ABSTRACT
Using such diverse terms as “decision-making,” “lawmaking,” and “political process,” modern political scientists from J. W. Burgess and Arthur F. Bentley through David B. Truman, Gabriel A. Almond, and David Easton have devoted a great deal of attention to the means by which important political determinations are made. In all political systems certain fixed structural constraints operate as a bias for or against certain processes and aid or impede certain policy possibilities. Likewise, in different functional areas inherent constraints arise from the nature of the issue and problem involved. Such structural and functional constraints serve as external determinants of both process and policy. Analysis which presumes some structural limitations is in many ways similar to that which begins by examining functional limitations. Much functional analysis argues that there is an inherent logic within some single functional arena, such as foreign policy, housing policy, transportation policy, or budgeting.
