The Social Science Encyclopedia, Second Edition
Political pluralism is a normative perspective in modern politics that emphasizes the importance for democracy and liberty of maintaining a plurality of relatively autonomous political and economic organizations. Political pluralists believe that in large-scale societies competing economic interests and differences of political opinion are unavoidable. In opposition to Marxists, political pluralists do not believe that these significant political cleavages are primarily or necessarily related to class. Nor do they believe that these sources of political conflict can be eliminated by bringing the means of production under public ownership. For the governmental system of large-scale societies to be democratic, political pluralists insist that there must be institutions through which divergent interests can articulate their views and compete for power. A system of competitive political parties is a hallmark of pluralist democracies. Such democratic polities are often referred to as liberal democracies.
Some political pluralists recognize that inequality in the distribution of political resources may mean that some social interests or groups in a liberal democracy have much more power and influence than others. Thus a political pluralist may advocate redistributive policies to reduce political inequalities (Dahl 1982). However much inequalities are reduced, democratic pluralists are still faced with the dilemma of how much autonomy should be extended to groups whose views differ from those of the majority.
Federalism is one solution to this dilemma where significant societal differences coincide with territorial divisions. Another approach is consociational democracy in which national policy is arrived at through a consensus of elites drawn from the country’s major cultural or ideological segments (Lijphart 1977).
Peter H.Russell
University of Toronto
References
Dahl, R.A. (1982) Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy, New Haven, CT.
Lijphart, A. (1977) Democracy in Plural Societies, New Haven, CT.
Further reading
Connolly, W.E. (ed.) (1969) The Bias of Pluralism, New York.
Lipset, S.M. (1960) Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics, Garden City, NY.
See also: democracy; federation and federalism; liberalism; plural society.
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