On The Pluralist Democracy Of Dahl

If we make a list of the outstanding democratic theorists and theories in the20thcentury, Robert Dahl and his work will be ranked in without any doubts no matter whatthe standards are. Dahl，a persistent democracy suitors, spends half a century ofresearch in academic career in democracy and politic research with all his commitment.Throughout the development of Dahl’s democracy ideas, we can find out that histheory of democracy is a realistic conception of democracy. Based on the reality ofAmerican society, Dahl proposed his pluralistic democratic theory and constantlyrevised it with the real changes of the society. After the World War II, with theexpansion of the powers of the U.S. government, an increasing number of variousinterest groups choose to participate in politics and try to affect the policy, whichformed a trend that interest group politics booming up. Meanwhile, the U.S. powerstructure of local government shows a characteristic of “decentralized” andmulti-centered, subjects involved in the policy process is very diverse. Dahl discoveredthe social reality of diverse power in the United States quickly, so he proposed that thereality of the multiple power in the United States makes the government only have toimplement pluralistic democratic system, can the ideal democracy be better achieved.As for the essence of the pluralistic democratic theory, the pluralist democracy is a“power-shared” democracy, the subject of the sharing is no longer confined to theformal state institutions and their leaders, but a internally diverse subject whichincludes a variety of social groups and organizations. The “power”is no longer limited to the traditional “three powers”, but includes all kinds of controls that can influenceothers. Obviously this is a new concept of power, which is different from thetraditional power theory and which is the theoretical point that Dahl must build toconstruct the pluralistic democratic theory. Therefore, this article attempts to explainthe pluralistic democratic theory of Dahl from the perspective of his the concept ofdiverse power.This paper is consisted of three parts:The first part describes the social background, theoretical background andmethodological background of the generation of Dahl’s pluralistic democratic theorybriefly. The Marxist materialism proposed that social being determines socialconsciousness, which affirmed that the social and historical conditions play a decisiverole in the processes of formation and development of the human thought. Therefore,in order to research on Dahl’s pluralist democratic theory, the particular social andhistorical conditions, based on which his ideas are generated must be examined. Dahl’spluralistic democratic theory is produced in the1950s, what is the situation of thesocial history during this period? And what is the impact of the history on Dahl’sthought? In addition, Dahl’s theory of democracy is not a vacuum, but based on sometheoretical background. In the1950s, the behavioral politics appeared and became thedominant trend in the political science research rapidly. It emphasizes on the purescience, rules, authentication, technology, certainty of the number, value-neutral,systematic and integrated, which tries to transfer the political science into a disciplinethat can not only explain but predict the politic phenomenon. Carrying out thetheoretical study on the background of the behaviorism methodology, Dahl became theleader of the political science of behaviorism finally. However, any study of politicaltheory can not leave the philosophical speculation and value judgments. The personalvalue judgments of Dahl are all included in the entire process of building his democratic theory.Therefore, this section considers that besides the political scienceresearch methods that the pluralistic democratic theory of Dahl mainly take, thepolitical philosophy theoretical speculation is also included in the entire process.The second part discusses the construction of Dahl’s pluralistic democratic theory.The view of the pluralistic power is the theoretical fulcrum of Dahl’s pluralisticdemocratic theory. And the social balance between the organizations that the subjectwho maintain the power is the social conditions of the pluralistic democratic theory.On this basis, Dahl distinguished the ideal democracy and actual democracy andproposed the “polyarchy”, the system model of pluralism. However, with the changesin the realities of the American society, the pluralistic democratic theory was criticizedand questioned for there were some questions that the pluralistic democratic theory canhardly explain. The existence of the pluralistic organizations can also lead to thedilemmas for the solidity of the political inequality, the distortion of the citizenship, thetamper of the public agenda and the transferring of the ultimate conformity. Dahl hadto reflect on his own theories for all of these, and made some corrections andimprovements to some extent. Finally, the ultimate prescription for the theory iseconomic democracy, that is put the democratic process into the large companies, largeenterprises and other economic organizations, so that the enterprises citizens canjointly manage the enterprise through the democratic decision-making process.The third part evaluates Dahl’s theory of pluralist democracy. In the review of thebook Democracy and its Critics, Lucian W. Pye said that when Dahl talked aboutdemocracy, everyone should listen. Dahl spent his whole life in the study of democracytheory. For the unique perspective and interpretation of reality, the pluralist democracytheory he created became the mainstream of the western democracy theory. And Dahlhimself was recognized as the authoritative experts by the academics in democratictheory. Therefore, when studied the theory of democracy, the master and his theory can not be ignored. His pluralist democracy theory created a new democracy theory form,which is the transferring from the monism to the pluralism. Meanwhile, the realisticconception of democracy reconciled the contradiction between ideal democracy andactual political practice, which relieved the crisis in the democratic faith to some extent.All of these are conducive to promoting democracy construction. However, there arealso some disadvantages in the theory. Dahl proposed that the power in Americansociety is diverse, the distribution pattern of the power is fragmentation, and the poweris dispersed in the hands of each organization. During the bargains they asked for theirrespective interests, they had the overall realization of the citizens of favorable policycome true. But Dahl does not realize the existence of inequality behind the formalequality of power. For different groups and social organizations have differentinfluence on the policy of government, the pluralist democracy theory does not solvethe ills of political inequality. Otherwise, after recognized the dilemma of the pluralismdemocracy, Dahl tries to overcome the difficulties through the multi-angle attempt.Economic democracy theory tries to promote the democracy into the economicenterprises so as to realize the democratic management and decision-making in theinternal company’s. But this idea is conservative and fantastic without any doubt.