Systems Research and Behavioral Science

Syst. Res. 22, 223^231 (2005)

DOI:10.1002/sres.639

&

Research Paper

A Systems Approach to Entropy

Change in Political Systems
Jong Heon Byeon*
Department of Ethics Studies, Jeju National University of Education, Jeju, Korea

It is the relative balance of both adaptability and level of political support that determine
the entropy of a political system as a whole. When the level of political support is low, the
entropy of the political system increases. The entropy is higher if the system cannot cope
with environmental stresses. Although these ideas remain fairly abstract, we can
indirectly measure the relative state of the entropy in a given system. First, adaptability
determines the outer entropy change of the system, which refers to the capability of the
system to survive in the face of environmental uctuations. This depends on such
qualities of the system as proper use of knowledge and information, exibility of the
system, and timely boundary control. Second, the level of spontaneous political support is
the critical factor affecting the inner entropy change of the system. It can typically be
assessed by examining the specic indicators or items in terms of threefold levels of a
political system. Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Keywords entropy; political system; adaptation; political support; complexity; variety;
boundary control

INTRODUCTION
Through the mid-20th century, there had been
increased attempts to apply systems perspectives
to the analysis of various human systems.
Indeed, in many research elds, the systems
approach had turned out to be the optimal and
most powerful tool for systematic analysis. For
example, many theorists in sociology have
generally referred to the state of a system in

* Correspondence to: Jong Heon Byeon, Department of Ethics Studies,

Jeju National University of Education, 4810 Whabuk 1 Dong, Jeju,
Korea 690-061. E-mail: byeon@jejue.ac.kr

Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

terms such as system integration, system order,

functional prerequisite and system maintenance.
This trend naturally stimulated the beginning of
the systems movement. In the rst conceptual
frames of this movement, systems were just
regarded to be goal seeking and self-regulatory
or controllable from outside. This phrase of
systems movement was primarily concerned
with equilibrium and stability and with their
maintenance through control of negative feedback loops (De Greene, 1994).
However, facing the ever-increasing complexity of the systems we are interested in, these
concepts no longer seemed to be adequately
rigorous for dealing with complex phenomena,
Received 12 September 2003
Accepted 1 April 2004

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and the older descriptive phrases nally showed
their limitations as scientic terminology. In this
vein, the second wave of the systems movement
has mainly focused on the use of such terms as
entropy, non-equilibrium, instability, and the
emergence of new patterns and structures. In this
stage of the movement, systems are usually
considered to be evolving or self-organizing into
something new, not just functioning.
In this paper, I propose to apply the concept of
entropy to the analysis of dynamic change in
political systems. The concept of entropy has
been seen as a foundational concept in many
current research trends, especially in contemporary systems theory. Although the term entropy
originated in the eld of thermodynamics, it has
both theoretical and statistical interpretations, as
well as widespread applications in other disciplines. As we know, the simplest denition of
entropy is disorder. It is the tendency for any
closed system to move toward a chaotic or
random state in which there is no further
potential for energy transformation or work.
The disorder, disorganization, lack of patterning,
or randomness of organization of a system is
known as its entropy (Miller, 1965, p. 195).
The aim of this paper is to clarify what is meant
by the entropy of a political system and apply the
denition to the analysis of dynamic change in
political systems. To do this, basically, it is
suggested that entropy change in a political
system is affected by both inner political support
level and outer adaptation ability of the system. In
other words, the entropy of a political system is
regarded as a function of inner political support
and outer adaptation process over time. A political
system will be identied as a set of interactions,
abstracted from the totality of social behavior,
through which valued things are authoritatively
allocated for a society (Easton, 1965, p. 98).

