Christopher A Simon. Encyclopedia of Governance. Volume 2, Sage Reference, 2007.
As a concept, pluralist democracy is highly relativistic, ranging from a potentially broadly defined condition to a narrowly defined, nearly corporatist model. Arguably, both conditions or states could be said to be pluralist within an overarching democratic political system.
In theory, the United States’ model of pluralist democracy is built on the founders’ desire to simultaneously promote the rights of citizens to organize into factional interests while also preventing individual citizen liberty from falling prey to factional influence; in essence, an attempt to find a middle ground between the absolutism of monarchy and what was seen as potentially deleterious and chaotic majoritarianism. Nevertheless, the existence of faction, and hence pluralist democracy, was seen as a natural and essential element in free society, consistent with human nature and the desire to express differences.
Scholars have repeatedly addressed the human tendency to promote group interests, at times at the expense of individual rights and liberties. Diversity of perspective was looked upon as being an important element in the maintenance of democratic pluralism and one that required constant monitoring and consideration. Issues of diversity and scope of participation are seen as particularly important to the protection and maintenance of civil liberties in a pluralist democracy. Simultaneously, there must be some shared values in pluralist democracy, an acceptance of institutions and the recognition of individual rights. Diversity was of particular interest to late nineteenth and also twentieth-century scholars such as William James, who focused on individual diversity in relation to participation in the public dialogue, while other scholars have focused on the elevation of the individual in relation to participation in organizational life, public and private.
The issue of diversity has continually plagued pluralist democracy. Looked upon from a broadly defined view, the greater the number of positions represented in a pluralist democratic process, the more likely that a diverse set of perspectives are being represented and expressed, but scholars are careful to point out that even though there is a great number of positions represented or expressed does not mean that the positions are equally represented, expressed, heard, or acted upon. In a dynamic model of pluralist democracy and over several iterations of the democratic decision making process, outcomes may not represent the diversity assumed to exist. In a narrowly defined view where very few interests exist, pluralist democracy is likely to lack the diversity of viewpoint that James and others believed to be so critical to public dialogue.
Recent historical events and scholarly treatments have shown that the problem of diversity promotion with pluralist democratic dialogue tends to be endemic in both established democratic nations as well as newly emerging democratic regimes in Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. Group-based identity may serve as a limiting factor in shaping the potential to engage in dialogue. Depending upon the nature of groups, it is possible that an orthodoxy of positions may be fostered at the expense of the very diversity of viewpoints within democratic dialogue that may be desired or desirable.
A second dilemma that has been of concern to scholars has been the true nature of democratic pluralism. As pluralism requires a proper respect for the diversity of citizens, the status of racial and ethnic minorities, as well as the status of women and the economically underprivileged and socially disenfranchised, is of particular concern to the linking of pluralist theory with practice. Robert Dahl, for instance, argues that two of the basic requirements for a pluralist democracy are: consent and political equality, neither of which were or are available to all citizens or denizens; but Dahl goes further in pointing out that pluralist democracy exists on a continuum between authoritarianism and pure democracy—he refers to this status as polyarchy, challenging theorists and practitioners to consider pluralism along a range rather than as an absolute concept. In essence, this second dilemma revolves around the issue of social pluralism, not only the variant of positions but also a focus on the individuals (particularly, their socialization and exposure to pluralist traditions) that hold these positions.
Concern with the underprivileged and disenfranchised is one of the major differences between a simply pluralistic condition and democratic pluralistic tradition—the former is more likely to be described as an atomistic condition, while in theory the latter is concerned with a basic set of principles that govern human rights above and beyond differences in preferences and viewpoint—socially or economically. An understanding of basic principles governing human rights, however, remains a central part of the dialogue about pluralist democracy, particularly when sociocultural, racial, gender, and economic barriers establish biased visions of consent. Furthermore, political equality has been shown through social scientific research to be directly related to social equality. Dahl’s two basic requirements may be ideals that cannot be reached, serving rather as possible benchmarks to be pursued ad infinitum, directly feeding into the third major dilemma discussed in the following paragraphs.
In many ways related to concerns of social pluralism is the nature of collective acceptance of basic principles, namely, the locus of agreement in relation to conflict. According to William Galston, there is an inherent conflict between value pluralism and the concept of individual freedom. John Gray, for instance, argues that negative freedom—that is, an individual’s right to disassociate from others and from the values of others—is inversely related to the promotion of value pluralism. In essence, Gray is arguing for a liberal democracy in which public action is governed by the pursuit of individual freedom, a movement away from the values of Dahl’s polyarchy, which focuses to a greater extent on groups. Galston argues that while there is a moral bottom, a locus of basic value premises is not relativistic—beyond this there is an emphasis on diversity of shared values and beliefs governing pluralist democracy, processes, and outcomes. Yet, other scholars reinforce the need to remain cognizant of the primacy of the individual and his or her needs.
