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Robert Dahl's Theory of Democracy Polyarchy & Participation: The Changing Democratic Theory of Robert Dahl Author(s): Richard W. Krouse Source: Polity, Vol. 14, No. 3, (Spring, 1982), pp. 441-463 Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3234535 Accessed: 02/07/2008 11:06 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=pal. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Polyarchy& Participation: The ChangingDemocratic Theory of Robert Dahl * RichardW. Krouse Williams College This essay offers an interpretationof the evolution of Robert Dahl's influential theory of polyarchal democracy. Both Dahl and his critics have in different ways and for different reasons emphasized the essential continuity of his theory. This essay advances the thesis that Dahl's recent emphasis upon the feasibility and desirability of fuller democ- ratization of existing polyarchies marks a far sharper break with his earlier revisionist phase than Dahl has been willing to concede or his critics to identify. Richard Krouse is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Williams College. He has published articles on liberalism, democratic theory, the family, and the history of political thought in Journal of Politics, Dissent and in several edited volumes. He is presently working on a study of radical-left critiques of liberalism. For more than a quarter century, Robert Dahl's theory of polyarchal democracy, in its various formulations, has ranked among the most formidable, influential, and enlightening versions of contemporary "re- visionist" democratic theory. Both Dahl and his critics have, though for different reasons and in different ways, stressed the essential continuity of his changing theory. In this essay, by contrast, I will interpret the recent evolution of Dahl's theory of polyarchal democracy as marking a far sharper break with his earlier phase than Dahl has been willing to concede, or his critics to identify.1 Either the greater favor Dahl now * I would like to thank Professor Dennis F. Thompson of Princeton University, members of the Williams College Department of Political Science, the anonymous referees of Polity, and Robert H. Harris, for helpful comments upon earlier ver- sions of this essay. 1. For more comprehensive review of Dahl's work, see George Van Der Muhll, "Robert A. Dahl and the Study of ContemporaryDemocracy: A Review Essay," American Political Science Review 71 (September 1977): 1070-1096. 442 The Theoryof RobertDahl bestows upon participatorydemocracy betokens a basic but as yet unarticulatedshift in his normativeview of social and political life, I argue, or recent revisionsin his concept of polyarchyare theoretically incoherent. The argumentproceeds in three steps. First, Dahl's most influential earlier writings (especially A Preface to Democratic Theory and Who Governs?)2and critical efforts to identify those writingswith an "elite theoryof democracy"are reconsidered.Second, Dahl's After the Revo- lution?3 and its receptionby these same criticsis likewise reconsidered. Finally, the most recent developmentin Dahl's theory of polyarchal democracy,his theoryof "proceduraldemocracy," is examinedcritically. I. Polyarchy Versus Participation-A Preface to Democratic Theory and OtherEarly Writings Dahl's A Preface to Democratic Theory is an effort to identify the cen- tral deficienciesof what he takes to be the two major traditionsof "classical"democratic theory, the "Madisonian"and the "Populist," and to substitutehis more coherent and realistic theory of polyarchal democracy.It stands as a classical expressionof contemporary"demo- cratic revisionism." In the Preface, Dahl identifiestwo major ways of theorizingabout politics, his "methodof maximization"and his "descriptivemethod." The method of maximizationprescribes a goal to be maximized-de- mocracyfor example-and the political and socioeconomicinstitutions and practicesnecessary and sufficientto maximize attainmentof that goal. The descriptivemethod considersas a single class of phenomena all those politicalsystems and social organizationscalled (for example) democraticin everydaylanguage and then discovers, first, their com- mon distinguishingcharacteristics and, second, the necessaryand suffi- cient conditions for polities and social organizationspossessing those characteristics. Dahl begins by employinghis method of maximization.He extracts from "populist"theory three characteristicsof democracythat might be made operationallymeaningful: (1) popularsovereignty, (2) politi- cal equality, and (3) majorityrule.4 He then specifies eight stringent 2. A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956); Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963). 3. After the Revolution? Authority in a Good Society (New Haven: Yale Uni- versity Press, 1970). 4. Preface, p. 64. RichardW. Krouse 443 conditionsthat would be necessaryand sufficientto maximizeattainment of these objectivesin the real world.5Together, these eight observable conditionsprovide an operationaldefinition of democracy. Dahl is quick to add that maximumrealization of these eight condi- tions is a utopian objective-"unattained"and "quite probablyunat- tainable"in the real world.6But this is not, for Dahl, cause for following Mosca and other elite theoristsin denyingthe possibilityof democratic rule.7What is requiredinstead is a shift from the maximizingto the de- scriptivemode, reinterpretingthese eight conditionsas ends of continua against which real-worldachievement can be measured.We may then establish some minimum thresholdof meaningfuldemocratic achieve- ment. Polities and social organizationsat or above this thresholdDahl labels "polyarchies."The questionthen becomes: "Whatare the neces- sary and sufficientconditions in the real world for the existenceof these eight conditions, to at least the minimumdegree we have agreed to call 'polyarchy'?"8 In his discussion of the "Americanhybrid" system of government, Dahl arguesthat elections combinedwith continuouspolitical competi- tion betweenindividuals or partiesor both are the two criticalmethods of social control distinguishingpolyarchal democracy from dictatorship. Neither leads to the majorityrule demandedby maximizingmodes of democratic theory, but taken together they do neverthelesspromote popularsovereignty and political equalityby increasingthe "size, num- ber, and varietyof minoritieswhose preferencesmust be taken into ac- count by leaders."It is here, Dahl argues,that we find the key contrast betweenpolyarchal democracy and dictatorship,which "is not discover- able in the clear-cutdistinction between governmentby a majorityand governmentby a minority [but] between governmentby a minority and government by minorities." Polyarchy is neither pure majority rule nor unifiedminority rule. It is an open, competitive,and pluralisticsys- tem of "minoritiesrule." 9 Popularparticipation plays only a peripheralrole in Dahl's early dem- ocratic theory. "Classical"theories, he argues,were "demonstrablyin- valid" in their emphasison "total"citizen participation:"What we call 'democracy'-that is, a system of decision-makingin which leaders are more or less responsiveto the preferencesof nonleaders-does seem to 5. Ibid., p. 84. 6. Ibid., p. 75. 7. Cf., classically, Gaetana Mosca, The Ruling Class, trans. Arthur F. Living- stone (New York: McGraw Hill, 1939). 8. Preface, p. 75. 9. Ibid., pp. 128-132. 444 The Theory of Robert Dahl operate with a relatively low level of citizen participation. Hence it is inaccurate to say that one of the necessary conditions for 'democracy' 10 is extensive citizen participation." Polyarchy ("what we call 'democ- racy' ") insures this responsiveness less by extensive mass participation than by ceaseless bargaining and negotiation between organized minori- 1 ties "operating within the context of an apathetic majority." It is, in other words, the competitive and electoral variant of Mosca's elite principle. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Dahl's theory of polyarchy has been persistently criticized as an "elite theory of democracy." Critics charge that Dahl has covertly transferred to existing "polyarchies," despite their patently oligarchical elements, the full commendatory force hitherto attaching to the phrase "democracy"-thereby supplanting the stronger sense of the latter as a constructive or reconstructive political ideal. The result is a thinly veiled apology for the elite domination and mass apathy that suffuse
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