Pluralist Democracy

As a concept, pluralist democracy is highly relativistic, ranging from a potentially broadly defined condition to a narrowly defined, nearly corporatist model. Arguably, both conditions or states could be said to be pluralist within an overarching democratic political system.

In theory, the United States' model of pluralist democracy is built on the founders' desire to simultaneously promote the rights of citizens to organize into factional interests while also preventing individual citizen liberty from falling prey to factional influence; in essence, an attempt to find a middle ground between the absolutism of monarchy and what was seen as potentially deleterious and chaotic majoritarianism. Nevertheless, the existence of faction, and hence pluralist democracy, was seen as a natural and essential element in free society, consistent with human nature and the desire to express differences.

Scholars have repeatedly addressed the human tendency to promote group interests, at times at the expense of individual rights and liberties. Diversity of perspective was looked upon as being an important element in the maintenance of democratic pluralism and one that required constant monitoring and consideration. Issues of diversity and scope of participation are seen as particularly important to the protection and maintenance of civil liberties in a pluralist democracy. Simultaneously, there must be some shared values in pluralist democracy, an acceptance of institutions and [Page 683]the recognition of individual rights. Diversity was of particular interest to late nineteenth- and also twentieth-century scholars such as William James, who focused on individual diversity in relation to participation in the public dialogue, while other scholars have focused on the elevation of the individual in relation to participation in organizational life, public and private.

The issue of diversity has continually plagued pluralist democracy. Looked upon from a broadly defined view, the greater the number of positions represented in a pluralist democratic process, the more likely that a diverse set of perspectives are being represented and expressed, but scholars are careful to point out that even though there is a great number of positions represented or expressed does not mean that the positions are equally represented, expressed, heard, or acted upon. In a dynamic model of pluralist democracy and over several iterations of the democratic decisionmaking process, outcomes may not represent the diversity assumed to exist. In a narrowly defined view where very few interests exist, pluralist democracy is likely to lack the diversity of viewpoint that James and others believed to be so critical to public dialogue.

Recent historical events and scholarly treatments have shown that the problem of diversity promotion with pluralist democratic dialogue tends to be endemic in both established democratic nations as well as newly emerging democratic regimes in Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. Group-based identity may serve as a limiting factor in shaping the potential to engage in dialogue. Depending upon the nature of groups, it is possible that an orthodoxy of positions may be fostered at the expense of the very diversity of viewpoints within democratic dialogue that may be desired or desirable.

A second dilemma that has been of concern to scholars has been the true nature of democratic pluralism. As pluralism requires a proper respect for the diversity of citizens, the status of racial and ethnic minorities, as well as the status of women and the economically underprivileged and socially disenfranchised, is of particular concern to the linking of pluralist theory with practice. Robert Dahl, for instance, argues that two of the basic requirements for a pluralist democracy are: consent and political equality, neither of which were or are available to all citizens or denizens; but Dahl goes further in pointing out that pluralist democracy exists on a continuum between authoritarianism and pure democracy—he refers to this status as polyarchy, challenging theorists and practitioners to consider pluralism along a range rather than as an absolute concept. In essence, this second dilemma revolves around the issue of social pluralism, not only the variant of positions but also a focus on the individuals (particularly, their socialization and exposure to pluralist traditions) that hold these positions.

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