PLURALIST THEORY OF STATE IN PP

Framework

1. INTRODUCTION (1) - Common to all theories

2. DEFINING STATE & CONTENDING THEORIES (2) - Common to all theories
3. UNDERSTANDING PLURALISM (1.5)
4. ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF PLURALISM (1.5)
5. THEMES AROUND THE STATE (3)
a. The weathervane model
b. The neutral state view
c. The broker state model
6. POLICYMAKING (2)
7. CONCLUSION (1)

Introduction

Pluralism is the belief that there are, or ought to be, many things. It offers a defence of
multiplicity in beliefs, institutions and societies, and opposes 'monism' - the belief that there is,
or ought to be, only one thing.

Pluralism is an interpretation of social diversity. It can be rendered as a cultural, political, or

philosophical stance. In any of these versions, pluralism offers an account of social interaction
understood as an interplay of conflicting and competing positions that cannot be seamlessly
reduced to one another, ranked in one single order permanently, or reduced to a single
institutional arrangement

In order to understand the policy process it is necessary to relate it to the power structure of a
society as a whole. Policy is the product of the exercise of political influence, determining what
the state does and setting limits to what it does. Any detailed attention to the policy process,
including policy implementation, needs to be set in this wider context.

Defining State
The State may be defined as a system of relationship which defines the territory and membership
of a community, regulates its internal affairs, conducts relations with other States and provides it
with identity and cohesion. It consists of institutions and processes which are extremely various
and complex, presiding over different spheres of the community, which distribute different social
goods according to different principles (Jorden, 1985). On the other hand, states Neera
Chandhoke, States may also be viewed more macroscopically as the configuration of
organisations and actions that influence the meaning and methods of policies for all groups and
classes in society.

In modern societies, the relationship between the State, as the sphere of political authority and
economy in which wealth is accumulated, goods and services produced and income distributed,
is regarded as crucial to the overall pattern of relationships. The most important issues concern
the extent to which resources should be allocated by people who can control them through
having money and the extent to which they should be allocated by the people who can control
them through having political authority. The State is seen as the only system of relationship,
powerful and pervasive enough to control the dominance of commercial interests. An
understanding of the State, therefore, is crucial to the grasp of 19th and 20th century political
thought and practice.

The Liberal perspective of the State is based on the philosophy of Liberalism, which broadly
represents freedom, modernity and progress. Emerging around the same period as that of the
evolution of the modern States, it came to signify the attempt to define a private sphere
independent of the State. Gradually, Liberalism became associated with the doctrine that freedom
of choice should be applied to matters as diverse as marriage, community, religion, economic
and political affairs. In fact, to everything that affects daily life (Macpherson, 1973). The concern
of politics should be the defence of the rights of these individuals in a way that must enable them
to realise their own capacities. The mechanisms for regulating individuals, and pursuit of their
respective interests were to be the Constitutional State, along with private property, the
competitive market economy and the family which was distinctly patriarchal. Liberalism is
hailed for upholding the values of reason and toleration in the face of tradition and absolutism
(Dunn, 1979).

Marxist theory, on the other hand, sees politics as intimately intermingled with economic
relations, and emphasizes the relationship between economic power and political power.
Marxists view the state as a partisan instrument that primarily serves the interests of the upper
class. Marx and Engels were clear that communism’s goal was a classless society in which the
state would have “withered away. ” For Marxist theorists, the role of the non-socialist state is
determined by its function in the global capitalist order. Marx’s early writings portrayed the state
as “parasitic,” built upon the superstructure of the economy and working against the public
interest. He believed that the state mirrored societal class relations, that it regulated and repressed
class struggle, and that it was a tool of political power and domination for the ruling class.

Pluralists view society as a collection of individuals and groups competing for political power.
They then view the state as a neutral body that simply enacts the will of whichever group
dominates the electoral process. Within the pluralist tradition, Robert Dahl developed the theory
of the state as a neutral arena for contending interests. He also viewed governmental agencies as
simply another set of competing interest groups. The pluralist approach suggests that the modern
democratic state acts in response to pressures that are applied by a variety of organized interests.
Dahl called this kind of state a polyarchy. Pluralism has been challenged on the ground that it is
not supported by empirical evidence.

(please make a brief of this diagram for the exam. This is optional. You can make a normal
flowchart also, since this looks too extravagant for an exam. But the main crux is to add a
flowchart with the theories readily visible.)

The following answer looks at the liberal understanding of State in the context of policy analysis.

Classical and Critical Pluralism

English political pluralism is a challenging school of political thought, neglected in recent years
but now enjoying a revival of interest. It is particularly relevant today because it offers a critique
of centralized sovereign state power. The leading theorists of the pluralist state were G.D.H.Cole,
J.N.Figgis and H.J.Laski. The classical
Origins and development of Pluralism

Pluralism has venerable intellectual antecedents in political philosophy, especially liberal

political philosophy. The English philosopher John Locke argued in his Second Treatise of Civil
Government (1689) that the state should rest upon consent, and that the governing authorities
should never have absolute or monistic power. The rejection of absolute, unified and
uncontrolled state power remains the hallmark of pluralism.