THE USE OF ENTROPY

A large number of useful terms and concepts
have been transported into other disciplines
from their original discipline. Often such transported concepts have been interpreted differently in their new manifestations. Some of these
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new meanings may be seen as positive adaptations to a new environment. However, many
terms seem to suffer from what has been called
concept degradation, meaning simply that the
term has lost conceptual sharpness, clarity or
precision (Bailey, 2001). Furthermore, it is true
that there has been a tendency for researchers in
the discipline where the term originated to see its
application in new elds as unwise. In spite of
such negative stances, however, it is certain that
many concepts will continue to be exported far
from their original elds; entropy is just one of
these.
The word entropy could fairly be termed one
of the greatest buzzwords of 20th-century
science. The use of the word has evoked in
laymen an aura of mystery and arcane knowledge (Corning and Kline, 1998, p. 274), and has
been widely debated by academics. Indeed, there
have been a number of books and articles
devoted to applications of entropy outside of its
original applications in thermodynamics
(Wicken, 1987; Brooks and Wiley, 1988; Coning
and Kline, 1998). Since its original inception by
Clausius in classical thermodynamics, entropy
has witnessed a series of subsequent incarnations. In particular, in the realm of social science,
Bailey (1990, 1994) introduced the notion of
social entropy and Rhee (1999) applied the term
entropy to the analysis of political systems.
According to Bailey (1990), entropy has
replaced the age of equilibrium. The concept of
equilibrium is not sufcient to fully describe the
complexity of social phenomena; the term
entropy and its applications, on the other hand,
can grasp the dynamic process of social complexity because we are indeed seeing generic entropy
phenomena in society. Thus he suggests it is
necessary to use the term entropy, as long as it is
qualied by a prex, as in social entropy. It can
then be differentiated from Clausius entropy, or
Boltzmanns entropy, or biological entropy, or
any other entropy concept which lacks a certain
prex.
Following the path in general systems theory
(Miller, 1978; Rothstein, 1958; Wiener, 1961),
social organization can be explained in terms of
entropy state. The concept of social entropy
recognizes that entropy processes exist in social
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organizations such as corporations or factories
where work is done. But the entropy processes in
such open systems as social organizations do not
inexorably follow the second law of thermodynamics. On the contrary, the overall system
entropy may actually decrease over time. It is a
kind of paradigm shift that breaks through the
negative Weltanshauung followed by the second
law of thermodynamics.
In open systems, according to Prigogine
and Stengers (1984), the ows of energy from
environments can lead to entropy decreases
greater than the entropy increases that are
internally generated. This means that social
organizations can be dissipated in the absence
of inow of new energy, just as heat systems are
quickly dissipated without the addition of new
energy. An organization that is totally isolated
from all information and energy inputs will
quickly degrade, just as will the classical thermodynamic closed systems. The whole process of
the continual decrease in order in social organizations seems sufciently parallel or similar to
that occurring in a simple heat system. Thus,
social entropy, like Clausius entropy, appears to
be a particular case of a generic process. Whether
in Clausius entropy or social entropy, we can
distinguish both given entropy state at a particular time and the more general process of
entropy increase or decrease over time.
In terms of systems theory, political systems
are regarded as adaptive as well as open to their
environment. According to Easton (1965, pp. 17
18), it is useful to interpret political life as a
complex set of processes through which certain
kinds of inputs are converted into certain types
of outputs. Political life can be regarded as a
system of behaviour imbedded in an environment to the inuences of which the political
system itself is exposed and in turn reacts. It is
clear that political systems cannot be interpreted
as existing in a void. They must be seen as
surrounded by environments, lying exposed to
inuences deriving from the other systems in
which empirically they are imbedded. If they do
survive environmental buffetings, political systems must have the capacity to respond to
disturbances and thereby to adapt to the conditions under which they nd themselves. In this
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Entropy Change in Political Systems

