Dahl's Pluralist Democratic Theory Research

Dahl's theory of pluralist democracy is an important part of Western theories of democratic politics. With the background of pluralist society and based on pluralist competitions among organizations, Dahl establishes a theoretical mode of pluralist democracy called "multi-layer minority rule", which does not regard state power as unique power center and which conversely considers the existence of pluralist organizations and their corresponding pluralist power centers as its logic base and theoretical core. Dahl thinks that various organizations in pluralist society can centralize the dispersive power of individual citizens, who cannot exert much direct impact on society or state, and bargain with other organizations as their agency representing their interests, thus forming pluralist social pressure points to fulfill the goal of influencing state decisions. Hereby, with the perspective of political philosophy, this thesis explores Dahl's theory of pluralist democracy by unifying ideality and reality of democracy.This thesis mainly discusses the following issues: first, Dahl's mode of pluralist democracy with organizations as agencies. Having reformed the knowledge of organizational functions held by former political philosophers, Dahl takes organization agency as analyzing framework, thus leading to social checks and balances; he also thinks pluralist democracy must regard fulfillment of freedom and equality as its value target. Second, Dahl's economic democracy. By analyzing the dual nature of organizational functions, Dahl discovers dilemmas of pluralist democracy, whose solution finally leads to proposal of economic democracy. Third, Dahl's thoughts of social checks and balances named "society balancing power". Having recognized the power balancing network formed by organizational pluralist competitions, Dahl puts forward the thoughts of social checks and balances, and these thoughts are enriched by his proposal of economic democracy. Furthermore, this paper also examines Dahl's other issues including his three-level democratic transformation from ancient democracy to pluralist democracy to world democracy and his methodology emphasizing democratic experience.