn be conditionedby historical and social circumstances. In this sense knowledge isrelational. It is related through the knowing process to the circum-stances under which it is produced.

This relationism, however, does not mean that the validity ofwhat is known need necessarily be impaired or destroyed, althoughthe relationism is often the source of error and distortion. Eventhough our choices of problems and concepts are conditioned byhistorical circumstances, they need not yield always or entirely toour presuppositions. Nature itself imposes limits on the range ofchoice, at least to the extent that we desire the acquired knowledgeto be scientifically (and practically as well) useful. Even though theknower selects freely from the phenomenal world, the aspects thatare available for selection are limited by the nature of the objects tobe known. If we are looking for covarying phenomena, we cannotarbitrarily or cavalierly select any sets of phenomena. The scien-tific and practical utility of our concepts will be constrained by ourneed to find correlations in the phenomenal world. In this waynature disciplines the perceiver.

The consequences for an understanding of politics is clear. Weare free to define politics in any way we wish. Empirically, ourdefinitions have shifted from age to age. But I have never impliedthat these shifts are inexplicable or random (an important conse-quence apparently, for Miller, of a historicist or relativistic posi-tion). 31 These shifts are clearly a product of efforts to improve ourknowledge by whatever criteria of improvement we may apply. For

Miller writes that "In fact, [Easton] appears to embrace the historicist interpre-tation of scientific development, according to which every discipline is a captive of

SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND ITS. CLASSICAL CRITICS 287

modern science, the utility of the particular definition we do use issubject to the test of its ultimate capacity to help us explain andpredict that part of the totality of phenomenal events in whichpolitical scientists are in fact interested. Knowledge can in this waybe both related to the times and yet be part of a larger processthrough which each generation seeks to add to the accumulationof our understanding, with the ultimate test of validity being ex-planation and prediction.

As Miller implies, there are two common positions about thetruth of statements-the realistic or correspondence and the in-strumentalist theories. 32 My constructivist view of political theoryrepresents a fusion of the two. Truth about political life does notlie in the discovery of some one and only political system coheringout there in the phenomenal world; nor does it call for us arbitrar-ily to order that world of complex relationships in terms of ourconcepts. Meaning does not lie in the phenomena alone (the corre-spondence view) nor does it derive exclusively from the utility ofthe way our socially conditioned minds may order these phe-nomena (the instrumentalist view 33 ). Meaning arises rather from

a set of fundamental assumptions, or a research paradigm, which shifts inexplicab-ly from one age to another." (Miller, p. 220) Clearly Miller is seeking to take advan-tage of the critical discussion around the implied historicism of Kuhn's Structure ofScientific Revolutions and has automatically tarred me with the same brush. For adiscussion of this issue see T. S. Kuhn's postscript to the second edition (1969) ofthis book and the critical discussion of the book in I. Laktos and A. Musgrave (eds.),Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1970). Without expressing an opinion about the merits of this criticism of Kuhn,however, it is clear that the tar will not stick. Certainly, ideas about political sys-tems will shift over time. But these changes need not be "inexplicable" and no-where have I ever even hinted that they were of this character. Indeed I have taken aposition exactly opposite to the one described here. I have argued that political sci-ence reflects not a discipline wandering aimlessly from one conceptualization toanother, as it responds to changing historical conditions, but one whose history re-veals an insistent search for increasingly reliable knowledge about politics. Thissearch has led to the behavioral revolution and the significant conceptual and tech-nical changes associated with it. Could it be that the clue as to why Miller seemsrelentlessly to accuse me of adopting positions opposite to those I in fact do hold, isthat he has been almost obsessively preoccupied with historicism and he has "inex-plicably" substituted Kuhn for Easton as he has read my work!

32 He might have added a third one, the coherence interpretation. It would onlycomplicate matters by introducing this view now but would not alter my basicconclusions.