RESEARCH PAPER
vein, a political system can be viewed as an open
and adaptive system.
According to Rhee (1999), open adaptive
political systems are dissipative and negentropic.
One of the important features of the thermodynamic composition of dissipative structure is
the negentropic potentiality. Negentropy, and its
opposite, entropy, are irreversible thermodynamic processes. Entropy refers to the universal
tendency of thermodynamic structures to evolve
irreversibly toward a stage of maximum disorder
called thermodynamic equilibrium. But for dissipative systems to sustain their growth, they
must not only increase their negentropic potential, but they must also eliminate the positive
entropy that naturally accumulates over time
and that degrades the systems internal structuring (Harvey and Reed, 1996, pp. 302303).
Even if internal entropy does increase within a
political system, transfers of information and
energy/matter from the environment can
decrease entropy, so that total system entropy
may remain constant or even decrease over time.
Thus, an understanding of the political system in
terms of entropy change would provide a
theoretical basis supporting the process of selftransformation or self-organization towards
higher states of systems stability and complexity.
Entropy production in the political system is just
such a function: if a political system is perturbed,
its entropy production will increase, but the
system reacts by returning to the state at which
its entropy production is lowest. In terms of
entropy analysis, the hallmark of the political
system as open and adaptive is the irreversible
intake of low entropy from the environment and
the return of high entropy to the environment as a
result of work done in the system (Byeon, 1999).
This means that any notation pertaining to the
behaviour of the political system must reect exchanges between the environment and the system, and focus on the entropy change over time.
ADAPTATION IN POLITICAL SYSTEMS
Denition of Adaptation in Systems
One of the most remarkable features of a living
system is the ability to exhibit what is called
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adaptation. After the work of Ashby (1956), it has
been generally conceived that non-living systems
can also show adaptive behaviour. What are we
referring to by adaptation? While this term is not
easy to dene, it is usually taken to refer to
behaviours which allow a system to survive
changes in its environment. In other words,
adaptation is a response to changes that actually
or potentially reduce the efciency of a systems
behaviour. Such change may be either internal
(within the system itself) or external (in its
environment).1 Typically, systems respond to
changes in different ways. Sometimes they take a
passive strategy, changing their behaviour so as
to perform more efciently in a changing
environment. At other times they adapt more
actively, changing their environment so that their
own present or future behaviour will be more
efcient. These two types of adaptation can, of
cause, both be employed.
In this paper I will use the term adaptation to
mean the overall responsive behaviours of a
system to changes in its environment. It can be
said that a system is adaptive if and when there
are changes in its environment which reduce its
efciency in pursuing the purposes that dene its
functions, and it reacts or responds by changing
its own state and/or that of its environment so as
to increase its efciency with respect to those
purposes. Thus adaptation is the ability of a
system to modify itself or its environment in
response to environmental disturbances that
threaten the systems efciency.
Political systems have purposes of their own,
contain subsystems that have purposes of their
own, and are usually parts of larger systems that
contain other human systems (Easton, 1965). In
this regard, political systems have often been
modelled in terms of open, living organisms with
the ability to adapt and evolve over time (Byeon,
1999). Once we conceive of political systems from
1
Ackoff (1999, p. 58) classies four types of adaptation. (1) Otherother
adaptation: a systems reacting or responding to an external change by
modifying the environment. (2) Otherself adaptation: a systems
reacting or responding to an external change by modifying itself. (3)
Selfother adaptation: a systems reacting or responding to an internal
change by modifying the environment. (4) Selfself adaptation: a
systems reacting or responding to an internal change by modifying
itself. As we know, Ackoffs otherself adaptation is the most common
one.

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this perspective, it becomes clear that they can
exhibit the adaptability to cope with various
changes in the environment and they will show
different system states in accordance with the
results of adaptation to changes.

Adaptation in Political Systems

As noted above, a political system is able to cope
with environmental changes in pursuing its
purposes. When a system exhibits adaptability
in various ways, the system is able to control the
entropy process and reserve available political
energy to perform its own goals efciently. For a
political system, changes in the environment
may be rapid and of short duration, or slow and
of long duration. Needless to say, a political
system should be able to handle either type of
change to adapt efciently and thus keep overall
entropy from approaching the critical range. The
following elements are important for a political
system to be able to show adaptability to changes
in its environment.
Accumulation of Information and Knowledge
The means by which a system deals with
information and knowledge is one of the critical
variables determining the adaptability of any
given system. Biological evolution is a process
of accumulating useful genetic information.
Accordingly, the best measure of evolutionary
progress is the ability to store and process
information in the brain and central nervous
system (Ayres, 1994, p. XV). Social evolution is,
similarly, a process of accumulating useful
cultural information that is used for social purposes, passed on via social processes, and stored
in artifacts as well as in peoples memories. In
both cases, the term useful can be understood to
mean that which assists adaptation and growth.
In the biological world, the build-up of
adaptation-useful information is reected in the
increasing number and variability of species, the
increasing complexity of organisms and ecosystems, the increasing information-carrying capacity of genes, and the trends toward larger
brains, longer lives, and a greater ability to modify the natural environment in ways favouring
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survival and propagation. Likewise, the tendency toward increasing adaptability in human
systems is reected in the increasing importance
of creating, storing, processing and transmitting
information, and the acceleration of the accumulation of knowledge with time. It is the use of
information and knowledge that permits individuals and institutions to look toward and plan
for the future. For adaptation and evolution
in human systems, accumulation of knowledge
and information-handling capability plays a
critical role.
In trying to best use information and knowledge, political systems share adaptive characteristics of living organisms. The argument
proposing similar adaptive paths for living
systems and political systems in terms of useful
information and knowledge can be drawn
from the obvious analogies between biological
organisms, communities, ecosystems and
human systems (Miller, 1978). In this regard,
the adaptive path of a political system can be
characterized by increasing abilities to sense
the state of the environment, to assess its risks
and opportunities, and to learn and take
appropriate responses. Accordingly, if a political
system keeps the proper adaptive track using
useful information and knowledge, it can control
the overall entropy process.
Variety and Complexity
A second element that is required for the
adaptation of a political system is exibility.
The exibility of a system usually stems from
variety and complexity. Thus, it is necessary for a
political system to possess a certain degree of
variety and complexity to cope with environmental changes. Increased complexity and ambiguity in environments (a kind of contingency)
demand variety and increased complexity of the
system itself. Only systems that are properly
organized to manage complex contingencies
effectively and to accommodate such environmental restraints or ambiguity with greater
exibility can adapt and survive.
Ross Ashby (1956) has explained mathematically why a system must have a minimum
amount of variety to be a dominant system.
According to Ashbys law, in order to achieve
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Entropy Change in Political Systems

