| Description |
1 online resource (374 pages) |
| Contents |
1. Introduction -- 1. The Three Theoretical Levels or Discourses of this Book -- 2. Structure of the Argument -- 2. An American Preamble -- 1. Personal Background: The Absence of Decisive Sources of Inspiration -- 2. Some Observations on the Historical Context -- 2.1. The Great Depression and the New Deal -- 2.2. The Keynesian paradigm -- 2.3. The postwar reassessment of market and politics -- 2.4. Inventing a better society -- 3. Political and Philosophical Background -- 3.1. The overarching liberal political context -- 3.2. Ethical pluralism and liberalism -- 3.3. Pragmatism as attitude toward life -- 4. Pluralistic Antecedents -- 4.1. The traditionally strong role of civil organizations in America -- 4.2. Statism in nineteenth-century political scholarship -- 4.3. The pluralist critique of statist thought in the interbellum -- 4.4. An unstable pedestal for Arthur F. Bentley -- 4.5. Earl Latham on the relentless power struggle between groups |
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4.6. David B. Truman -- 5. Concerns about Electoral Political Incompetence -- 5.1. The psychological discourse in the interbellum -- 5.2. Political science requires a new theory of democracy -- 5.3. Deweyism as democratic theory -- 5.4. Postwar empirical investigations of electoral competence -- 5.5. Bernard Berelson on benevolent political indifference -- 6. Conclusion -- 3. Foreign Policy and Political Competence -- 1. Citizens, Congress, and Foreign Affairs -- 1.1. Three criteria for democratic decision making -- 1.2. Influences on and limitations of the elected representative -- 1.3. Three methods to improve current decision making -- 1.4. Why the choice of means cannot be left up to the experts -- 1.5. Fostering political competence -- 1.6. Desired reforms of the political system: Party government -- 1.7. Influences on Congress and Foreign Policy -- 2. The Elected Dictator and Iraq -- 2.1. Concentration of power and complacency |
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2.2. The rationality of the democratic decision making on Iraq -- 3. Electoral Competence and the Emancipation Dilemma -- 4.A Common Point of Departure -- 1. Appropriate Social Techniques and the End of Ideology -- 2. Seven Broadly Endorsed Goals of Rational Social Action -- 3. Calculation and Control as Prerequisites for Rational Social Action -- 3.1. Processes of calculation: Science, incrementalism, calculated risk, utopianism -- 3.2. Four techniques of control -- 4. The Price System -- 4.1. How businessmen are controlled through the market mechanism -- 4.2. The market and socialism can coexist -- 5. The Hierarchical Order -- 5.1. Bureaucracy and the causes of and reasons for its expansion -- 5.2. The inevitable costs of indispensable bureaucracies -- 5.3. The primacy of politics and decentralization as counterweights -- 6. Polyarchy -- 6.1. Polyarchy as solution to the basic problem of politics -- 6.2. The social preconditions for the existence of a polyarchy |
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7. Bargaining -- 7.1. The negative consequences for political rationality and responsiveness -- 7.2."Party Government" to combat the negative aspects of bargaining -- 8. Hierarchical and Polyarchical Versus Price System Techniques -- 8.1. Some technical shortcomings of polyarchy and hierarchy -- 8.2. Some shortcomings of the price system -- 8.3. Efficiency and innovative potential of public and private organizations -- 9. Bargaining Versus the Price System -- 9.1. Co-management and the illegitimacy of private enterprise -- 9.2.A prelude to the neocorporatism debate: National bargaining -- 10. Improved Social Techniques to Realize the Enlightenment Project -- 10.1. The end of classical liberalism and socialism -- 10.2. The planning of personalities -- 11. Interim Balance -- 11.1. Interdisciplinarity, scientific progress, and naivete -- 11.2. The reception of Politics, Economics, and Welfare -- 11.3. The endless "end of ideology" movement |
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11.4. Modernization and the end of Big Politics -- 11.5. The spirit of the time by Weber, Mannheim, and Schumpeter -- 5. The Behavioralist Mood -- 1. The Breeding Ground of Behavioralism -- 1.1. Bentley, Wallas, and Merriam -- 1.2. German refugees, social irrelevance, the survey, and the Social Science Research Council -- 1.3. The influence of Popper's epistemological notions -- 2. The State and the Future of Political Science According to David Easton -- 2.1. Facts, trivia, and little laws -- 2.2. The necessity of theories -- 2.3. Can political scholarship become a science? -- 2.4. The unfulfilled function of normative political theory -- 2.5. The potential of the equilibrium theory prevailing in political science -- 3. Dahl's Critique of the Old and New Science of Politics -- 4. Lindblom's Praise of Current Political-Scientific Knowledge -- 5. An Epitaph for a Successful Protest -- 5.1. An austere description of behavioralism -- 5.2. The achievements of behavioralism |