33 The instrumentalist position holds of course that a statement is more likely tocorrespond to the world if it works, for scientific purposes in this instance. Thereare some social scientists, especially among so-called positive economists, who goeven further and subscribe to a radical instrumentalist view. They are less interestedin whether a theory corresponds to the world than in whether it permits predictionabout the world. If it works in this sense, this is all that matters. The merits of thispoint of view are certainly debatable.


the process through which the knower perceives and understandsrelationships among phenomena and the existential limits thesephenomena impose on the process itself. These limits lie in theneed to test, through experience, the utility of a particular orderingof phenomena by its contribution to our explanatory and predic-tive powers."

It is clear that what I consider to be a reasonable accommoda-tion between a correspondence and an instrumentalist theory oftruth, based as this accommodation is upon a clear distinctionbetween the relational context of knowledge and its relativisticnature, Miller chooses to interpret as vacillation. The oscillationbetween historicism and objectivism that Miller presumed to seein my writings is an artifact ofhis analysis, not of my position.

As with much of what Miller has to say through his analysis,here, too, his conclusion depends regrettably upon reading pas-sages out of context and upon forcing the reasoning in unintendeddirections. He has been less careful and cautious in his interpreta-tion than an author might justifiably expect. One illustration,about the present subject, will suffice for the numerous instances ofthis sort with which his essay is laced.

Miller states: "[Easton] tells us that a final and eternally validconceptual framework is 'a goal that in principle lies beyond therealm of possibility.' He advises us to give up the illusion of theclassical tradition that 'there must be one theory and only one, thatcan be right.' "35 A glance at his footnote references reveals that thetwo internal quotations from my writings, juxtaposed here, weretaken from books written over a decade apart. Each quotation incontext has in fact little to do with the historicist problem and wasnot directed to that issue.

The first one, that "an eternally valid conceptual framework [is]

34 I. Scheffler in Science and Subjectivity (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), putsthe matter in more general terms. "In sum, category systems make no arbitrarytruth-claims for they make no truth-claims at all; they are, moreover, revisableunder circumstances specifiable by their own means." (p. 42) "What is the upshot?There is here no evidence for a general incapacity to learn from contrary observa-tions, no proof of a pre-established harmony between what we believe and what wesee. In the disharmony between them, indeed, lies the source of observational con-trol over belief. Our categorizations and expectations guide us by orienting us selec-tively toward the future; they set us, in particular, to perceive in certain ways andnot in others. Yet they do not blind us to the unforeseen. They allow us to recog-nize what fails to match anticipation, affording us the opportunity to improve ourorientation in response to disharmony. The genius of science is to capitalize uponsuch disharmony for the sake of a systematic learning from experience." (p. 44).

35 Miller, p. 221.


a goal that in principle lies beyond the realm of possibility," repre -

sents, indeed, the very opposite, that is, an antihistoriciststatement. In the context, I was speaking of ways of identifyingphenomena as political. I denied the possibility of establishing"eternally valid conceptual frameworks" because in my view con-cepts are never valid; they are only more or less useful for obtain-ing valid generalizations about behavior. In this sense, as knowl-edge improves, each age is called upon to reassess its concepts forthe purposes of scientific understanding. Hence I am describingthe conditions for the accumulation of objectively valid scientificknowledge, a concern inconsistent with the kind of radical histori-cism under attack by Miller (for which knowledge merely fluc-tuates from age to age as interests change).

The second quotation, that it is an illusion to believe that"there must be one theory and only one, that can be right" appearsin the context of my effort to contrast traditional moral theory,and its search for the one correct ethical position, with contempo-rary social science, The latter recognizes that alternative theoriesmay often exist at the same time, each of which overlaps with theother and yet each of which is appropriate for describing the phe-nomena to which it is addressed. If Miller had seen fit to continuethe quotation to the beginning of the next paragraph, my wordswould have neutralized any attempt to interpret my meaning in ahistoricist direction. There I add that "If we cannot say that weought to expect that any one theory is the right one, how are we toevaluate and select among alternatives? "3 6 I then discuss the gen-eral and specific criteria for evaluating theories concluding that"the ultimate key, of course, is the adequacy of explanation andunderstanding offered by the theory."

