Pluralist Paradigm - Lecture 3 Flashcards
According to Alexis de Tocqueville, what is a group?
Said they were a key factor in American society
Groups share a common interest around which they effect action
They cast a sort of ballot about issues which are important to them
What are the two risks of democracy according to Tocqueville
- ‘soft despotism’ - flock behaviour creating passivity, docility and less freedom. Groups activate, provide counter-power
- ‘tyranny of majority’ but people participate in multiple different groups which means they socialise and adopt higher rules of the game
What is the definition of pluralism?
It is the paradigm that considers the existence of different groups as the political essence of society
It sees the interaction between these groups and with state actors/government as the unit of analysis
What were some key concerns of pluralism>
Criticism on institutionalists who saw the state as representative of ‘the people’
Criticism on the utilitarian notion of individual as unit of analysis - pluralists were pragmatists and focussed on what could actually be observed and what works. They stressed the role of groups in preference formation instead of Schumpeter’s elitist way of dealing with the collective will issue
What is behaviouralism?
It is similar to pluralism. It is an approach in political science that focusses on objectively observable behaviour in response to triggers from the context. It has a logical positivist basis and does not conceptualise what cannot be observed
Typical research interests therefore are voting, political socialisation, comparative political systems
What is the pluralist conception of politics?
Society is about diversity of groups seeking influence on the state
The political system is not controlled by the state as ‘top dog’ but comprises many different processes (planning, decision making, implementation etc) and offers groups access for influence through these processes
Politics is a continuous process of contestation and negotiations between groups bounded by some common values
The state’s job is to nurture that process, ensuring a democratic equilibrium rather than to adopt, generically, a position of its own
What is a critique of this?
The critique is that yes all groups universally have access however, there are differences in degrees of access, politicians have programmes and constituencies
What is democratic equilibrium?
It is quintessential to pluralism
It is finding a balance of the democratic majority and the plurality of groups in a democracy. Respecting democratic rules and norms in which group members are socialised through group action (habit background (Bentley) or the ‘rules of the game’ (Truman)) - meaning within this democracy, all groups operate within the rules of the game and are socialised into this
This is done in order to avoid soft despotism and tyranny of the majority and promote stable majority
What are the three main themes of pluralism then?
Power
Groups and interests
How the political system works
According to Smith, what is the focus of power in pluralism?
In elitism, power was embodied in actors (the ruling elite members)
However, in pluralism power might be achieved by actors through drawing in their actions, on sources of potential power which could be legal rights, opportunities, knowledge, access to government, free time etc and these sources are dispersed through society. Part of them are accessible to all but different groups have access to different sources
What is the difference between potential power and actual power?
Potential power are the sources accessible to a particular group.
Actual power is the power with which others are actually influenced. It is achieved through group action, drawing upon potential power sources. Actual power depends on how smartly a group uses the potential power of the resources
Actual power also depends on group size and nature
Potential power always exceeds actual power
Power relations between groups are context dependent and continuously changing
According to Dahl, how would pluralists research power?
Instead of making a priori assumptions and assuming that someone has power in the first place like in elitism, they rather focus on what is actually happening in line with the pragmatist and behaviouralist inclination.
Therefore the research approach follows these steps:
- select a few key decisions
- investigate for each who were actively participating in the process leading to decision
- acquire accurate depiction of actors and behaviour
- determine and explain eventual outcome
What did Bentley say about the Progressive Era?
There was Political Modernisation - reformed to make government more efficient, rational, less prone to corruption like nepotism and fraud, measures to increase transparency, accountability and professionalism, more experts to handle complex policy issues
There was also Societal Modernisation - reforms related to industrialisation like labour rights and regulations, improvements in education, welfare programmes and healthcare, reforms to address inequalities and injustice exacerbate by industrial growth and urbanisation
Common idea that progress was in the common interest of society as a whole - defined by either experts with rational and scientific governance approaches or the democratic majority reflecting the will of the people
Recognition that certain interest groups might prioritise their own interests over the general welfare leading to conflict where the actions of these groups threaten broader societal interest
Progress therefore required navigating the interests of powerful groups
According to Bentley, what is a group?
