PLURALISM ELITISM The many and the few Derives

PLURALISM & ELITISM (The many and the few)

• Derives from the word Plural • “Containing, involving or composed of more than one”. • Central tenet of Liberalism • Competition & disagreement healthy (J. S. Mill) • Competing ideas -The truth can only be found through discussion when people are open to criticism (Mill)

Countervailing ideas • https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=a 0 Bpfwa zh. UA

• Central to democratic thought and practice. • Countervailing groups (eg League Against Cruel Sports vs the Countryside Alliance) • Opposes Marxists and elitists in suggesting in liberal societies there is a dispersal of power

Pluralism & Power • Pluralism espouses the distribution, dispersal and separation of power and influence • It opposes absolutism and monism • It supports multiculturalism and can be found in Socialist, anarchist and Conservative thinking

Pluralism opposes elitism • Elitism: social hierarchy natural and desirable • Those ‘born to rule’ • Traditional conservatism: we seek the security of ‘knowing our place’; provides stability • Benevolent elitism: Disraeli's ‘noblesse oblige’; One Nation Conservatism

Elitism • • • Those who went to public school: 71% Senior Judges 31% MPs 50% the Cabinet 50% Lords 43% newspaper columnists 45% public body chairs

• • Elitism Oxbridge: 75% Senior Judges 50% Cabinet 47% newspaper columnists 44% chairs of public bodies 38% Lords 24% MPs In Attlee’s government (1945) there were 28 from public schools, including 7 from Eton

A pluralist state functions as: • A minimal and neutral role for the state • Locke’s arbiter state • There is a choice of competing political parties allowing government by consent • Electors express independent views • The state should promote debate and safeguard individual freedom

• In Europe pluralism began as a response to absolutism • In USA it began as a practical response to limit state power • Concerned with how society should be organised in order to achieve a just society • Diversity is a social good • Prevents the dominance of one particular idea • Power should be dispersed

The Main Principles of English Pluralism • Liberty the most important political value • Liberty best preserved by power being dispersed • Groups should be regarded as ‘persons’ (representative) • Ideas of state sovereignty should be rejected

• However, early English pluralists opposed the individualism of liberalism • They saw groups as the main elements of society (family, village, community) • Individuals have no independent existence (other than through groups) • Group identity and representation an important element in the political structure (eg constituencies; rotten boroughs) • Groups are therefore the building blocks of politics and the state

• English pluralists therefore concerned with: 1) State sovereignty (constrained by groups) 2) The role of groups therefore important in democracy

American Pluralism • Particularly opposed to a powerful imperial state (Britain) • Necessary to ensure powers of state limited to avoid groups being crushed • Emphasised separation of powers • Federalism • Lobbyists/ ‘K Street’ corridor

Britain after WW 2 • Pluralism weakened by a growing, complex state (in the USA a welfare state failed to develop) • Growing symbiotic relationship between civil servants and ministers • Power monopolised within a closed and elitist state • Thatcher suspicious of groups (eg unions) & emphasised a direct relationship between the sovereign government and the individual

BUT • Assumptions of pluralism challenged by: 1) Civil rights movement (groups are not truly equal) 2) Anti-Vietnam War movement (government elites control our lives)

Modern pluralism • State “hollowed out” in late 20 th Century • Pluralists see “voluntaristic solutions to deep seated structural problems” (Smith 2006) • The Big Society? • Postmodernists, like pluralists, reject monism (especially the Marxist belief in a single truth and explanation – everything linked to class)

Multiculturalism & Pluralism • Multiculturalists see rights as group-based rather than individual (eg the rights of religious groups) • Generally recognised as a good thing But • Some Muslim women might want their rights protected as individuals rather than as Muslims So • Dilemma: is there a tension between group rights and individual rights?