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‘Pluralism’ in Political Science: The Odyssey of a Concept

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Pluralism in the Soviet Union

Abstract

For over a decade now, the field of Soviet studies has been riven by a debate over the appropriateness of applying the term ‘pluralism’ to the study of Soviet politics. At one time or another, most of the leading scholars in the field have been drawn into the discussion and yet the debate is no closer to being resolved today than it was when it first erupted. What, if anything, can be usefully added at this point? To rehearse the issues in the dispute would be superfluous for, reminiscent of the life-histories of other controversies in the social sciences, there have of late appeared review articles which summarize the positions of the leading participants in the dispute.1 To bring empirical evidence in support of one or the other position in the debate seems similarly fruitless, for there are no agreed-upon criteria of pluralism. To add yet another definition of pluralism to a scientific disagreement already bedevilled by lack of terminological clarity would surely be to confuse rather than to edify. Therefore instead of entering the lists, I propose to stand back and analyse the controversy over pluralism as a manifestation both of the thorny problem of concept formation in Soviet studies and of the strengths and weaknesses of pluralism as a conceptual tool in political analysis.

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Notes and References

  1. The classic statement of this argument is William E. Odom, ‘A Dissenting View of the Group Approach to Soviet Politics’, World Politics, 28 (July 1976) 542–67.

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  3. The only reference to Schon’s work by a Sovietologist I have encountered is Richard D. Little, ‘Communist Studies in a Comparative Framework’, in Frederic J. Fleron (ed.), Communist Studies and the Social Sciences (Chicago, 1969) 94–111. Little touts the advantages of Schon’s notion of concept extension, not specifically for the analysis of pluralism but for the comparison of Soviet and Western politics in general.

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  4. The most complete treatment of the pluralist movement in British and American philosophy is Jean Wahl, Pluralist Philosophies of England and America (London, 1925).

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  5. For representative examples of such commentaries, see Henry Mayer Magid, English Political Pluralism (New York, 1941);

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  21. While interest in the problems suggested by the notion of pluralism (sovereignty, constitutional government, federalism) did persist, systematic inquiry into the nature and activity of groups did not continue past the 1920s. When such research did resume again in Britain in the 1950s, it was very much in the American mould. See W.J.M. Mackenzie, ‘Pressure Groups: The Conceptual Framework’, Political Studies, 3 (1955) 247–55;

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  31. The hypotheses were most clearly articulated by Robert Dahl. Robert Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago, 1956);

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  38. Henry Kariel, The Decline of American Pluralism (Stanford, Calif., 1964);

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  40. For example Andrew S. MacFarland classified pluralist writings into two groups: ‘power structure pluralism’, which aimed at discrediting the ruling élite model in some political arena, and ‘group theory pluralism’. Andrew S. MacFarland, Power and Leadership in Pluralist Systems (Stanford, Calif., 1969).

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  41. This point is made in Darryl Baskin, American Pluralist Democracy: A Critique (New York, 1971).

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  44. The locus classicus was Arthur F. Bentley, The Process of Government (Chicago, 1908).

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  48. Earl Latham, The Group Basis of Politics (Ithaca, New York, 1952) 380–3;

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  51. In 1913, Ernest Barker described the state as a ‘polyarchism’. Ernest Barker, Church, State, and Study (London, 1930) 169. The essay was originally delivered as a paper in 1914.

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  52. This interesting usage was brought to light in Claude Burtenshaw, ‘The Political Theory of Pluralist Democracy’, Western Political Quarterly, 21 (December 1968) 586. Burtenshaw says: ‘In adopting the name pluralist, the pluralist democrats undoubtedly made conscious reference to the English pluralists, Neville Figgis, Harold Laski, the Webbs and Ernest Barker’.

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  53. Lane Davis, ‘The Cost of Realism: Contemporary Restatements of Democracy’, Western Political Quarterly, 17 (March 1964) 37–46;

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  54. Jack Walker, ‘A Critique of the Elitist Theory of Democracy’, American Political Science Review, 60 (June 1966) 285–95;

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  55. Christian Bay, ‘Politics and Pseudo-politics: A Critical Evaluation of Some Behavioural Literature’, American Political Science Review, 59 (March 1965) 39–51.