A group is the shared activities and interests of people.
It is not a set of individuals acting on the basis of a common interest. Groups, not individuals, are the primary unit of analysis in political science. Individuals are not stable enough to be the primary force in a society. They are a connection in a web of group affiliations, and affiliations depend on conflicts and pressures
He says groups are activity that reflects or responses to some particular interests over which there is conflict. The particular form the activity takes depends in part on a ‘habit background’ i.e., customary and conventional rules of the game.
What are some key quotes from Bentley on groups?
Groups necessarily pursue their interest under conditions of pluralism; all groups are specialised. ‘No group can even be conceived of as a group - when we get right down close to facts - except as set off by itself, and, so to speak, made a group by the other groups’
‘All phenomena of government are phenomena of groups pressing one another, forming one another, and pushing out new groups and group representatives (the organs or agencies of government) to mediate the adjustments’
What do pluralists have to say about interests?
Groups are relational - interests from different groups are interconnected and interdependent meaning when one group asserts its interest, it does so in relation to other groups and their interests. Significance and meaning of a particular interest can only be understood in regards to its context and interactions with various groups
Bentley says that interest groups exert pressure in the government process and influence decision making and policy outcomes
Interests are also relational - they often emerge through collective action of groups, interests articulated and pursued through group activity or by the way government has organised and represented interests
There is no general interest - interests are diverse and differentiated to reflect varying needs, preferences and perspectives of groups. Pursuing interests is pluralist and complex - LaVaque- Manty
What do interests not follow from?
Objective utility
Ideas - Bentley says that ‘feelings and ideas still have a meaning in the social interpretations in which they are used’ as ‘they bring a certain amount of order into what would otherwise be chaos’ but ‘nowhere [can] the feeling and ideas be located for themselves as apart from the activities they [are] appealed to explain’
Feelings and ideas ‘never lose their reference to a social something’
So according to Bentley, what is the essence of politics?
‘It is only as we isolate these group activities, determine their representative values, and get the whole process states in terms of them, that we approach to a satisfactory knowledge of government’
So studying politics means
- study activities of groups, as they exist around and seek to realise and interest, including their ‘perpetual’ contestation within specific conditions (habit background) focussing on what they manage to realise rather than their arguments
How did the 1950s see a revival of pluralism?
It was the ‘End of ideology’ after a disastrous era of two World Wars, the Great Depression etc. People had seen communism and fascism and there was a mistrust in big narratives and ideals. There was an idea that the ‘old passions have fallen’ and there is a greater emphasis on pragmatism and what can be observed and therefore pluralism
The development of the welfare state means there was government intervention in socio-economic affairs for between wellbeing and institutionalisation of collective bargaining for more stable labour relations. Ideologies were less relevant for attracting the working class
What did Lipset say about the end of ideology and the welfare state?
‘Politics is now boring. The only issues are whether the metal workers should get a nickel more an hour, the price of milk should be raised, or old-age pensions extended (…) the fundamental political problems of the industrial revolution not longer give rise to ideological disputes (…) this very triumph of the democratic social revolution in the West ends domestic politics for those intellectuals who must have ideologies or utopias to motivate them to political action’
Who is David Truman?
A political scientist (1951 Columbia University) who wrote the Governmental Process which honours and builds on Bentley’s work and elaborates some aspects more specifically (especially the effects of group (inter-) actions on the development and evolution of governmental institutions
How does Truman echo Bentley?
He says interests spring from social context and are differentiated and there is no overarching common interest
He says the essence of politics is ‘the emergence of interest groups, their organisation and politicisation and their efforts to achieve and retain access to governmental power in order to influence the direction and content of governmental action’
How does Truman build on Bentley?
He says that a group is a lasting pattern of interaction
It has influence over its members (membership assumes some basic consent; interactions between members shape attitudes, individual formed by own and competing groups)
Competition with other groups partly occurs through government (multiple access: federal system, many elected representative)
Effectiveness depends on the nature of group and members and the degree of organisation and coordination
