The West German Political System

Abstract

To give analytic coherence to the complex variety of political structures and institutions in a large modern state such as the German Federal Republic, some convenient conceptual framework is required. One of the most suitable is the ‘systems framework’ developed by political scientists such as David Easton, Gabriel Almond and Karl Deutsch.¹ This is based on the idea that a political system can be identified analytically, by reference to the various structures and their interrelationships that are involved in the political process (which, for Easton, is the ‘authoritative allocation of values’, for example). Such a system is a useful model, for it emphasises the interactions among political structures, and draws attention to the key concepts of environment, feedback, stress and communication. It also facilitates relevant comparison with regimes from Germany’s own past, as well as with the numerous other states of the contemporary world.