Developments in British pluralism

Perhaps one of the great ironies of the intellectual history of British political science is that a time when major figures in American pluralism were rejecting the pluralist framework, and a government was elected in Britain that was explicitly opposed to group intervention in politics, attempts were being to revive the pluralist tradition in British politics.

However, it was the work of Richardson and Jordan that did the most to inject a pluralist conception of decision-making into contemporary British political science (see Richardson and Jordan 1979; Jordan and Richardson 1987a; Jordan and Richardson 1987b; Jordan 1981). Their work drew explicitly on the work of American political scientists in the pluralist tradi­tion such as Bentley. They argued ‘the interplay of interest groups is the dominating feature of the policy process in Western Europe’ (Richardson and Jordan 1979: 3) and that the adoption of policies is ‘the reflection of the strength of particular groups at any one time’ (Richardson and Jordan 1979: 6). Both of these were hyperbolic claims considering the strength of state traditions in many West European countries, including Britain. However, Richardson and Jordan did try to develop the pluralist tradition by drawing on the work of later American group theorists, such as Heclo (1978), Ripley and Franklin (1980) and Gais, Peterson and Walker (1984), who saw the political system as fragmented into distinct policy domains.

Despite their modifications of American pluralism, Richardson and Jordan maintained most of the presumptions of the pluralist position. First, they saw groups as crucial to the policy process and in fact saw state-group relations as undermining the parliamentary system. Second, they main­tained that power was dispersed and fragmented across a range of policy areas with no single interest dominating across a range of policy communities. Third, they presented the dominant policy style in Britain (if there can be such a thing) as one of negotiations. They suggested that civil servants were driven by the imperative of consensus to consult widely and to take account of the views of different groups. Policy-making was characterized by co-operation and consensus (Jordan and Richardson 1982). Fourth, they believed that access to policy-making was relatively open with most reason­able groups being able to gain access to the consultation lists of Whitehall departments.

Richardson and Jordan’s framework was undermined by the fact that the Thatcher government was anything but consensual in terms of most pressure groups and by their failure to recognize that many groups were excluded from the policy domains that they saw as relatively open. They made three fundamental errors. One was the common error of pluralists: to mistake, as Marsh (2002) argues, plurality for pluralism. The existence of many groups and policy domains does not mean that power is dispersed and that access is open. Second, they assumed that the existence of groups on consultation lists and involved in discussion with officials meant they had influence.

Third, they saw networks as essentially agency-based, in other words dependent on personal relationships, and, so like other pluralists, they ignored the structural and institutional barriers to inclusion.