The reformulation of pluralism
Pluralist theorists did respond to the events of the 1960s and the 1970s and there was some considerable rethinking. The reformulation took different forms in the United States and in Britain.
In the United States there was the development of a distinct notion of neo-pluralism which grew out of some critiques of American democracy in the work of Lowi (1969) and McConnell (1953, 1966) and the rethinking of the nature of pluralism in the work of Dahl and Lindblom. Neo-pluralism continues the pluralist concern with the role of groups in the policy process but accepts that particular groups, especially business, will often come to dominate within policy areas and are at a clear advantage compared to groups like consumers (Dunleavy and O’Leary 1987; Kelso 1978). McConnell (1967) saw business as exercising great power in the US polity and, for Lowi (1969), interest groups did not result in pluralism but in structures of privilege that excluded the public from policy-making arenas.Lindblom was firmly in the Yale school of pluralists but recognized that business enjoyed extra resources in the political sphere. First, government is dependent on economic growth for its own success and therefore it is likely to meet business demands for favourable tax and economic policies. As a consequence business is in ‘a privileged position in government’. Second, in a market system many decisions that have a major impact on the lives of people are taken without any democratic control (Lindblom 1977: 175). Businesses can close factories or pollute environments without any accountability. This leads Lindblom to a non-behavioural conclusion. He sees business as not just having power through its lobbying ability but having structural power (see Chapter 3).
Lindblom’s remarkable volte-face places him more closely with Marxists such as Claus Offe and David Coates than with the classical pluralists of post-war America (see McLennan 1989 on convergence). However, unlike Marxists, Lindblom maintains the pluralist focus on groups and actually pays little attention to the nature of the state.
He accepts the pluralist conception of the state as fragmented but then argues that business has a privileged position in that fragmented state. Manley maintains that the neo-pluralists still see the state as neutral but considering their suggestion that it has to respond to business this is not convincing. What they do is fail to problematize the state in the way that the pluralists of the past failed. Lindblom (1982) recognized the many flaws in the conventional pluralist conception of the state and argued for the mainstream to at least consider the hypothesis of radical and Marxist conceptions of the state. For instance, Lindblom examines the notion of socialization which in US social science was used in a benign sense of transmitting social values and rules and asks whether the Marxist notion that it is a form of indoctrination allowing the advantaged to retain control should at least be tested (1982: 19-20). In what is a strong critique of pluralism Lindblom (1982: 19) argues:We fall into a bad habit of simply taking for granted that people in society will think alike, as though agreement was a natural phenomena that requires no explanation. Even natural phenomena require explanation...Agreement on political fundamentals cries for an explanation.
Lindblom is questioning the fundamental pluralist notion that consensus is necessarily an indication of political contentment. He concludes by calling for conventional theory to bring in the radical thought ‘from the cold’ (Lindblom 1982: 20). Neo-pluralists escape from the pluralist position as seeing policy making as a priori pluralistic and the Marxist position as seeing it as a priori dominated by a ruling class. For Lindblom this is a question that has to be tested.
More on the topic The reformulation of pluralism:
- The rise of American pluralism
- The roots of pluralism
- Developments in contemporary pluralism
- Developments in British pluralism
- Chapter 1 Pluralism
- Legal Pluralism and the Roman Empires
- Pluralism has been one of the most dominant frameworks for understanding politics in mainstream political science.
- Contents
- Structure of the book
- Structure and agency: towards a dialectical approach
- Contingency: is a theory of the state possible?
- Conclusion
- Radical democracy and associationalism
- Governance
- A concentration of power: but how much?