FUNCTIONALISM AND ITS CRITICS - Intercollegiate Studies Institute

FUNCTIONALISM AND ITS CRITICS
little relevance to its adequacy as a means of classifying and studying
political systems. However, as we shall later see, the source of
its derivation is not without importance, for Almond is not completely
free of that ethnocentric bias from which he had hoped to
escape.
The Politics of the Developing Areas was a preliminary attempt
to apply a structural-functional framework to the analysis of political
systems. In it Almond was not particularly concerned with the
nature or direction of social change, at least explicitly, but merely
with fashioning a tool which would permit effective comparisons In
Comparative Politics he added a number of dimensions to his
analysis, including a theory of evolution and a set of concepts designed
to enable political scientists to evaluate political systems.
Both of these dimensions will be described later. For the moment,
however, we are concerned with his efforts to increase the precision
and depth of his conceptual framework.
Almond begins Comparative Politics with a discussion of some
of the criticisms which have been leveled against a functional approach-for
example, that it implies an equilibrium or harmony of
parts and that it has a conservative bias. He rightly points out that
his use as a functional approach does not assume that system equilibrium
is natural and certainly does not assume harmony among
system parts. He admits that his previous writing had lacked an approach
to political change, but promises to rectify this in the present
volume. 14
His definition of the political system has changed somewhat.
The political system now consists of ". . . all those interactions
which affect the use or threat of legitimate physical coercion. " It is
the potential use of legitimate force, indeed, which gives the political
system its coherence. 18 He still considers himself a functionalist, however,
and promises to :
. . . consider the activities or functions of political systems from
three points of view. The first of these we have already referred tothe
conversion functions of interest articulation, interest aggregation
political communication, rule making, rule application, and rule
adjudication. The second consideration is the operation of the politi-
"Ibid., pp. 12-13.
18 1bid., pp. 17-18.
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