In the face of so direct a commitment to objectively validknowledge, repeated frequently in my work, it is baffling indeedthat Miller should find it necessary to pull sentences out of contextand put them together in such a way as to misconstrue my posi-tion. The whole thrust of my argument has been that even thoughwe must recognize the historically conditioned character of think-ing, we are always able to test the validity of theories through theuse to which we put them for explanatory and predictive purposes.Consistent with my opposition to historicism expressly elaboratedin The Political System in 1953, I have stood by this position insubsequent years. Yet I have not been willing to deny the impact

36 A Systems Analysis of Political Life, p. 473.


that values, social class, ideology and the like have on our re-search. Willingness to make allowance for distortion and error dueto social factors is not to be mistaken, however, as a "concession"to historicism, except insofar as this epistemological view hashelped us to appreciate what could easily be neglected. Nor is rec-ognition that knowing is part of a social process necessarily a de-nial of the attainability of objectively valid science.

III

In addition to these more general challenges, Miller lodges twospecific complaints about concepts central to my theoretical ap-proach. The first concerns my definition of society. The adequacyof my framework of analysis, he holds, must be judged by its suc-cess "in giving a satisfactory answer to the question: `Whatis political?.' " And since I see political life as an aspect of society,my identification of the political "is worthless unless it is accom-panied by a clear definition of society." 37 In Miller's view I havedefined clearly neither politics nor society. Systems analysis istherefore found fundamentally wanting.

Miller is apparently dissatisfied with my interpretation of soci -

ety on three grounds. It is unclear, probably arbitrary and un -

founded, and independent of politics.There is a certain justification to Miller's complaint about the

potential ambiguity of the way in which I use the concept society.The literature is replete with efforts at definition. I have sought toavoid writing another book in an effort to clarify the meaning be-yond any doubt and have accordingly used society virtually as aprimitive term, minimally defined. I have described society simply,as a group of biological persons who together are involved in thesolution of all of the problems of living together. Societies neednot reside on fixed territories although in fact most do. They neednot have a sense of community or of belonging together althoughmany do. They are more likely to be inwardly rather than out-wardly oriented; that is to say, their members are likely to be ableto identify one another as belonging to a common entity whetherit is called a monarchy, a nation, a tribe, or a nomadic band. Al-though Miller turns to Aristotle, in fact I find no clearer a descrip-tion of society (or community) in Aristotle; and Miller is unable toprovide us with a less ambiguous meaning. For theoretical pur

87 Miller, p. 225.


poses what I seek to signalize by my use of the term is that forevery group of biological persons there exists a mass of undifferen-tiated interactions from among which the social scientist findsthose that concern him. These interactions are the "apperceptivemass" 38 with which the social scientist begins his analysis.

Miller objects not only to a lack of clarity in the definition. Healso suggests that it is based on "nothing more than an arbitrarypostulate, with no rational or empirical foundation whatever." 39

In line with my constructivist conceptualization of the politicalsystem, he considers I must similarly conclude that "an aggregateof persons forms a society merely because we choose to regardthem as such for purposes of research. "40

This conclusion by Miller, of course, reduces a useful interpre-tation to a patent absurdity. As with political systems, althoughthe investigator is free to select any aggregate of persons and des-cribe them as a society, here too the utility of the particular des-ignation will depend on the extent to which the members of thegroup conform to our theoretical notion of a society. If they aredefined as a mere aggregate, unrelated in any way as a societalunit, they would have little interest for social science. We coulddescribe every tenth person in the world population as consti-tuting a society. We would, however, find difficulty in turning tothis mere aggregate to understand the political problems of livingtogether. What distinguishes an interesting from a trivial societalgroup, for scientific understanding, is the fact that the members ofthe group are significantly related to each other for purposes ofcoping with most of the problems of living together. Hence al-though society is virtually a primitive term for me, it is neither ar-bitrary in the sense of being whimsical or capricious, nor is itwithout an empirical base.

