The Genealogy of American Pluralism: From Madison to Behavioralism

Abstract

Although the concept of pluralism is often equated with democracy in the language of American political science, and in accounts of contemporary trends toward democratization in other countries, both the critique of pluralist theory that began in the 1960s and the early history of the concept suggest the need to reflect on that equation. Pluralism is a concept that often appears in the language of politics, but its systematic meaning is largely a function of its use in talking about politics in the discursive universe of political science. The genealogy of pluralism as a descriptive and normative concept in American political science reveals a great deal about both the evolution of the discipline and its understanding of its relationship to politics.