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5.3. Putting the fragments of political science back together again -- 6. Some Preliminary Observations on Behavioralism -- 6.1. The scarcity of epistemological reflection -- 6.2. Building from the ground up? -- 6.3. Building up to the heavens? -- 6.4. Behaviorism versus behavioralism: Only sensory perceptions? -- 6.5. Opposed to political philosophy? -- 6.6. Economic theory of democracy, equilibrium, rational choice, and modernization -- 6.A Logical Analysis of Polyarchy -- 1.A Preface to Democratic Theory -- 1.1. Democracy according to James Madison -- 1.2. The populistic democracy -- 1.3.A feasible alternative: Polyarchy -- 1.4. The relative importance of constitutional guarantees against tyranny -- 1.5. How minorities rule within the parameters set by the majority -- 2. Some Remarks on A Preface -- 2.1. Symbolism and deductive logic -- 2.2. Natural rights or a social decision procedure -- 2.3. Normative assumptions and political science |
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2.4. Dahl's growing economic individualism -- 7. Empirical Research on Polyarchy -- 1. Empirical Research on the Distribution of Power -- 1.1. The debate between elitists and pluralists -- 1.2. Defining and investigating power -- 1.3. Dahl's research in New Haven -- 2.A Contented Political Democracy or a Contented Political Scientist? -- 2.1. Politics as a method of conflict resolution -- 2.2. Pluralism instead of majority decisions -- 2.3. Social consensus as precondition for democracy -- 2.4. Political parties and the rationality of public decision making -- 2.5. Four strategies to influence political decision making -- 2.6. Interim balance: Pluralistic democracy and modernization -- 3.Comparative Research on the Preconditions for Polyarchies -- 3.1. The characteristics of a polyarchy -- 3.2. The limited explanatory power of socio-economic development -- 3.3. Social inequality does not obstruct political stability |
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3.4. The generative history: From greater dispute to greater inclusion -- 3.5. The presence or absence of social divisions -- 3.6. The importance of spreading the democratic conviction -- 3.7. The limited possibilities to democratize hegemonies -- 4. Balance and Outlook -- 8. Arguments in Defense of Democratic Participation -- 1. The Participants, Their Objections, and Their Favorite Opponents -- 2. Classical Theory: Ideal or Reality? -- 3. Dubious System Thinking -- 4. Fear of Ideology, Participation, and Changes in the Status Quo -- 5. The Misunderstood Dynamic Character of the Classical Theory -- 6. The Elitism of the Pluralists and Their Blindness to Social Discord -- 7. Dahl's Defense Against Allegations of Elitism -- 8. Carole Pateman on Economic Democracy and Schumpeter -- 9. Digression: The Costs of Democratic Participation and Deliberation -- 10. Dahl's Reaction to the Democratization Movement |
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10.1. The legitimation of authority and the costs of participation -- 10.2.A commune is not a country: The definition of the demos -- 10.3. Social inequality is an obstacle to full-fledged democracy -- 10.4. The corporate leviathan and a renewed call for market socialism -- 10.5. The monster of the state and the gap between politics and citizens -- 11. Democratization and Basism or Neo-populism -- 11.1. Political participation and the common or private interest -- 11.2. Participation via the Internet and referendums: Is the citizen finally the boss? -- 12. Schumpeter's Influence on Postwar Democratic Theory -- 12.1. Two interpretations of Schumpeter and pluralism -- 12.2. Schumpeter, the pluralists, and the economic theory of democracy -- 12.3. Do pluralists indeed have no normative criteria? -- 12.4. Is competition among leaders what pluralism is all about? -- 12.5. Pateman and the necessity of reading the authentic texts |