This brings us to Miller's final point. He is unhappy with myeffort to distinguish the political system from other kinds of sys-tems in society for purposes of analysis. In thus separating outpolitics from society he finds me joining modern social scienceagainst Aristotle. Whereas Aristotle understands society "in termsof the good and happy life, Easton is silent about the quality oflife as an appropriate consideration in defining society." 41 UnlikeAristotle I do not see political activity as "the formative principle

s8 A Framework for Political Analysis, p.38.39 Miller, p. 227.4° Ibid., italics inserted.91 Ibid.


of a community wherein men pursue their distinctively humanpurposes. 42

It would appear that Miller's objection to my definitions of so-ciety and of politics flows from different uses to which we wouldput these concepts, a good illustration of the way in which the in-terests of the perceiver leads to a different organization of the per-ceived world. I have been seeking a conceptualization or a way ofordering phenomena that will ultimately direct us to the kind ofunderstanding that comes from discovering valid relationships. If Idiscern Miller's interests correctly, his probably center on a set oftheoretical definitions (ways of ordering phenomena) that will per-mit him to discover objective and final values. If such values couldindeed be uncovered and demonstrated, perhaps his adoption ofthe Aristotelean approach to society and politics would provehelpful. It is not for me to say. But without further debate I amprepared to grant him that my framework of analysis would not beof much help. It flows from other interests, it is explicitly designedfor other purposes, and it subsumes a different conception ofvalues.

Thus, for ascertaining some final moral standards for men, itmight make sense to interpret politics as though it were the "for-mative principle of a community wherein men pursue their dis-tinctively human purposes." 43 Political activity is one of the majorarenas in society, whether modern or non-literate, in which collec-tive goals are self-consciously debated by those who are politicallyrelevant. On the other hand, whether political activity can underall conditions constitute this "formative principle" is itself an empir-ical matter subject to inquiry.

Miller moves, however, from his own ethical perspectives tothose of systems analysis and accuses the latter of not taking "po-litical criteria into account from the beginning" 44 and this seemsto him to constitute a major defect. One answer might of coursenow be given. Even if the accusation were true, it might be ac-counted for by our differences in research objectives. A second an-swer might be that if by this accusation Miller means only that systems analysis does not view politics as the universal formativeprinciple of a society, then he is obviously correct. This flows fromour different research purposes.

42 Ibid." Ibid.44 Miller, p. 228.


Miller, however, goes further than this. He also seems to besuggesting that somehow systems analysis-and all of modern so-cial science is included in this indictment-defines society withoutfinding it necessary to include politics as an important element; orthat the political is defined exclusively in terms of the social.

45

Both of these opinions are misleading.As I use the term society, it refers to all interactions through

which the members of a group seek to cope with the problems ofliving together. One of these classes of problems is that of provid-ing goods and services for members of the society. This set of in-teractions is typically called the economic system. Another prob-lem involves the provision of rules (norms) and goals throughwhich members organize their activities. These we may describe asthe cultural system (including political culture as an importantsource of such rules and goals). Among the varied kinds of inter-actions to be found in all societies, and empirically inescapable, isthe kind we call political (regardless of how we define political forthe moment).

Clearly, the analysis of politics as a system of behavior couldnot help but take "political criteria into account from the begin-ning," to use Miller's phrase. Indeed, society could not usefully beidentified in any other terms, at least from the point of view ofscientific understanding of political behavior. The political systemstands to society as a part does to the whole. Since the whole iscertainly different from its parts in either a quantitative or a quali-tative sense, 46 we would expect a definition of society to include thepolitical system and yet to be different from it.

From a systems analytic view point of view, this is not merely adefinitional matter. It is an integral part of the theoretical ap-proach. The differentiation of a political system as one subsystemof society permits us to consider those parts of society excludedfrom the political system as part of the social environment of thelatter. In systems analysis the exchanges between a system and itssocietal environment have important consequences. Inversely, al-though this is not a central focus, we cannot understand societyunless we take into account the impact of transactions moving

45 Miller in footnote 103.45 See a discussion of this in my following papers. "Systems Analysis in Politics

and Its Critics" in H. J. Johnson (ed.), Political Theory (Dordrecht, The Nether-lands: Reidel, 1973) forthcoming; and "Some Limits of Exchange Theory" 42 Socio-logicallnquiry, (1972)129-49.


