Scenarios for political metamorphosis. A macro-theoretical mathematical model of political behavior

In this paper an attempt has been made to do two things: (1) to show that system analysis concepts and techniques can profitably be applied to problems in political science where they yield information and insight hardly attainable by purely verbal arguments. (2) to give precise definitions of the notions of ideology, change and stability, which although widely used, are at the moment hardly a sound basis for explications. i am aware of the fact that the entire approach is reduced to the most radical simplifications, concerning linearity of the relations, the dichotomization of the system and the reduction to three vectors components only. concerning the dimensions and the numbers of system elements, it should be obvious that giving up the imposed restrictions (which would have to be done in any empirical application of the model) only increases the computational burden, while not changing anything in the basic ideas. removing the linearity assumption would be far more critical since a nonlinear model might be expected to show strongly differing behavior patterns. current work on models of change of ideology and change of demands will provide a sequel to this paper.;