Pluralism Democracy And Political Knowledge

The political discontent or malaise that typifies most modern democracies is mainly caused by the widely shared feeling that the political freedom of citizens to influence the development of their society and, related to this, their personal life, has become rather limited. We can only address this discontent when we rehabilitate politics, the deliberate, joint effort to give direction to society and to make the best of ourselves. In Pluralism, Democracy and Political Knowledge, Hans Blokland examines this challenge via a critical appraisal of the pluralist conception of politics and democracy. This conception was formulated by, above all, Robert A. Dahl, one of the most important political scholars and democratic theorists of the last half century. Taking his work as the point of reference, this book not only provides an illuminating history of political science, told via Dahl and his critics, it also offers a revealing analysis as to what progress we have made in our thinking on pluralism and democracy, and what progress we could make, given the epistemological constraints of the social sciences. Above and beyond this, the development and the problems of pluralism and democracy are explored in the context of the process of modernization. The author specifically discusses the extent to which individualization, differentiation and rationalization contribute to the current political malaise in those countries which adhere to a pluralist political system.

The book focuses on the study of democratic processes. Special emphasis is put (1) on the existence of a diversity of (e. g. socio-economic, ethno-cultural,.) interests and the transformation of this diversity into public policies, (2) on the participatory features of democracy and on barriers to individual and group participation due to disparities in economic and political resources.

Pluralism today is not much a particular school of thought or coherent body of theory. McLennan argues that pluralism is an indispensable reference point across a spectrum of social scientific debates.

The theory of democratic pluralism has long provided the dominant ideal and description of politics in industrial societies with competing party systems. The purpose of this classic collection, including some of the leading theorists of the late 1960s, is to subject this theory to systematic scrutiny. The authors examine the work of such pluralists as Robert Dahl, David Truman, Adolf Berle, Arthur Bentley, Joseph Schumpeter, and Walter Lippmann, as well as of such critics of pluralist theory as C. Wright Mills, Herbert Marcuse, Henry Kariel, and Grant McConnell.Voicing the respective points of view of science, economics, philosophy, and psychology, the authors converge in their agreement that the conventional, pluralist interpretation of contemporary politics requires significant revision. The views of these diverse critics coalesce into the outline of what they see as a more enlightened political ideal and a more relevant descriptive theory. This collective portrait offers a provocatively new interpretative framework for the understanding of the politics of contemporary industrial society.Connolly includes a sophisticated discussion of such concepts as power, decision-making, politics, and interest groups and devotes considerable attention to the need to promote positive change, particularly where the pluralist system shows bias against certain segments of society as well as against some dimensions of social life affecting everyone's existence in the society. Intended for use in Comparative Government, Contemporary Political Theory, Political Parties and Pressure Groups, and advanced courses in American Government, this volume remains a challenging resource for those dealing with the nature and possible change of the organization of contemporary democratic society.

This book articulates a participatory conception of deliberative democracy that takes the democratic ideal of self-government seriously. It aims to improve citizens' democratic control and vindicate the value of citizens' participation against conceptions that threaten to undermine it. The book critically analyzes deep pluralist, epistocratic, and lottocratic conceptions of democracy. Their defenders propose various institutional ''shortcuts'' to help solve problems of democratic governance such as overcoming disagreements, citizens' political ignorance, or poor-quality deliberation. However, all these shortcut proposals require citizens to blindly defer to actors over whose decisions they cannot exercise control. Implementing such proposals would therefore undermine democracy. Moreover, it seems naive to assume that a community can reach better outcomes 'faster' if it bypasses the beliefs and attitudes of its citizens. Unfortunately, there are no 'shortcuts' to make a community better than its members. The only road to better outcomes is the long, participatory road that is taken when citizens forge a collective will by changing one another's hearts and minds. However difficult the process of justifying political decisions to one another may be, skipping it cannot get us any closer to the democratic ideal. Starting from this conviction, the book defends a conception of democracy ''without shortcuts''. This conception sheds new light on long-standing debates about the proper scope of public reason, the role of religion in politics, and the democratic legitimacy of judicial review. It also proposes new ways to unleash the democratic potential of institutional innovations such as deliberative minipublics.

During the 1960s the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas introduced the notion of a "bourgeois public sphere" in order to describe the symbolic arena of political life and conversation that originated with the cultural institutions of the early eighteenth-century; since then the "public sphere" itself has become perhaps one of the most debated concepts at the very heart of modernity. For Habermas, the tension between the administrative power of the state, with its understanding of sovereignty, and the emerging institutions of the bourgeoisie--coffee houses, periodicals, encyclopedias, literary culture, etc.--was seen as being mediated by the public sphere, making it a symbolic site of public reasoning. This volume examines whether the "public sphere" remains a central explanatory model in the social sciences, political theory, and the humanities.