It was against the doctrine of sovereignty that political pluralism emerged, most famously in the
work of the French philosopher Montesquieu. He wrote The Spirit of the Laws (1746) in praise
of the eighteenth-century English system of government, which he believed separated political
power into three branches - executive, legislative and judicial. In contrast to the French absolute
monarchy of his day, Montsquieu felt that the British system combined the best elements of
monarchy and aristocracy.

Similar themes dominated the thinking of the revolutionaries who drafted the American
Constitution. The authors of The Federalist Papers (1787) tried to reconstruct what Montesquieu
had believed to be true of English government. Their priority was to prevent the tyranny they had
experienced in the reign of George III. Tyranny was understood as arbitrary interference by
government with individuals' natural rights (their person and property) without the backing of
law made by representatives. Avoiding tyranny required institutional pluralism: the separation of
powers and federalism.

The American political system decisively influenced Alexis de Tocqueville, the most important
nineteenth-century pluralist thinker. 'A new political science is needed for a new world', he
announced in the Introduction to his two-volume study Democracy in America, published in
1835 and 1840 (Tocqueville, 1956, p.30).

There are then five key features of the intellectual origins of pluralist political science. It began
first and foremost as an attack on state monism, whether expressed philosophically in the
doctrine of sovereignty, or practically in centralized, absolutist states. Second, pluralists valued
group and organizational autonomy, activity and diversity (Hsiao, 1972; Nicholls, 1975). Third,
they agreed that vigorous group conflicts must be expected in any complex society. Fourth, they
debated the relative usefulness of institutional or social checks and balances as mechanisms to
prevent state monism. They were also divided over whether the rationale for institutional or
social pluralism is primarily protective or developmental. Fifth, although they defended the
merits of political individualism, pluralists were aware of the dangers of a society where
self-interest was the dominant motive and traditional social ties were absent.

Models of state analysis

All pluralists have at least implicit theories of the relationships between state and society in
polyarchies and of the way state organizations work. Three images of the liberal democratic state
compatible with pluralism can be found in their texts: the weathervane model, the neutral state
view, and the broker state model.

The weathervane model

American pluralists of the 1950s regarded the liberal democratic state as a cipher, literally a
'person' of no importance. The state is a coding machine, a passive vehicle through which inputs
are processed. The state resembles a weathervane. It simply mirrors or responds to the balance of
pressure group forces in civil society. State organizations are seen as 'mainly inert recipients of
pressure from interest groups' (MacPherson, 1973). Policy-making is law-making and
law-making is the legitimation of victories in pressure group contests.

State 'neutrality' in the cipher model means that state organizations are responsive to, biased
towards, and indeed colonized by the strongest pressure groups in their domains. Dahl went as
far as describing the state as a 'pawn', though one of 'key importance', for when 'an actor controls
the state he can enforce his decisions with the help of the state'.
The polyarchic process represents constant flux and changes in the balance of 'dispersed
inequalities' (Dahl, 1961, p. 228) which are reflected in the constant restructuring of the
machinery and procedures of government. As different groups are differentially successful in
each policy arena, and at different times, the structure of state organizations mirrors this process
of dynamic disequilibrium.

This cipher model offers a simple pluralist explanation of the growth in the size of state
organizations and government activity in the post-war liberal democratic state. State growth is a
product of democracy. The erosion of the last vestiges of the authoritarian and pre-industrial
structures of political authority in the post-war era has allowed the free play of polyarchic
pressure. By definition highly responsive, a cipher state facilitates the translation of citizens'
demands into public programmes. And demand-based explanations account for the growth in
public expenditures (Tarschys, 1975), policy programmes (Rose, 1984) and public employment
(Rose et al., 1985).

The neutral state view

Those public policies which are apparently undertaken in the 'public interest' cannot be easily
explained in a cipher model. Many pluralists are unhappy with the proposition that a state simply
mirrors civil society. Instead they argue that, both ideally and in practice, the state can be neutral
in a proper polyarchy - a claim especially prevalent amongst pluralists using functionalist
assumptions.

Self-interested public officials, elected or unelected, are capable of acting in the 'public interest'
in order to preserve the stability and legitimacy of pluralist democracy. In the short run the latent
power of unorganized voters can be mobilized at the ballot box against those governments which
only respond to organized pressure groups. The 'fact that the next general election is never more
than [a few] years away is one of the most important facts that induce politicians to respect
public opinion and adjust their policies to intimations of public need' (Birch, 1964, p. 236). In the
medium term partisan pursuit of institutional change might rebound upon future governments of
the same party.
Moreover, the pursuit oflarge electoral coalitions by political parties dictates that there be no
surrender simply to the best organized pressure groups. In the longer run, governments, for
self-interest reasons, must be concerned with overall regime legitimacy - for example, avoiding
economic policies which generate 20 per cent unemployment for fear of the social tensions they
would then have to manage.
Public bureaucracies tend to consult all the 'affected interests', in the revealing language of the
British civil service. Such practices disguise the positive decisions being made by politicians and
bureacrats to re-weight the messages they receive from interest group activity. For example, in
agricultural policy government officials do not just allow the powerful pressure groups to write
public policy after having fought things out amongst themselves. Instead public officials, elected
or unelected, tilt the balance of public policy back towards the interests of unorganized
consumers.