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  56. Dahl took great pains to deny that there was any intended normative slope in pluralist theory. Robert Dahl, ‘Further Reflections on the “Elitist Theory of Democracy”’, American Political Science Review, 60 (June 1966) 298.

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  57. To be sure Robert Dahl and his colleagues did use their notion of pluralism to argue against Mills’s image of America run by a power élite. But I suggest the reason that the refutation of Mills seemed so urgent was that Mills had refused to distinguish between democracy and totalitarianism as types of mass society. See C.W. Mills, The Power Elite (New York, 1956) 310. To this distinction, the majority of American political scientists writing in the immediate post-war period were deeply committed.

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  58. The notion that American pluralism had as its counter-instance an external monism flies in the face of conventional wisdom. The majority of works written over the past two decades portray American pluralism as a conceptual device pitted against C. Wright Mills’s description of America governed by a ‘power élite’. For example, see Kenneth Prewitt and Allan Stone, The Ruling Elites (New York, 1973).

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  59. Benjamin R. Barber, ‘Conceptual Foundations of Totalitarianism’, in Carl J. Friedrich et al. (eds), Totalitarianism in Perspective: Three Views (New York, 1969) 34.

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  60. J. LaPalombara, ‘The Utility and Limitations of Interest Group Theory in Non-American Field Situations’, Journal of Politics, 20 (February 1960) 29–49;

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  61. Donald Matthews, U.S. Senators and Their World (New York, 1960);

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  62. P. Bachrach and M. Baratz, ‘Two Faces of Power’, American Political Science Review, 56 (December 1962) 947–52;

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  63. P. Bachrach and M. Baratz, ‘Decisions and Non-Decisions: An Analytic Framework’, American Political Science Review, 57 (September 1963) 632–42.

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  64. R.E. Dowling, ‘Pressure Group Theory: Its Methodological Range’, American Political Science Review, 54 (December 1960) 944–54;

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  65. Stanley Rothman, ‘Systematic Political Theory: Observations on the Group Approach’, American Political Science Review, 54 (February 1960) 15–33; Odegard, ‘A Group Basis of Politics’.

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  66. P. Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism (Boston, 1967);

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  67. Carole Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge, 1970);

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  68. Henry Kariel, The Decline of American Pluralism (Stanford, Calif., 1961); Davis, The Cost of Realism’; Walker, ‘A Critique’.

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  69. Philippe Schmitter, ‘Still the Century of Corporatism?’, in Philippe Schmitter (ed.), Trends Towards Corporatist Intermediation (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1979) 14.

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  70. The first major application of the group concept to Soviet politics can be found in H. Gordon Skilling, ‘Interest Groups and Communist Politics’, World Politics, 18.(April 1966) 435–51.

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  71. Some of the ideas in this article had been formulated by Skilling in a paper of the same title delivered to the Canadian Political Science Association in June of 1965. Less than two years later, in January 1968, a conference on the question of interest groups in Soviet politics was held at the University of Toronto. Within little more than two years there appeared in print a collection of original research papers on the topic: H. Gordon Skilling and Franklyn Griffiths (eds), Interest Groups in Soviet Politics (Princeton, N.J., 1971).

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  72. See Joel J. Schwartz and William R. Keech, ‘Group Influence and the Policy Process in the Soviet Union’, American Political Science Review, 62 (September 1968) 840–51.

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  73. Philip D. Stewart, ‘Soviet Interest Groups and the Policy Process: The Repeal of Production Education’, World Politics, 22 (October 1969) 29–50.

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  74. Jerry F. Hough, ‘The Soviet System: Petrification or Pluralism’, Problems of Communism (March–April 1972) 25–45.

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  75. For example, see Gabriel Almond and James S Coleman, The Politics of Developing Areas (Princeton, N.J., 1960) 49. This instance was cited in Skilling, ‘Interest Groups’, 438, n.19.

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  76. This tension is lucidly discussed in Lucian W. Pye, ‘The Confrontation between Discipline and Area Studies’, in Lucian W. Pye (ed.), Political Science and Area Studies: Rivals or Partners (Bloomington, Ind., 1975) 3–22.

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  77. In establishing the chronology of the field of Soviet studies, two collections are useful: Harold H. Fisher (ed.), American Research on Russia (Bloomington, Ind., 1959);

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  78. Cyril E. Black and John M. Thompson (eds), American Teaching About Russia (Bloomington, Ind., 1959).

