"To begin with, as the defense of "democracy" against "its critics" descends very quickly to the "real world" of polyarchy, the many contemporary critics of polyarchy who conceive themselves not as critics of democracy but as its advocates receive short shrift at best. Plato, Lenin, and MacIntyre are handily dispatched; Milbrand, Bachrach, Domhoff, Cohen and Rogers, Mansbridge, and Barber, to name just a few of polyarchy's well-known critics, are virtually ignored. Dahl's treatment of C. Wright Mills is indicative: once again an empirical democratic theorist trots out the criticism that "elite theorists" fail "to provide much evidence on the chain of control from these elites to the outcomes—for example, beliefs, agendas, or government decisions—over which they presumably dominate." If elites, whoever or whatever they are, do not dominate over beliefs, agendas, and government decisions, then why can't the criteria for the democratic process be met? If contribution to the agenda, for example, is random, then surely we have "equal opportunity;" that is what the phrase means. Contrarily, in the absence of equal opportunity what else have we but elite domination?"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Philip Green, A review essay of Robert A. Dahl's Democracy and Its Critics, in Social Theory and Practice (Summer 1990)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Democracy_and_Its_Critics
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Democracy and Its Critics
74 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Democracy and Its Critics →
Related Quotes
"What we understand by democracy is not what an Athenian in the time of Pericles would have understood by it. Greek, R…"
"In the Greek vision of democracy, the citizen is a whole person for whom politics is a natural social activity not sh…"
"At its simplest, what happened was that several city-states, which from time out of mind had been governed by various…"
"Citizens are more heterogeneous body than the Greeks thought desirable. In many countries, in fact they are extraordi…"
"Thanks to events in Britain and America, the eighteenth century also saw the development of a strain of radical repub…"
"In the aristocratic republican view, even though the people, the many, ought to have an important role in government,…"
"As more and more citizens lived at too great a distance for them easily to make the journey to Rome, the assemblies w…"
"The transformation of democratic theory and practice that resulted from its union with representation has had profoun…"
"The members believe that no single member, and no minority of members, is so definitely better qualified to rule that…"
"Finally, then, what can we reasonably conclude as to the limits and possibilities of democratization, particularly in…"