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Dimensions of Political Systems: Factor Analysis of A Cross-Polity Survey*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Phillip M. Gregg
Affiliation:
Indiana University
Arthur S. Banks
Affiliation:
Indiana University

Extract

Since the publication of David Easton's The Political System, it has become increasingly common for political scientists to speculate as to the basic factors which may be common to all political systems and which, in their varying manifestations, determine the unique styles of political behavior within each. Efforts to identify the basic political phenomena and their complex relationships have generated a variety of cross-national conceptual schemes and propositions. Some authors speak of structural and functional requisites, some refer to equilibrium conditions for system maintenance. Others, employing more traditional concepts, refer to power, legitimacy, ideology, instability, consensus, influence, and bargaining. Regardless of the form these efforts assume, they all posit the existence of factors or dimensions which are common to all political systems.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1965

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References

1 New York, 1953.

2 For an attempt to integrate the structural and functional approaches with the systems approach, see Almond's, introductory essay in Almond, Gabriel A. and Coleman, James S. (eds.), The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1960), pp. 364Google Scholar.

3 The terms “factor” and “dimension” are here used as equivalent, non-technical concepts. Henceforth the former will be employed in reference to the mathematical result (the columns of variables' loadings in the factor matrix) of the factor analytic calculations; the latter will refer to the phenomena of the real world which the factor delineates.

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13 Banks and Textor, op. cit., p. 6.

14 Since each of the Survey variables is discussed in the Survey itself, it seems unnecessary to provide a set of definitions for purposes of the present article. For those unfamiliar with the Survey, one variable that appears in Table I may, however, require specification. “System Style” refers to the degree of “mobilization” (to attain political or social objectives) present in the system.

15 In an earlier factor analysis involving all 57 polychotomous characteristics of the Survey and an eleven-factor solution, four non-political factors (“Economic Development,” “Size,” “Population Density,” and “Religion”) emerged. The remaining seven factors closely resembled those reported on below. The four nonpolitical factors correspond to factors identified by Berry, op. cit.; Rummel et al., op. cit.; and Russett, op. cit.

16 The numbers in parentheses in Table I indicate the Survey raw characteristics from which the variables have been derived. Thus variables 22–24 are all derived from Survey Raw Characteristic 26 (Constitutional Status).

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23 Calculations were performed by the Indiana Research Computing Center's IBM 709. The MESA-3 program employed was developed by John B. Carroll at Harvard, coded by R. A. Sandsmark at Northwestern, and revised by Norman Swartz with the assistance of Gary Flint at Indiana.

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27 Due to an artifact of coding procedure taken over directly from the Survey, the variable “Ex-Spanish Dependency” exhibits an unusually high missing data component. For this variable, in addition to normal missing data attrition, only ex-colonial dependencies were assigned substantive codings, some 40 countries being regarded as “irrelevant” to the coding category.

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34 Russett, op. cit., develops a very useful method for applying the factors as comparative scales.

35 We have not actually calculated factor scores in order to compare nations on the factors. The loadings of the areal grouping variables do, of course, provide insight as to what nations might be expected to correlate most strongly with the various factors. However, the loadings of the areal grouping variables lose their meaning when the nations are quite heterogeneous with respect to the dimension that the factor taps. On this point, see Lawley and Maxwell, op. cit., pp. 88–92.

36 For an excellent discussion of the methodological status of typologies in the social sciences, see the remarks of Hemple, Carl G. in “Symposium: Problems of Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences,” Science, Language, and Human Rights (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1952), I, 65 ff.Google Scholar

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38 We have not named those factor clusters which are not readily interpreted or which duplicate other clusters.

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