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  79. H. Gordon Skilling, ‘Soviet and Communist Politics: A Comparative Approach’, Journal of Politics, 22 (May 1960) 300–13;

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  80. Robert C. Tucker, ‘On the Comparative Study of Communism’, World Politics, 19 (January 1967) 242–57.

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  81. For discussion of the catalysts to that transformation, see Roy C. Macridis et al., ‘Research in Comparative Government’, American Political Science Review, 47 (September 1953) 641–75;

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  82. for some of the early enthusiasm which accompanied the transformation, see Joseph LaPalombara, ‘Macrotheories and Microapplications in Comparative Politics: A Widening Chasm’, Comparative Politics, 1 (October 1968) 52–3.

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  83. Alistair’Maclntyre, ‘Is a Comparative Science of Politics Possible?’, in Alistair Maclntyre, Against the Self Images of the Age (London, 1971);

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  84. Arthur Kalleberg, ‘The Logic of Comparison: A Methodological Note on the Comparative Study of Political Systems’, World Politics, 19 (October 1966) 69–82.

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  85. Elsewhere, I have discussed the desire for destigmatization as it was reflected in the writings of Western scholars studying Soviet science. Susan Gross Solomon, ‘Reflections on Western Studies of Soviet Science’, in Linda L. Lubrano and Susan Gross Solomon (eds), The Social Context of Soviet Science (Boulder, Colo., 1980) 1–30.

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  86. For an excellent discussion of the two approaches to comparison, see John Kautsky, ‘Comparative Communism Versus Comparative Politics’, Studies in Comparative Communism, 6 (Spring/Summer 1973) 135–70.

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  87. The developments in Czechoslovakia and Poland were very much in the mind of Gordon Skilling when he wrote his original article in 1966. At the same time there appeared a second article using the term pluralism with respect to Czechoslovakia. See A.H. Brown, ‘Pluralistic Trends in Czechoslovakia’, Soviet Studies, xvii, no. 4 (April 1966) 453–72.

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  88. Hough, ‘The Soviet System: Petrification or Pluralism’, 25–45. In this first article, Hough appeared to use American pluralism as a synonym for ‘classical pluralism’ In a later work, the two were clearly differentiated. Jerry F. Hough, The Soviet Union and Social Science Theory (Cambridge, 1977) 9.

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  89. Darrell P. Hammer, USSR: The Politics of Oligarchy (Hinsdale, Ill. 1974) 223, 224.

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  90. The locus classicus of the totalitarian model was a work written by two members of the Harvard faculty. Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge, Mass., 1956).

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  91. The term ‘normative slope’ was drawn from Charles Taylor, ‘Neutrality in Political Science’, in Peter Laslett and Walter G. Runciman (eds), Politics, Philosophy and Society, 3rd ser. (Oxford, 1961) 25–58.

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  93. Peter H. Solomon, Jr, Soviet Criminologists and Criminal Policy: Specialists in Policy-making (New York and London, 1978).

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  94. For example, see Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society (London, 1969);

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  95. James O’Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York, 1973);

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  96. Claus Offe, ‘The Theory of the Capitalist State and the Problems of Policy Formation’, in L. Lindberg et al. (eds), Stress and Contradiction in Modern Capitalism (Lexington, Mass., 1975) 125–44;

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  97. Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crises (Boston, 1975).

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  98. Some classic sources include: John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Boston, 1967);

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  99. Charles Lindblom, Politics and Markets (New York, 1977);

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  101. See ‘Symposium on Pluralism in Communist Societies’, Studies in Comparative Communism, 12 (Spring 1979) 6–39; H. Gordon Skilling, ‘Pluralism in Communist Societies: Straw Men and Red Herrings’, Studies in Comparative Communism, 13 (Spring 1980) 82–8. The first major review article on the debate appeared almost a decade earlier.

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  1. Susan Gross Solomon
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  1. University of Toronto, Canada

    Susan Gross Solomon (Associate Professor of Political Science) (Associate Professor of Political Science)

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© 1983 Susan Gross Solomon

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Solomon, S.G. (1983). ‘Pluralism’ in Political Science: The Odyssey of a Concept. In: Solomon, S.G. (eds) Pluralism in the Soviet Union. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06617-9_2

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