The “Intermediary gatekeepers” In die examples given above, we have said that demands can be in thousands. If all of them become effective or realisable demands or issues, requiring to be convened into outputs, they will overload the political system the conversion “box”, i.e. the government. Every desire or hope cannot become a demand.
The “intermediary gatekeepers” are the regulatory mechanisms which enable the political system prevent some wants. e.g. expectations, opinions, preferences or interests, from becoming issues or realisable and effective demands, and thus prevent overloading of the political system. They are as follows:
1. Structural mechanisms: They are the activities of opinion- leaders, political parties, mass media, pressure groups and the elite classes.
2. Cultural mechanisms: The cultural mechanisms are the norms which regulate behavior, impose taboos; and also include the socialisation process.
The “gatekeepers” operate at various levels of the political system. They sit astride the flow from demand to output and, via the feedback loop back to the input side. They are known as “gatekeepers” because they operate at those strategic points, where demands can be stopped, selected, winnowed down, combined with others or are otherwise altered. It may be mentioned that there are more “gatekeepers” in a democratic State than in the undemocratic dictatorships or autocratic governments, which restrict them from arising. In the examples givens above, in a theocratic State, the- gatekeepers winnow out economic or cultural demands, while they select and strengthen religious ones.
The supports: Supports constitute another kind of inputs. In simple terms it means that the political system exists so long as the government has the support of the people. Supports can be in both active and passive ways. An active support is in the form of actions or attitudes which promote or resist a political system or the demands and decisions which are needed to keep the system going. This refers to three levels which exist to ensure die maintenance of the system which are as under:
Firstly, the political community: It supports the system through payment of taxes, participation in elections, obeying laws and accepting certain values, Thus people are part of a total political community, and provide allegiance to the system. The allegiance expresses national unity or “consensus”
Secondly, the regime: its members must support the constitutional principles of the political system which legitimise action and provide authority and links between various parts of the political system, such as die executive, the legislature, judiciary, political parties.
Thirdly, authorities: They must support the actual government if it is to perform its functions. Public opinion or the views people hold on political or social issues, can also act as a support Governments generally see to it that their policies satisfy the public’s expectations.
Apathy: It is a lack of input. It is a matter of common observation that there are always some people who are indifferent to the political demands. For instance, they do not participate in voting at the time of election. It is a passive indifference. But it affects the inputs. The fewer there are those who participate in politics, die lesser the inputs in the conversion process. Thus the political process is both quantitatively and qualitatively affected. Conversion Process: Surprisingly enough, Easton says little about the conversion process by which the government actually transforms the inputs into outputs by authoritative allocations or binding decisions. It is the process by which (i) demands are articulated and aggregated into policy proposals and (ii) demands are converted into authoritative decisions which are the OUTPUTS.
Outputs. Outputs are laws or policies. They are the decisions and actions of the authorities. They are of the following kinds:
(a) extractive, e.g. tax-collection;
(b) regulative e.g. laws;
(c) allocative, i.e. activities which allocate public funds to alternative uses; and
(d) judicial decisions, treaties, executive orders and administrative decisions.
The list of the outputs can be much longer than mentioned above. Briefly, all the activities of the government can be grouped under the broad heading of the outputs of the government What government does to allocate values or objects of human needs to the society in response to the demands and supports of the people and of special interests are the-outputs.
The feedback: The feedback may be defined as the reactions of the people to the decisions and acts of the-govemment called the output. Every government action is bound to cause some reaction from at least some of the people. It may be a response of the people who made the original demand or of those who are affected by the output. The feedback is, thus, a dynamic process through which information about the output is communicated back to the system in such a way as to affect the subsequent behaviour of the system. It is a cyclic process by which the government can know how the system is working for the satisfaction of the needs or demands of the people. This is the reason why Easton’s model is called flow model of the political system.
The stress: A political system may be in a State of stable equilibrium when the input-output flow may be operating smoothly. But there may be conditions when it is subject to various stresses. They are, for example excess demands, lack of support or the outputs which produce hostile or adverse effects in the environment or the feedback may be overcharged with old and new demands. In such conditions there are various kinds of political protests, which include pickets and strikes, rallies and riots.
As the political system seeks to persist in time, it will meet the stresses by its own remedial or regulatory mechanisms and responses. Indeed, no real political system works exactly like the model. There are often many kinds of snags, especially in the developing countries. They are, to mention a few, lethargy of the people, including that of the authorities, corruption, lack of democratic freedoms or outright acts of tyranny and oppression.