274 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies N. 6 / 2015 These forces are related to the space where they occur. The method provides a political analysis of the spatial distribution of power, the relations among different political agents, and their consequences.12 The application of the functional method would allow us to analyze the conflicts that arise among the different administrations, discovering and assessing the tensions that surface between the central state when carrying out its particular functions, and the regional or local organisms. Saul Bernard Cohen applies it to the case of the US.13 The application of the functional method assumes a common political or economic organization; thus, we can observe that it requires the existence in the area of a sole regional organization that groups the states in the area, and allows the substitution of the state in the analysis designed by Hartshorme. Therefore, it is not a method generally valid nor to be applied to the study of an area. 2.1.4. Behavioral method The political geography of behavior deals with the cases in which space may be identified as an independent variable. Kasperson and Minghi distinguish between the behaviors in space, which refer to the analysis of the spatial models that behavior adopts, and in the territory that refer to innate feelings dealing with the occupation and defense of the physical space. Thus, the behavioral methodology includes the empirical examination of situations by means of appropriate controls, and determines that what we know, feel, and value about space is important to explain our own way to behave. From this perspective, the behavioral method allows the explanation of different models for the political behavior of societies in a specific geographic area. Nonetheless, the empirical nature of the method, as well as the difficulty to carry out an analysis of collective behavior, hinders the application of this method beyond the purely academic field or in highly controlled areas. For all these reasons, this method cannot be applied to the study of an area as a strategic estimation tool. 12 COHEN, Saul Bernard. Opus cit, op. cit. p. 51. 13 Ibídem p. 52. http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee
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