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control the variety in the control system must be
equal to or larger than the variety of the
perturbations. Only variety can cope with variety. A simple illustration comes from chess, in
which a queen can defeat a bishop or castle
because she has a greater variety of moves. In
organization theory, which stresses a function of
efcient relationships between the system and
certain contingencies, variety is one of the key
factors for adaptation of a system (Blau and
Schoenherr, 1971). For example, system inertia,
usually caused by a lack of variety, can be
regarded as a kind of adaptation failure (Satry,
1997). The inertial behaviour resists adaptation
and thus places the system at risk when the
environment changes.
To completely control the effect of changes in
environment, a political system must be able to
produce at least as many counteractions as
changes. The variety of a political system must
be at least as great as the variety of environmental changes. In this vein, a political system
must have a sufciently large variety of actions
in order to ensure sufciently small impact on
the system state from changes in environment.
Since the variety of perturbations that a political
system can potentially be confronted with is
unlimited, it should always try to maximize its
internal variety (or diversity), so as to be
optimally prepared for any foreseeable or unforeseeable contingency of entropy increase.
Complexity is another factor promoting adaptability in a system. According to Laszlo (1972),
systems of high complexity have shown richness
in adaptability. More complex systems are more
likely to adapt successfully to environmental
demands. Political systems with several different
political institutions are much more likely to
adapt to various demands. As Luhman (1982,
p. 164) suggested, more complex political systems have a better chance of adapting to
increasingly more complex environments. Thus,
in turn, they have better prospects for maintaining their complexity. From similar viewpoint,
Huntington (1968, p. 11) argued that more highly
developed political institutions were required to
maintain the Athenian political community as it
became more complex. Like biological systems,
through increasing complexity political systems
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seek to control environmental and internal
changes in such a way that they do not become
entropic.
Following these arguments, functional variety
(or diversity) and increasing complexity in a
political system seem to favour the adaptation
process. Further, they necessarily favour the
creation, accumulation and transmission of
information and knowledge by systematic
mechanisms. This in turn results in an increase
in both the rate and focus of the adaptability of
the system. Thus, a political system must
constantly increase its own degree of variety
and complexity in order to adapt to changes that
threaten entropy increase.
Boundary Control
In case exibility of a political system is possible
only to a limited extent, ows of change itself
from the environment should be, at least partially, controlled to keep the adaptive track
effective. An overow of too many disturbances
from the environment at one time can paralyse a
system. In order to keep the system adaptive to
changes, any changes themselves have to be
controlled actively in terms of system survival. It
is necessary here to note the importance of what
we call a kind of active adaptation behaviour of a
system, that is, control of system boundary.
According to Klapp (1975), system boundaries
do not remain permanently open or closed. It
seems unwise to characterize a closed system as
always bad. The important thing for adaptation
is that effort is made to nd the best trade-off
between too much variety and too much banality. A xed system, whether open or closed,
cannot do this. At any level of system, the natural
pattern is alternation of opening and closing, and
the more alive a system is, the more alertly it
does both. Closing is neither permanent nor, as
some suppose, merely a setback to progress, but
evidence that the shutter of life is working
selectively. It can be assumed that a political
system should regulate its boundary by closing
and opening in order to effectively adapt to
changes in environment.
In a similar vein, Karl Deutsch (1966, pp. 221
228) stressed the importance of a political
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clude the failure of the system. Such failure is
mainly caused by an overload of environmental
disturbances and a lack of system ability to
control it in time. Thus, in order to pursue its
own goals, a political system has to keep power
over its environment, rene the effectiveness of
information channels from the outside world,
and control the ows of excessive changes from
the environment. When the political system fails
to do this, the system can become crippled,
stagnant and imprisoned in an invisible rut of its
own making.
Autopoietic systems keep themselves alive by
continually altering their structures to accommodate environmental perturbations and to
actively control the ows of changes. Because
interaction with the environment is inevitable, an
autopoietic unity has to change. If its organization cannot change, its structure must.2 For
example, cells maintain their unities even as they
metabolize with their environments. They exist
as metastabilities through energy exchanges with
their environments. In addition to accepting
calories from their environments, cells selectively
accept ions such as sodium and calcium, which
they incorporate as elements of regenerated
proteins and nucleic acids. In this way, cells
incorporate parts of their environments into their
autopoiesis. At the same time, they refuse to
accept other ions such as caesium or lithium,
which would disrupt their autopoiesis.
Through their boundary control and the
renement of information channels from the
environment, political systems have to control
the ows of information and matterenergy to
adapt to changes. In addition, the notion of
autopoesis, an operationally closed system, is
useful for insight into the adaptability of political
systems. If we accept the idea of autopoesis, the
political system should be regarded as an active
rather than reactive actor, working to mould
environment. Thus it can be assumed that if a
political system fails to control its boundary
efciently and/or does not manage to selectively
control inows from the environment, the
system cannot effectively adapt to changes and
2
According to Maturana and Varela (1984), three elements can be
distinguished in the existence of an autopoietic unity: its uctuating
environment, its invariant organization, and its variable structure.

