Political Structure Lecture 2

Meaning of Political
Structure
Definition
 Structure is best interpreted not as a physical entity in space and
time but as a special kind of property of such an entity
 As a concept, political structure has two aspects: political and
structural.
 What distinguishes a political structure from other kinds of social
structures is depends upon our theoretical presuppositions about
what we are going to accept as political phenomena.
 Members of a society interact with each other in a variety of
relationships.
 these kinds of relationships are more or less directly concerned with
the making of decisions will enable us to distinguish them as
political.
 Structure is nothing more than one kind of property of political phenomena.
 ….The social scientist is studying the structural arrangement of the units and
takes the internal structure of the units for granted. The same remarks may be
made about political arrangements.
 They represent one inescapable and fundamental aspect of political life.
 What is clear at the outset is the absence in political science of any theory or
organized conceptualization to guide us in settling on a stable idea of structure.
 In actual usage the meanings are so varied that it would be fruitless to attempt
to collect all of them in the hope of ultimately distilling some common content.
 as Kroeber, has complained, use of the term some time ago became
almost a fashion, a way of showing that one was stylish with the
language of social science. he wrote:
 'Structure' appears to be just a elastic to a word that has a perfectly
good meaning but suddenly becomes fashionably attractive for a
decade or so-like 'streamlining' and during its vogue tends to be
applied indiscriminately because of the pleasurable connotations of
its sound.
 this variable usage may just represent a genuine attempt to come to
grips with an underlying consciousness that not everything is possible.
Constraints are built into the human condition. They are of various sorts:
internal in the sense of genetic or merely biological, internal in the sense of

motives and predispositions (personality), geographical, cultural, and so
forth.
One of them has to do with the way human beings organize their social
ties, that is, the structure of their relationships.
Structure has long been an everyman concept. Boudon has concluded that
the word structure has been caught up in such a complex web of multiple
meanings, Having the same form but unrelated meaning and synonymic
meanings that it defies any effort to induce a single acceptable connotation.
 he suggests;
 When a concept has its support in objective reality, as for example, 'dog,' a
concept dear to Kant, it is possible to attempt its definition by comparing and
abstracting the elements common to those objects which it designates. In our
example, the concept of dog would be defined by comparing and abstracting
the elements common to all individual dogs. But what of the concept of
'structure'? Clearly, comparing and abstracting would take place on the level
of secondary sources and could not use any other material than the definitions
of the concept of structure propounded by different authors in different
disciplines. While dogs exist and have a reality independent from the
definitions which could be given to the concept of dog, this does not hold for
'structures,' which do not exist until they have been defined.
 We can set aside the uncertain metaphysic expressed here about the objective
reality of dogs as against a presumed subjectivism of structures.
 Boudon's ultimate conclusion is necessary to attempt not an intrinsic but an
extrinsic definition of the term. He sets out to do this by analysing not the
meanings common to all definitions but what he views as the function of the
concept in ongoing scientific research.
 disagreement with Kroeber, Boudon finds that the popularity of structure stems
not from fashionism but from important changes taking place in social science.
 he is associating the popularity of the idea of structure with a transformation in
our thinking in the midtwentieth century that has led us to conceive of our subject
matter in social science as systems.
Boudon finally instructs us that social scientists use the concept in such a
way that it can be reduced to two major implications as its intentional and
its operative meanings.
In the intentional sense scientist referring to a variety of different
properties.
Where the idea of structure goes beyond such mere intention, Boudon
argues, it can be demonstrated to involve the formulation of a theory about
the nature of the interdependence of the parts in the object-system. This
gives structure an operative meaning.
The idea of structure arises not simply to imply an intention to treat a
subject as a system but also as a way of actually trying to understand the
structure of the object-system, that is, to develop a theory about how the
parts of a system hang together and operate.
For Boudon, the analysis of structure in this operative sense would,
therefore, lead to the construction of a theory.
different conceptions of the structure of an object are not just an
expression of an intention to interpret an object as a system, for him they
represent efforts at formulating different kinds of theories about the
relationships among the elements of such systems.
the analysis of structure is just another way of committing oneself to the
construction of alternative social theories. "To sum up, a structure is
always the theory of a system-and it is nothing else.
If the analysis of structure is, in the end, nothing more than a
commitment to formulating theories
if we were to accept Boudon's point of view it would certainly end the
enormous conflict over the meaning of the idea of structure.
the reduction of structuralist or structural analysis to theory construction
would leave too many questions unanswered about the use of structure in
political science,
The critical issue is Even if social theories, by the very nature of their
interest in social relationships, must in fact involve themselves in the
identification of structures, just what gives some theories a special
structural character?
To distinguish structurally oriented theories from other kinds requires us
to settle on a meaning for structure.
Meaning of Structure in Ordinary Usage
Political relationships, whether among individuals or collectivity(ies),

have many properties.
political relationships may also vary in the property of being structured.
Some may have very little structure as in the case of casual and fleeting
political contacts.
Others may display well-defined and durable kinds of structures, as in
the connections among executives, legislatures, and courts in stable
political systems.
What is the nature of this variable property called structure?
in ordinary language it usually refers to patterns found in political

relationships among elements of a system, that is, to relatively stable
arrangements among members of the system or among other political units
such as collectivities or aggregates.
This ordinary usage suggests-several things about structure:
1. it implies that an object can have a structure only if it has parts.
2. in all instances, it is the arrangement among the parts that constitutes
its structure, not any part taken by itself.
3. the arrangement of individuals, groups, or aggregates in a political
system represents a property abstractable from the objects of which the
arrangement is composed.
4. this property is observable or can be directly contingent, and,
accordingly, Will be confirmable.
In short, structure is an empirical, describable property referring to the
relatively stable relationships among the parts of an object or among
objects themselves.
the anthropologist defines structure as an ordered arrangement of parts,
which can be treated as compatible, being relatively constant, while the
parts themselves are mutable.
sociologists speaks of social structure as the patterns visible in social
life, the regularities observed, the configurations detected.
From this view of structure, federal relationships would constitute a
political structure.
Identifying the structure of a political culture, on the other hand, would
point to the stable patterns of attitudes in a political system,
structure is just a description of the relationships among the parts of an
object, not a theory about them.
For some social scientists, such as Levi-Strauss and Poulantzas, social
structure is precisely that, a theory about the factors that give shape to the
reality.
The theory can represent the structure, because it is the theoretically
defined factors themselves that are presumed to give structure to the visible
world.
In Levi-Stauss's oft-quoted sentence, "The term 'social structure' has
nothing to do with empirical reality but with models which are built up
after it.
This interpretation led Levi-Strauss to speak of the visible structure of
ordinary discourse as mere "social relations" as contrasted with "social
structure," which can be specified only through a "model" of basic
relationships underlying the observed social relations.
this difference between structure viewed as a description of the world as
against an underlying theory about it, would not necessarily seem to be
contradictory or necessarily incompatible.

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Meaning of Political

internal in the sense of genetic or merely biological, internal in the sense of

Political relationships, whether among individuals or collectivity(ies),

in ordinary language it usually refers to patterns found in political

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