The proper balance between individual rights, the promotion or acceptance of pluralistic conflicts, and Dahl’s concerns for cooperation remains a central concern as the concept of pluralist democracy evolves and as the conditions within and surrounding nation-states change. In recent decades, for instance, Germany faced the likely long-term challenge of reunification. Political traditions and values in former East Germany differed significantly from West Germany, influencing views on individual rights, pluralist conflict, and the nature of cooperative enterprise through the political process.
In more recent studies, pluralism has evolved in terms of its meanings and emphasis. There is a growing need to focus on its complexity in order to fully realize its meaning and lasting importance. Scholars have increasingly emphasized the need to explore the full meaning of pluralist conflict, dialogue, compromise, and cooperation through the use of nontraditional methods of participation. Through the exploration of meaning, it is believed that pluralist processes will be more inclusive, emphasizing group and individual notions of political and social justice.
The scope and meaning of pluralism in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has, at times, led to a greater focus on the structural inequalities in society created by early conceptions of pluralism. Neopluralism places greater emphasis on substantive outcomes, focusing more on class and distributions of wealth and power. Neopluralism also questions the prerequisite for (and value of) capitalist liberal democracy in the promotion of promised substantive pluralist outcomes. The identity of individuals and groups, therefore, is focused to areas outside of traditional concerns, with more generally constructed measures of racial, ethnic, gender, and economic-based measures of diversity.
Until quite recently, classical liberal traditions within the pluralist democracy dialogue were built on the notion of the individual operating within a pluralist democracy. As individuals, consent was centered on individual rights and liberties within the political process. The neopluralist argument was dismissed or countered with a marketplace metaphor in tandem with a conception of the individual actor rationally operating within the political sphere. Pursuing individual self-interest within a set of governing principles regarding individual rights and liberties was seen as the best way to maintain the system and to promote unbiased outcomes.
In the early twenty-first century, both neopluralist and classical liberal traditions related to pluralist democracy have, to some degree, floundered on the shoals of the political and social realities of fundamentalism in its multifarious forms. Aspects of the neopluralist tradition are provided some support through the recognition of racial, ethnic, and gender-based measures rather than simply considering the individual and individual rights bereft of such considerations—in essence, the concept of the individual separated from the aforementioned factors is entirely incomplete and the promotion of pluralist democracy without such consideration is likely rendered useless. Simultaneously, aspects of the classical liberal tradition within the pluralist democracy dialogue critique an overemphasis on grouping factors in the consideration of liberal democracy. Scholars within the classical liberal tradition find that neopluralist emphases may actually promote skewed distributions of power and effectively weaken individual consent by focusing on grouping factors rather than on individual choices and association within a pluralist tradition.
The current status of pluralist democracy is challenged by two different sets of forces. In one sense, there is a rapidly accelerating movement away from particular notions of collective action assumed by scholars for quite some time—in essence, the model built on the assumption that individuals from across the spectrum of a broadly defined society with similar possibly secular (in the broadest sense of the word) interests would form groups to pursue individual and collective interests through the democratic process. Technology and a greater emphasis on private market-based solutions within a commodified environment form the foundation of individually based solutions, rather than collective action through democratic pluralism. Therefore, pluralism is left to promote the interests of two general groups: often-powerful economic interests that benefit directly from a corporatist or quasi-corporatist relationship with government; and sociocultural-based cause groups that often promote what may be viewed as almost unbending principles rather than relative preference sets to be considered in relation to other preference sets. The latter two conditions within the pluralist tradition—perhaps of greater concern to scholars in the tradition of Theodore Lowi—effectively limit the basic assumption of diversity, instead promoting a potentially pernicious (in terms of pluralist democratic tradition as discussed thus far) and secondary force—a form of economic, social, and political fundamentalism, a term alluded to previously.
A final challenge to democratic pluralism is that it is possibly not as natural a concept as theorists have often assumed, as seen in the case of many newly emerging nation-states. With the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many nations in Eastern Europe and in Central Asia have entered into the democratic pluralism dialogue in a period of political, social, and economic change. The issue of individual rights was often not part of the political or social lexicon. A concept that is not recognized or understood may not be easily employed. Certain assumptions about the relationship between the individual and government must be considered and consented to before democratic pluralism can be applied in any form. Democratic pluralism may not be natural. Rather, it may be seen as simply a more desirable approach in lieu of alternative and possibly undesirable arrangements.
Much of the work and consideration of democratic pluralism has been done within the context of particular social, economic, and political conditions: current challenges are, to a lesser degree, concerned with its meaning and, to a much larger degree, concerned with its applicability or even legitimacy built on evidence or assumptions regarding desirability. Pluralism—in an unvarnished sense—tends to be based in the pursuit of individual or group “wants,” while democratic pluralism tends to imply the pursuit of “wants” in the context of “obligations,” the meaning of which may be either narrow or expansive; the latter proves to make a discussion of democratic pluralism much more complex than a discussion of pluralism per se. Democratic pluralism will likely continue to evolve as challenges to its meaning and applicability arise, or it may face potential marginalization in a changing world.