Political Systems and Institutions

Institutions and organizations ranging from families to governments influence policy formation and the way society is organized. The Social Process Diagram accommodates a wide variety of institutions and organizations, as the descriptions of the economic system and population categories have shown. Political and other institutions have differed vastly through time and currently vary greatly from place to place. In the description of the economy it was suggested that there was a relation between market systems and political openness. Within market systems, for example, if the political sectors are open or democratic, the government is more likely to be responsive to public opinion expressed through voting and lobbying. The role of other institutions and local political arrangements will be less dependent on the government and thus relatively effective.

Authoritarian systems tend to subordinate most other institutions from the family to the economy to the political options of the central government. Subordinate bureaucracies, such as the ministries, the army, the police or the structure of the ruling political party, might be important in such systems because they influence the outcome of the authoritarian decision-making process. In developing countries, the political system, like the economic system, can often be split between a weak national level and a strong local level dominated by ethnic and kin-based loyalties.

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