Even the word “function” is more comprehensive. The concept function can conveniently be used. Almond further says that “power” is a legal term and for that reason he cautiously avoids the use of the term state. But political system includes many other ideas besides legality. In his opinion the term state is mainly a legal concept. He uses political system instead of state. His innovative terms do not end with structure. So he wants to adopt such terms as will enable him to analyse and compare all (or at least major) political systems. Why has he changed the names? The reason forwarded by Easton is that he wants to adopt concepts and categories which will be suitable for analysing political systems which are radically different from each other. Almond claims that all these were previously called institutions. Every political system has several institutions such as political party, legislature, executive, judiciary, etc. What is structure? Here the word structure is used in a sense different from sociological sense. He says that though there are differences between developed and developing countries so far as structures are concerned, the structures perform almost similar functions. In his noted work The Politics of the Developing Areas Almond has drawn our attention to an interesting issue. He has, in fact, stressed that every political system has some structures and these structures perform certain functions meant for it. It is so called because Almond has explained his views keeping these structures of political system in mind. Almond’s model is popularly known to the students of political science as structural functionalism. In fact there are a number of political scientists who are actively associated with general systems theory and one of them is Gabriel Almond who died in 2003 at the age of 91. But Easton is not the only political scientist who can be credited with being associated with this model or concept. We have already analysed in details the general systems theory as propounded by David Easton which is also called Easton model.
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