This picture of the state as mediator, balancer and harmonizer of interests is what critics have in
mind when they describe the pluralist conception of the state as 'neutral' (Miliband, 1969).

The broker state model

Both the cipher and neutral state models raise many questions, since neither consistently applies
pluralist logic.

Concern for the public welfare is a dubious notion for pluralists to handle. Group theorists since
Bentley have continually ridiculed the notion that liberal representative governments pursue the
'public interest' in the manner described by nineteenth-century philosophers. It is even more
dubious to assume a harmonious connection between the public interest defined as the
preservation of polyarchy and the interests of state officials. Some major policy decisions may
reflect neither pressure group demands on the state nor the pursuit of the public interest, however
defined.
Accordingly the third pluralist model of a broker state interprets public policy as the aggregation
of pressure group activities going on inside the state apparatus. A broker state does not mirror its
society, nor neutrally follow the public interest. Whatever steering capacity it possesses is a
product of the strength of the dominant coalitions inside and outside the state. It is an interest
group state in which elected party government is only 'first amongst equals'. For example,
agricultural policy represents the substantive policy preferences of public officials as well as the
pressures of external pressure groups (Self and Storing, 1963). Officials' preferences are distinct
both from those of the powerful and from those of the unorganized underdogs.

In the broker model state officials continuously elaborate and facilitate the acceptance of policy
compromises amongst key groups. The broker 'state' is therefore not a distinct organization,
easily demarcated from the rest of society. It is not passive, neutral or indeed a 'black box'. It
consists of multiple formal and informal pressure group activities; of coalitions and bargains
struck, dishonoured and reconstituted; and extends into the interactions which take place amidst
the equally multiple activities, coalitions and bargains amongst non-state pressure groups.

Policy-making
There are four dimensions to pluralist conceptions of policy-making, as originally articulated by
Charles Lindblom (1959, 1965; Braybrooke and Lindblom, 1963).

First, a general theory of decision-making asserts that comprehensive 'rational' decision-making,

evaluating all available options and choosing the best, is impossible. Policy-makers do not
engage in 'root and branch' studies of all feasible options when confronted with a problem. They
focus on a few obvious choices which have already been experimented with or canvassed by
interested parties. Policy-makers make small-scale, or piecemeal, changes to existing policy
rather than attempting to search comprehensively for a single and optimal solution. The status
quo dominates all forms of organizational decision-making, because we know that it is
intellectually feasible.

Second, pluralists recognize that a great many additional complications are introduced when the
task at hand is not an individual's decision but a collective decision made on behalf of a group or
a whole society. Dahl and Lindblom (1953) recognized very early on that collective decisions
which are supposed to maximize social welfare cannot be made in any 'single best form'. The
implications of work in welfare economics was that no procedure meeting even the most basic
standards of universal acceptability was feasible. Any procedure for making any collective
decision would have to do something which adversely affected the interests of someone in
society - for example, by linking up 'irrelevant' issues which were objectively separate, by
overriding one group's preferences so that another group might benefit, and so on (Arrow, 1951).
Voting, bargaining and their attendant problems are flawed but necessary ways of reaching
collective decisions.

Third, Lindblom argued that an accommodation between organized interests is the only feasible
way of making national-level decisions which can approximate to democratic requirements in the
real world. 'Partisan mutual adjustment' is the central method of achieving a degree of policy
co-ordination without a co-ordinator in contemporary polyarchies. It is a process where decisions
are reached without an agreed consensus about matters of substance. Some set of different
interests is invariably represented in decision-making sites, whether in cabinets or
sub-committees of the legislature. Policy-makers advocate and pursue their own special concerns
in a disjointed way.

Fourth, in the early development of incrementalist doctrine Lindblom and other pluralists
extrapolated optimistically from their accounts of the interest group process to the claim that all
salient groups are able to gain access to some section of the state apparatus. Almost any group
can find an internal agency, political leader or group of representatives to ensure that their voice
is heard in the administrative and budgetary processes which are the crucial sites of partisan
mutual adjustment. In key policy arenas under-represented interests can be catered for by
'political entrepreneurs' setting up new agencies that will 'fly the flag' for these interests.

CONCLUSION

Pluralist approaches to input policies, state-society relations, state organization, policy-making

and crises still dominate the political science literature of Western Europe and North America,
although much less so than in the 1960s. Their research on state organizations and policy-making
remains richer and demonstrates more of a concern for empirical accuracy than any other
approach to the theory of the state. Although the pluralist monopoly of liberal thinking has been
shattered, and much of the recent intellectual pressure has seemed to lie behind the development
of new-right thinking and of neo-pluralism, the conventional pluralist mainstream remains a
strong and still active tradition whose influence will decline only slowly (if at all) in the coming
decade.