from the political system to the societal environment. The wholenotion of feedback through the environment to the political sys-tem highlights this. Miller is very much mistaken in suggesting thatI treat society "as something that can be understood independentlyof political consideration. "47

From the interpretation that a society cannot be definedwithout taking into account its political aspects, however, we donot need to join Miller in drawing the conclusion that for scien-tific understanding, politics must always be "the formative princi-ple." Political activity is vital in a society. But so are economicactivity, social structure, and the like. A society has numerous as-pects and it is unlikely that men could pursue their purposes with-out providing for goods and services, for example, as well as forthe authoritative allocation of valued things. Marx seemed to ar-gue for the primacy of economics, some social scientists haveurged the dominance of culture, or of personality and motivation.The fact is that at the general level of societal existence, eachmajor area of human activity contributes its share in a totally in-teractive process. Politics infuses ("formative principle"?) all oflife; but so do economics, culture, motivation and the like. A mul-ticausal, interactive interpretation of society seems more helpful inunderstanding the way it operates than one that insists on somekind of primacy, out of hand, for one or another social aspect. Wemay grant that empirically, at given times and places, one or an-other aspect of society-the political, economic, cultural, psycho-logical or structural-may indeed attain a selective emphasis forspecial reasons. But it is difficult to imagine a kind of society inwhich each of the aspects mentioned could not be said to be "for-mative" in some significant sense.

In summary, Miller's brief for political primacy does not seemparticularly useful for broader scientific purposes. Nor does it seemto hold water empirically. It would appear that Miller would havebeen better advised to have identified our difference in objectivesand to have appraised my concepts at least in terms of my goals.He could have appropriately made one or both of two points: first,that my goal, a search for generalizations about human behavior,is futile, uninteresting, or unwise, given whatever reasons hemight have marshalled; second,. that my mode of analysis is im-paired, useless, or otherwise uninteresting for the very purposes forwhich it is designed. It is, however, scarcely persuasive to argue as

47 Miller, p. 227-8.


implicitly and in effect Miller does, that, given our very differentgoals in research, systems analysis is seriously deficient because itfails to help him attain his goals, the search for "final values."

IV

Miller's final complaint is lodged against the concept of per-sistence. He finds that at least in comparison with Aristotle, thisconcept leaves me totally incapable of dealing with the really im-portant aspects of political change. Aristotle, he points out, appro-priately identifies the distinctive character of any political com-

munity as its constitutional order or regime. The central quality ofa political community changes with any fundamental modifica-tion of the regime. In Miller's view, systems analysis confineschange arbitrarily to a mere choice between persistence and non-persistence. Either a political system, remains in existence or it failsto do so, something like a zero sum game one would suppose. Forthis reason it fails to pose questions about the very kind of changethat means most to a political community. Compared to Aristotle'sconceptualization at least, systems analysis has in this area little torecommend it.

Once again, in Miller's description of systems analysis I unfor-tunately fail to recognize what I have to say about change. As Ihave conceived of the idea, persistence was intended to permit usto identify not just regime change, a highly significant kind ofchange by any criterion, but three additional vital types of politi-cal change which no serious theory about politics today could pos-sibly ignore. It has always seemed to me that one of the merits ofsystems analysis is that for the first time it required us to clarify theprecise kind of political change we have under consideration,something about which political science had heretofore been lessthan systematic.

Systems analysis proposes that any theory contemplating thedeterminants of political change would need to be able to accountfor the following four types:

(1) State change in the system: These are changes in states ofthe major variables that do not lead to modifications in the charac-teristic way in which a system operates. For example, the numberof inputs of demands, their content, or their frequency may vary,or the level of support may fluctuate, yet the system may remain ofthe same general type. Similarly, the occupants of authority rolesor the party in power in a democratic system may change and yet


the characteristic way in which the system operates (as a democrat-ic one) may remain constant. These kinds of shifts, however im-portant their impact on the destinies of the members of the systemmay on occasion be, represent only state changes in majorvariables.

