Television in this aspect plays a role in keeping passivity and participation balanced. Everyday news broadcasts on the most important questions thus create a structural pattern of how this issue is being handled by the main political forces. Secondly, it creates a specific image of how, why and when consensus and cleavage exist, how it originates and develops. The possibility of having access to the majority of the population with the help of television introduces new aspects of political-civic culture, and this adopted value consensus creates the conditions and motivation for social solidarity. The basic principle of the theory is the view of the political system as converting inputs from the social community into outputs.
Inputs consist of demands and support.
Outputs consist of authoritative actions and decisions. Thus the gap between political demands and political decisions produces different kinds of stress that actually make the political system ineffective. Easton and Dennis analyse the main types of stress. The first type of stress is an output stress that arises when members of the system do not conceive the political decisions as binding. Socialisation can counteract this stress in the individual, while still a child, by teaching that obeying the decisions of the authorities is necessary and useful.