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9. Power and Powerlessness Under Polyarchy -- 1. Power and Powerlessness: Some Theoretical Notions -- 1.1. Dimensions of the exercise of power -- 1.2. Do people have "real" interests? -- 1.3. Difficulties with the radical conception -- 2. Unheard Voices -- 2.1. Matthew Crenson's research on the depoliticization of air pollution -- 2.2. Michael Parenti's perspective from the bottom up -- 2.3. Lewis Lipsitz' grievances of the disadvantaged and the need of an ideology -- 3. William Domhoff on the American Ruling Class -- 3.1. Some political and methodological assumptions -- 3.2. Four processes of the exercise of power by the ruling class -- 3.3. New Haven too is dominated by an elite -- 4. Dahl's Oblique and Implicit Response to Criticism of Who Governs? -- 5. The Truth of Political Science and the Political Victory of the Right -- 6. Social Inequality and its Political Consequences -- 7. The Making of Social Consensus |
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8. Anew, Dahl's Struggle with the Emancipation Dilemma -- 10. Epistemological Reservations -- 1. An Overgrown Garden of Grievances -- 2. Kernels of Critique -- 3. Dahl's Aloofness and Complacency in the 1950s and 1960s -- 4. The Influence of Conceptual Models upon Observation -- 4.1. Metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical assumptions -- 4.2. Images of man and society and their origin -- 4.3. Neutrality in the political sciences -- 4.4. Expecting and investigating consensus or conflict -- 4.5. Unbalanced thinking in the equilibrium model -- 4.6. By our behavior we confirm a theory we believe to be right -- 5. Natural Versus Social Sciences -- 5.1. Dahl's modest research findings and the reasons for this -- 5.2. Positivism and positive political freedom -- 5.3. The interpretative method as alternative -- 5.4. Are significant, complex events usually unique? -- 5.5. Some weaknesses of the scientific and interpretative method |
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5.6. Everyday scholarly practice and its quality -- 11. Modern Political Science and Rationalization -- 1. Behavioralism, Relevance, and Relativism: Dahl's Reply -- 2. Arnold Brecht, Max Weber, and Scientific Value Relativism -- 3. Rationalization and the Retreat from the Realm of Values -- 12. Modern and Old-fashioned Politics -- 1. The Naturalistic Conception of Politics: Christian Bay on Pseudopolitics -- 2. The Counter Culture's Small Political Opposition to Small Politics -- 2.1. Discontent about the social and political consequences of modernization -- 2.2. The innocence of Charles A. Reich -- 3. Political Powerlessness and the Revolution that Did Not Occur -- 4. Robert Lane on Discontent in Market Democracies -- 4.1. An epidemic of depression, distrust, and alienation -- 4.2. The hedonistic treadmill and social malnutrition -- 4.3. The road home -- 5. An Old-fashioned Political Answer to Modern Social Problems -- 5.1. Dahl's struggle with Small Politics -- 5.2. Big and authentic politics |
| Summary |
Taking his work as a point of reference, this book not only provides an illuminating history of political science, told via Dahl and his critics. It also offers a revealing analysis as to what progress we have made in our thinking on pluralism and democracy, and what progress we could make, given social sciences epistemological constraints. Above and beyond this, the development and the problems of pluralism and democracy are explored in the context of the process of modernization |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
Dahl, Robert A., 1915-2014.
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| SUBJECT |
Dahl, Robert A., 1915-2014 fast |
| Subject |
Democracy -- Philosophy
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Cultural pluralism -- Political aspects
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Political science -- History -- 20th century
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Democracy -- United States
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POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Political Ideologies -- Democracy.
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Democracy
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Democracy -- Philosophy
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Political science
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United States
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| Genre/Form |
History
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9781409429326 |
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1409429326 |
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