(2) System type (regime) change: Events may occur that lead tofundamental alterations, say, in the rules and goals of the system,transforming it from a democracy to a totalitarian system. Theseare kinds of changes that correspond to those dealt with not onlyby Aristotle but by most of the literature in political science fromtime immemorial. They refer to changes in the characteristic wayin which political systems process demands and convert them intooutputs. Usually when the system type changes-as after the Span-ish Revolution in the 1930's, or after the fall of the Weimar Re-public-the old authorities disappear with the old regime and newpersonnel emerge to function under the new rules and goals of thesuccessor regime.

(3) Political community change: These kinds of changes occurwhen those persons who participated in an existing regime findthat they can no longer share a common political life and, hence,go their independent ways. Separation is the classic instance of thebreak-up or change of a political community. Nationalist move-ments that lead to the creation of two or more independent politi-cal systems are associated with this kind of change with Bangla-desh as the most recent instance. Typically, here, both the authori-ties and the regime will change along with the politicalcommunity.

(4) Basic _system change: This refers to those less frequent in-stances, perhaps, when the members of a political system findthemselves in conflict or under other kinds of stress so severe thatthey are unable to continue to make decisions. Or if they can makedecisions they cannot get them accepted as binding by most mem-bers of the society most of the time. That is to say, a given societyis unable to provide for the persistence of those processes throughwhich authoritative allocations are characteristically made. Con-trary to Miller's opinion, 48 there are numerous instances in whichpolitical systems have disappeared in this sense, even in recenttimes. Germany, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Korea, and Vietnamare cases in point. In each instance the members of the society

4, "[Easton's] conceptual framework virtually eliminates the possibility of non-persistence," Miller, p. 231.


bearing these names were unable to sustain processes throughwhich binding decisions could be made for the members of each ofthese societies. The existing societies were destroyed and either di-vided into two societies or absorbed into another society. This kindof change I have called persistence failure.

It is entirely misleading to suggest, as Miller does, that systemsanalysis is concerned exclusively with the fourth kind of change orcan shed light on it alone. Each of the other three types is vital foran understanding of the range of changes that may occur. Aristotlewas presumably primarily concerned with the second type ofchange. Nationalist movements (political community changes ofthe third type) as a major focal point of interest were not suggestedby the historical experiences of the Greek city states. Furthermore,given the classical presupposition that city states were a permanentform of social organization and given an interest in the conditionspermitting men to pursue a certain kind of good life, it was entire-ly reasonable to focus on the regime. The way men order their po-litical relationships certainly is critical for their capacity to definetheir goals and pursue them. Who rules (the nature of the authorities in my terms) and the fundamental ordering of their relation-ships to each other and to the members of the system (the regimein my terms) are clearly basic considerations if we are to specify thepolitical conditions of the good life.

Yet a major point needs to be made. The Aristotelean questionabout regimes is not the only one that needs to be asked althoughit is one that cannot be left unasked. Since the behavioral revolu-tion in political science one hardly needs to argue for the benefitsof achieving an understanding and explanation of how all majoraspects of political systems operate. This understanding is a pre-condition for obtaining reliable knowledge about the means neces-sary for attaining the good life. Systems analysis is designed as astep in the direction of acquiring such understanding. Persistenceis introduced to help us to pose significant questions about howpolitical systems operate. In the process, as one of its major con-cerns, it emphasizes the importance of distinguishing among andaccounting for four major, different kinds of changes.

Why was persistence adopted as this central concept rather thanthe more obvious idea of regime? If I had been concerned with aprior understanding of how some given type of system operated,such as a democracy or a totalitarian system or a good system how-ever defined, there might have been some apparent justification forusing regime as a key concept to differentiate system types. But


with an explicit interest in general theory and, therefore, in tryingto ascertain the most useful concepts for understanding how anyand all systems operate-from mass industrialized to small tribalsystems-persistence has appeared to me as the most general andinclusive question to ask. I have referred to the reasoning behindthis concept at length, in my publications. Suffice it to say herethat by asking: How can a society sustain some kind of processesand structures for making and implementing binding decisions?, weare led to pose a whole host of general questions applicable to anykind of political system, including but passing beyond the vital ques-tion of political change.

