When structures are perceived and qualified by their salient functions – when
the question is not what a structure is but what it is for – it is not
possible to distinguish between structure and function and thus provide
accurate descriptions of the former (Sartori, 1970, p. 1047).
The term ‘function’ is equally problematic. The word is used in different
ways without the differences being fully acknowledged. ‘Function’ can
mean maintaining something: for example, the function of the political sys-
tem is to integrate society and allow it to adapt. Function can also mean
merely a task, such as when the ‘function’ of a political organization is to
articulate an interest. The functionalist literature tends to switch from the
more mundane meaning to the almost mathematical meaning of function as
the result or consequence of some other factor in the social equation.
The concept of ‘boundary’ is also controversial. If political systems could
not be clearly differentiated from the economic and the social as, say, in China
or the Soviet Union, it was heavily value-laden to say that they were, as a con-
sequence, less developed than a society where it is assumed that state and
economy operate in their own self-contained spheres. It may or may not be
justifiable to prefer such separation, or laissez-faire, but it is not a develop-
mental stance to say that a more modern society creates clear boundaries
between polity and economy. That begins to look like a subterfuge for saying
that societies where there is heavy state involvement in the economy are back-
ward. This leaves aside the problem of assuming capitalist societies them-
selves demarcate between politics and economics. In all societies people
move from one system to the other by virtue of the different roles which they
perform. The boundaries are blurred even if we wish to distinguish between
societies where polity and economy are closely integrated because of public
ownership, state planning, or collectivization, and societies where that is less
so. Almond wanted to argue that it was regressive scientifically not to insist on
an analytical boundary being drawn between the processes of politics and
those of social integration and adaptation, or between the political system on
the one hand and churches, economies, schools, kinship, lineages and age sets
on the other (Almond, 1966, p. 5). Nevertheless, a political system defined
in part by reference to boundaries either leaves non-boundary systems non-
political systems or makes statements about political systems true by defini-
tion and untestable empirically (Holt and Turner, 1966, pp. 17–19).
Changes of emphasis
The pessimism about Third World politics that set in after what was per-
ceived to be the failures of the United Nation’s first Development Decade,
72 Understanding Third World Politics