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eventually the entropy of the system will
increase over time.

POLITICAL SUPPORT
In order to analyze the change of entropy in a
political system, we also need to take into
account the relationship between the system
itself and members within the system. This refers
to what I call the inner aspect of the entropy in a
political system. In this regard, the concept of
political support can be a useful analytical
foundation for looking into the entropy change
within a political system. While the adaptive
behaviours of political systems share similarities
with qualities of living systems, the term political
support may manifest the crucial characteristic of
political systems that differentiates them from
other living systems. Thus, if we are to refer to
the overall entropy change of the political system
over time, we have to look at both political
support and adaptability together. As suggested
above, adaptability and the level of support in a
political system are the two crucial aspects to
consider for analysis of the entropy change of a
system as a whole.
Demand and support have been considered as
critical variables to the stability of a political
system (Easton, 1965; Rhee, 1982). Thus, in terms
of entropic perspective, demand and support can
be regarded as signicant factors to determine
the inner overall entropy. However, in this
paper, I will mainly focus on support to explain
entropy change within political systems, because
in such systems demand is not only closely
related to support but also in the end is supposed
to be reected or converted into support through
various channels. In this regard, political support
can be a kind of indicator to show the change of
entropy state within a political system.
In general, political support concerns the
degree to which members of a political system
approve of the system that is processing various
demands for them (Easton, 1965). Demands are
assertions of what people want from the political
system. Political support exists when a person or
group acts in favour of or is favourably oriented
toward any part of the political system. Political
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Entropy Change in Political Systems

RESEARCH PAPER
support may be externally expressed in activities
connected with organizations, and in demonstrations and parades. It may also be internal,
consisting of an attitude or frame of mind such
as a sense of duty or loyalty. The amount of
support actually given to the political system is
the net balance remaining after measuring
support against opposition and indifference.
The level of support may uctuate a great deal
and in turn may make a change in the inner
entropy state of the system.
However, when we are referring to political
support as one of the critical variables to explain
the inner entropy, we have to take into account
the different objects of political support. In this
regard, the term political support has to be more
specic. In other words, political support needs
to be understood as a multidimensional phenomenon. We have to consider a conceptual
framework distinguishing between the different
levels or objects of political support. One of the
most useful analytical frameworks was provided
by David Easton (1965), who distinguished
between support for the community, the regime
and the authorities.
Of course, these categories can be rened and
expanded more analytically since there are
signicant theoretical and empirical gradations
within different parts of the regime. Following
this line of thinking, some have expanded these
into a vefold framework distinguishing
between political support for the community,
regime principles, regime performance, regime
institutions and political actors (Norris, 1999).
However, basically Eastons threefold conceptual framework is enough to reveal the importance of support within a political system. In
applying the simple threefold framework, we
can observe the close relationships between level
of political support and entropy change of the
system.3
First we will consider diffuse support for the
political community, which is usually understood to mean a basic attachment to the nation
beyond the present institutions of government
and general willingness to cooperate politically.
3
Here I have just made a small revision on the support of the regime,
which focused on regime institutions instead of the regime itself in
general.