Miller is not content with finding systems analysis deficient inthe kind of change to which it addresses itself. He goes further andwould have us believe that even to the extent to which I do dealwith change, I seem to consider any kind of political transforma-tion to be as good as any other kind. Each change represents itsown moral certification. As Miller puts it, my "conceptual frame-work requires us to regard any change in the political system as anexample of successful adaptation to stress, just so long as somekind of systeln persists.

"49

Now, as these words stand, in their ordinary meaning, they arenot an inaccurate representation of my analysis. But in Miller'shands they assume a new and almost sinister connotation. Theyare construed to mean that somehow, by suggesting "successfuladaptation" I lend approval to the way in which a particular sys-tem copes with stress. An identification of a fact becomes, thereby,an approval of it.

Specifically, Miller views with alarm my interpretation of theNazi dictatorship. As an illustration, in passing, of how systems domanage to persist, I refer to the transformation of the Weimar Re-public into the Nazi regime as one among a number of optionalresponses available at the time, in the German political system, forcoping with the extraordinary stress created by the socio-economicconditions of the decades following World War I. For formulatingthe matter in this way I am accused of some truly heinous crime,although, charitably, one that I do not intend. My crime is to failto provide in my analysis for "any basis for saying that an 'adapta-tion' of this type is undesirable.

"50More than that, to describe the

rise of the barbaric Nazi regime as though it could be conceived of

49 Miller, p. 231.99 Miller, p. 233.


as one option through which the German political system re-sponded to stress exposes, for Miller, the cold and inhumane, in-deed "miserable" consequences of my type of scientific analysis.5 t

The answer to these accusations is twofold. In the first place,they take what is essentially a descriptive statement-that throughregime change a system may succeed in persisting-and convert itinto a moral judgment-that I thereby approve of the change. Theillogic behind this transformation of meaning is self-revealing.

In the second place, in line with his whole review, Miller isagain pressing systems analysis to do what it was not intended todo. Systems analysis is designed to provide a framework of expla-nation and understanding, not one of evaluation. It would take adifferent kind of effort to warrant a set of ethical criteria for evaluating the persistence capacity of political institutions and behav-ior. Miller seems to be proclaiming that only research that incor-porates moral judgments can be worthwhile. I have alwaysadopted a less restrictive point of view. I have argued for the equalsignificance of both kinds of inquiry-explanatory as well as val-uational. In the end each is related to and relies for its value on theother. But en route, political science as a discipline is broadenough to encompass both as analytically separable enterprises. AsI have pointed out in my discussions of postbehavioralism,changing circumstances may require shifts in emphasis from oneto the other kind of concern, especially today as we move into aperiod when applied social science commands greater attention.But as I have repeatedly indicated, the mere fact that a contempo-

51 Here Miller quotes R. Dahrendorf in support of his interpretation. It is sad tosee Miller hiding behind Dahrendorfs intemperate outburst (as well as superficialreference to my work). One or another German scholar, perhaps still haunted by asense of guilt for Nazism, may have some slight justification for protesting toomuch and for turning to the overworked political tactic of appearing to allow hisemotions to overcome a normal sense of proportion. But Miller has not got eventhis slight excuse, especially since he avoids expressing his feelings in his ownwords. Furthermore it is interesting to see that I am not by any means alone ininterpreting totalitarianism as a type of response to stress. Compare: "In contrast,second-order mechanisms adjust to stress by modifying the internal arrangementsof the system itself. . . . second-order changes of this type also appear in theories ofpolitical change in the less developed countries. In John Kautsky ' s theory, for ex-ample, totalitarianism as a set of repressive policies and nationalism as a policy toincrease the domestic political salience of a foreign enemy are typical responses ofthe ruling nationalist intellectuals to the breakdown of domestic political unity re-sulting from modernization. Totalitarianism replaces nationalism as the latter be-comes increasingly ineffective in maintaining the nationalist coalition." G. D.Brunner and G. D. Brewer, Organized Complexity (New York: Free Press, 1971)p. 143.

