The focus of the article is to emphasize the importance of the state’s autonomous role in the political process. By examining the Eastonian “stateless” system theory from a Kuhnian paradigmatic viewpoint, his paper argues to locate the position and the active function of the state from a structural perspective. From a functional behavioral perspective to define its key concepts, such as politics, system, etc., the Eastonian paradigm confines its practical application to a limited scope and domain of politics, improperly isolate political system from other social systems, and depoliticalize the political process. Thus, it mystifies the state as a “black box” which is hardly understandable. A structural perspective argues to take a political actor (no matter which is a person, a group, and organization, or a society) with his or its political endowments as a basic unit of analysis, then to grasp the internal logic of change entailed in political phenomena by analyzing the relationships and interactions among the related actors. Actors are assumed to be self-interested, namely, they will act in their own benefits with their endowments on their respective stand-points. Accordingly, the state is autonomous in the political process but structurally constrained internally by the civil society and externally by the international systems.