Models of democracy (part II)

Among the many pluralist thinkers, each with his version of the pluralist model, Held chooses as the most representative a political scientist, Robert Dahl, who has in the last five decades dominated the international discussion on democracy for making its definition closer to the Western political system by developing the idea of polyarchy.

The root of this word is Greek, meaning the rule of the many, rather than the rule of the people as in democracy. It is a concept invented in order to describe the conditions of modern democracies, in which society is managed by interest and pressure groups with common goals and the government merely plays the role of mediator among them.

By studying the dynamics of power and influence in small American communities, Dahl came to the conclusion that a pluralist political system has several centres of power and sources of authority, rather than a single regulator. The government shares power with several other entities such as trade unions, industrial associations and business organisations, the administrative bureaucracy, interest groups and pressure groups (based on gender, class, religion, ethnicity...), and non-governmental organisations lobbying for the environment, human rights and civil liberties, etc.

Another original feature of pluralist theory derived from the study of community power is that a low rate of participation in democratic process is not necessarily regrettable. On the contrary, apathy in political involvement could even be seen as healthy in meaning trust by the people in those who govern them, while history shows that excessive participation often coincided with undesirable phenomena like fanaticism in Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and communist Soviet Union.

David Truman (1913-2003), who shares with Dahl one of the longest ever memberships of the American Political Science Association, adds to the theory the explanation on how stability can be achieved in such a dispersive decision-making system: actually, "only the highly routinized governmental activities show any stability", he writes in The Governmental Process, while organised interest groups may only play segments of the whole structure, each of them being too weak to impose its "Tyranny" (a concept of society fragmentation that Truman owes to Madison).

Pluralists like Dahl and Truman agreed with Schumpeter that the distinctive feature of democracies is the method of selection of politicians, but here ends the similarity and begins the difference: in fact, they broadened Schumpeter's and Weber's ideas to apply them to a multiplicity of social actors, using the same conceptual framework to show how the concentration of political power in the hands of competing élites was not inevitable.

What follows is a summary of other similarities and differences that I have noticed between the two models, in David Held's presentation of them.

Similarities:
Both models find their principle of justification in the need to obstruct the emergence of exceedingly powerful political factions and leadership.
Among their key features, the two models share the principle of a healthy electoral competition between rival political élites and at least two parties.
Again among their key features, both models value the independence of a well-trained bureaucracy as a fourth pillar along the classical tripartition of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary (and the system of checks to balance their powers).

Differences:
On an eminently philosophical dimension, pluralist Dahl maintains that the legitimacy of a political system ought to originate from "the depths of political culture", while according to Schumpeter the simple acceptance of a competitive electoral system means a belief in its legitimacy.
Analogously, together with fellow pluralists Dahl insisted that democracy is firmly berthed in the harbour of society's consensus, hence no politician would be successful in leaving a lasting impression unless in tune with a nation's political culture; on the other hand, before him Schumpeter stressed instead the profound impact on democratic politics made by the direction given by competing (and competent) élites.
Last in this list, but probably the most noteworthy, is a feature of polyarchy limpidly explained by Held:
The democratic character of a regime is secured by the existence of multiple groups or multiple minorities. Indeed, Dahl argued that democracy can be defined by "minorities government". For the value of the democratic process lies in rule by "multiple minority oppositions", rather than in the establishment of the "sovereignty of the majority". Weber's and Schumpeter's scepticism about the concept of popular sovereignty was justified, albeit for reasons different from those they themselves gave.

In conclusion, and as an attempt to answer the assessment's second question, on which of the examined models I consider to provide the more convincing picture of contemporary democracy, it is quite obvious to point at the more recent and developed model, in its neo-pluralist version, because it is easy to recognise in it an important element which in our era of globalisation we have grown used to: the increasing influence of corporate capitalism over the other actors of pluralism. This represents another difference between the competitive élitist model and pluralism in its newer, neo-pluralist variant. Neo-pluralist author Charles Lindblom (1918-) writes:

Because public functions in the market system rest in the hands of businessmen, it follows that jobs, prices, production, growth, the standard of living, and the economic security of everyone all rest in their hands. Consequently, government officials cannot be indifferent to how well business performs its functions. Depression, inflation, or other economic disasters can bring down a government. A major function of government, therefore, is to see to it that businessmen perform their tasks.

Therefore, a government will follow a political agenda that is polarised towards corporate business, causing erosion of parliamentary politics and the marginalisation of those excluded from the political agenda itself. This is, in extreme synthesis, what neo-pluralism represents or, better say, what neo-pluralism differentiates itself from earlier pluralism. It is somehow ironic, although hardly surprising in consideration of the foreseeable counterattack of conservative forces, that the dissolution of pluralism into crystallised schools of neo-pluralist thought was the consequence of the 1968 social movement and the political polarisation subsequent to it, for it was precisely the 1968-69 social unrest in Europe and North America to highlight all the limits of a pluralist theory which reached its climax of popularity between the 1950s and the 1960s.

Neo-pluralist thinkers adjusted their theories. For example, in spite of being an admirer of free market economy, Lindblom himself grew increasingly uncomfortable in respect of the asymmetries of power that he witnessed in favour of big corporate business. Remedies to this unbalance are to be found in the future models of democracy which David Held delineates in conclusion of his book - democratic autonomy and cosmopolitan democracy - but are not the subject of this essay.