30O THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER

rary social scientist does not seek to provide a framework for ethi-cal assessment cannot be interpreted as meaning that he must bedevoid of a moral point of view or that he is unprepared to discussit, given the necessary circumstances. To condemn the search forexplanation and understanding as an expression of indifference tomoral issues, as Miller seems intent on doing here, is to base one'sargument neither on logic nor on fact.

Although Miller does not neglect entirely the unique substan-tive problems involved in the development of systems analysis asan approach to the understanding of politics, for the most part heis more concerned with criticizing it as representative of. an at-tempt to build theory based on the assumptions of scientific meth-od. Both the guidelines of his criticism and many of his specificobjections could be applied with equal ease to most other modes ofanalysis prevalent in contemporary political science. In this spirit,Miller continues the familiar plea that social science would bemore fruitful if it returned to the classical tradition and sought todiscover, through political institutions and practices, values thattranscend time and place.

As we all know, these issues about the differences between clas-sical and contemporary political research have been exhaustivelydiscussed in many forums. As thoughtful as Miller's present cri-tique is and as felicitous as his phrasing may be, he has said littlethat is not already well known to his readers. The path he has cho -

sen raises serious question about the utility of repeating familiarrefrains on each new occasion. Although the choice of a reviewer isnot Miller's responsibility, it might have been more rewarding ifan assessment of`my work had been directed less toward its avowedand recognized scientific assumptions and more pointedly towardits adequacy, in its own terms, for understanding the functioningof political systems. With this objective a reviewer might then haveappropriately raised questions about the internal consistency ofsystems analysis, its comparative merits in relation to alternativetheoretical approaches, its applicability in research, its substantiverelevance, and its potential for growth and improvement. 5 2

52 For other extended critical analyses of my writings see the following: Astin,J.D., "Easton I and Easton II," 25 The Western Political Quarterly (1972) 726-737;Cook, T„ "The Political System: The Stubborn Search for a Science of Politics," 51Journal of Philosophy (1954) 128-137; Evans, M., "Notes on David Easton's Modelof the Political System," 8 Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies (1970);Kress, P. F., "Self System and Significance: Reflection on Professor Easton's Politi-cal Science,"77 Ethics (1966) 1-13; Leslie, Peter, "General Theory in Political Sci-

SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND ITS CLASSICAL : CRITICS 301

Those who continue to believe, with Miller, that the classicsprovide us with a more useful model for understanding contem-porary political life would surely be more persuasive today if theyrefrained from treading over the same old predictable argumentsagain and again. They would be more likely to convince others ifthey were to put their own assumptions and epistemological per-spectives to work in actual research on an analysis of contempo-rary political problems, however defined. If only by their worksthey shall be known, they are in danger of remaining an anoma-lous sect unless they move away from repetitious critiques and intothe hard, cruel world of research. There they will be called on todemonstrate, in compelling ways, the utility of their assumptionsand ideas.

University of Chicago DAVID EASTON

ence: A Critique of Easton's Systems Analysis," 2 British Journal of Political Sci-ence (April, 1972) 155-173; Magid, R. M., "Discussion: A Critique of Easton on theMoral Foundations of Theoretical Research in Political Science," 65 Ethics (1955)201-205; Nicholson, M, B., and Reynolds, P. A., "General Systems, The Interna-tional System, and the Eastonian Analysis," XV Political Studies (1967) 21-31;Reading, Reid R., "Is Easton's Systems-Persistence Framework Useful? " 34 Journalof Politics (1972) 258-267. I have responded generally to some of these criticisms inthe following papers: "Continuities in Political Theory: Behavioralism and Post-behavioralism, " Epilogue to the 2nd edition of The Political System (New York:.Knopf, 1971); "Further Comments on Criticisms of Systems Analysis" HogakuKenkyu: Journal of Law, Politics and Sociology, Tokyo, forthcoming; "SystemsAnalysis in Politics and Its Critics," in H. J. Johnson (ed.), Political Theory (Dord-recht, Holland: Reidel, 1973), forthcoming; "Reflections on Criticism " Social Sci-ence Information (1973), June.

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