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Conventionally, attachment to the nation is
measured by items such as tapping a sense of
belonging to the community, national pride and
national identity. Although there is often a
signicant gap between our concepts and measures, a shared consensus about many measures
has been developed in survey research. Such
feelings as pride to be a citizen of a certain
political community and the willingness to
volunteer for military service are two specics,
for example, that serve to indicate degree of
support for a political community.
A second consideration is support for regime,
in particular, regime institutions. Measuring the
support for regime institutions taps a kind of
realistic view of the system. Included are
attitudes towards governments, parliaments,
the executive, the legal system and police, the
state bureaucracy, political parties and the
military (Lipset and Schneider, 1987). It is
important to measure generalized support for
the institutions. Assessment of support for
regime institutions focuses on attitudes toward
the formal structures, not the specic incumbent
ofce-holders. It emphasizes evaluations of the
ofce of the presidency, parliament and politicians in generalthat is, approval of the power
of the Presidency rather than support for George
Bush, and support for parties rather than
particular party leaders, although in practice
the dividing line between the ofce and incumbents is often fuzzy.
Finally, we can look at support for political
actors or authorities, including evaluations of
politicians as a class and the performances of
particular leaders. This is most commonly
measured by generalized trust for politicians
and public ofcials, and by evaluations of the
performance of particular presidents, prime
ministers, party leaders and representatives
obtained via monitoring in regular opinion polls.
As we have noted, political support is not all of
one piece and can be evaluated by specic items
in terms of levels or objects of political support. If
we are to analyze entropy variation in terms of
uctuations of political support, our analysis
needs to take into account these distinctions. If we
are to mention the entropy increase of
the political system, we should clarify what we
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are referring to among these three levels or
objects.
In addition, we have to take into account the
quality of the political support. It is of no use to
induce political support with force in order to
decrease the entropy of the system. In other
words, spontaneous support for a political
system is important to keep entropy from reaching maximum levels. As Jantsch (1975, p. 63)
pointed out, entropy is usually high in a dictatorial political system. It is not the degree of law
and order which is essential for decreasing
political entropy, but rather the degree to which
the creativity of a political systems individual
members can contribute freely to the life of the
system.

CONCLUSION
The starting point in evaluating the validity of
entropy measurement (or change) in a political
system must be agreement upon a theoretical
denition of the concept. It is almost impossible
to provide a denition of entropy in political
systems that will satisfy everyone; thus, I have
attempted only to provide a working denition. I
have dened entropy in a political system as the
waste of political energy which can be used to
activate the essential variables of a political
system. Here, political energy refers to the
capability of a political system to increase
spontaneous support from political members
and to cope with environmental uctuations. In
this regard, it was assumed that the entropy of a
political system is a function of inner political
support and outer adaptation with time.
Indeed, it is the relative balance of both
support and adaptation of a political system that
determine the degree of entropy of the system as
a whole. When the level of political support is
low, or when the system does not cope well with
environmental stresses, the entropy is higher. Of
course, any analyses of these relationships
remain fairly abstract ideas. How do we determine the degree of political support in each
system and how can we evaluate the adaptability
of the system to environmental changes? Until
we nd direct measures of entropy in political
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Syst. Res.
systems, concrete answers will remain elusive.
However, as I have suggested, the relative state
of the entropy of a political system can be
measured indirectly.
Political support and adaptability are two
dimensions of the entropy of a political system.
Firstly, adaptability refers to the capability of the
system to handle environmental uctuations,
determining the outer entropy change of the
system. This depends on such qualities of the
system as proper use of knowledge and information, exibility of the system, and timely boundary control. Secondly, the level of spontaneous
political support is the critical factor affecting the
inner entropy change of the system. It can typically be assessed by examining specic indicators or items in terms of threefold levels or
objects of political support in a political system.
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