Multiple Minority Rule

The American local government system is particular. It is world-famous for its large number, its flexible structure, its diverse types, its function and the boundary intercross overlap. Today American local governments look as they are in a mess for the various systems, the obvious differences. However, comparing with most other countries'local government system, American local governments all function well.The American scholars mainly explain the phenomenon of"the fragmentation" of their local government system from two aspects. On one hand, it arises from the American strong consciousness of"the stock democracy". On the other hand, nowadays the economic imperialism is wide-spread, the American regard the phenomenon as their democratic spirit in market value orientation .Obviously, the democracy theory and the democracy value are the core of the two explanations. The author thinks that pluralist democracy theory is more persuasive than other democracy theories. Robert A. Dahl argues that in modern democratic politics,"the election and the political competition do not lead to the majority's rule by any meaningful way, but increase the size and multiplicity of minority, whose preferences must be taken into consideration when the leaders make policies. However, just because of the character, not the majority's rule, but the multiple minority rules, we certainly can find certain basic difference between democracy and autocracy."Dahl describes representative democracy system as"the multiple minority rule".How does the pluralist democracy theory explain the fragmentation of the American local government system? This paper focuses on answering this question. Thomas R. Dye, a renowned political scientist who proposed that pluralism models about local community authorities, emphasizes four aspects: the fragmentation of power; the influence of official appointments and elections; the significance of organized group activities; the function of public opinions and elections in public policy making. This paper, on the basis of introducing"the fragmentation"of local government system and the pluralist democracy theory, attempts to explain the fragmentation of the American local government system by the multiple democracy theory. The dissertation includes three parts: The first part introduces the fragmentation of the American local government system. The second part mainly introduces the pluralist democracy theory. The third part is the key of this paper,which analyzes the fragmentation of the American local government system in perspective of pluralist democracy.