'Classical pluralism comes nowhere near capturing the reality of local Essay

'Classical pluralism comes nowhere near capturing the reality of local politics' (Stone 2008). Discuss - Essay Example This paper aims to study the classical pluralist theory and analyze how much it is found in our local politics today. Classical pluralism is the view that politics and decision making are mostly located in the government, but there are also non-governmental groups who use many resources to exert their influence on politics and decision making (Barzilai 2003). Discussion What we observe these days in our local politics is actually neopluralism. It is the reconstruction of political science and advancement in the fundamental and traditional structure of classical pluralism of political sociology. Our societies have come a long way from the traditional classic era of classic pluralism of the post second world war era. Pluralist legacy emphasized on the primacy on the pluralist social agents and factors. Neopluralism still falls in the pluralist legacy of the classic, but it has undergone a series of complicated revisions. There are many theoretical perspectives on one of the most fundam ental question of politics. Who should rule? The answer varies from the many, the few, to one? Classical pluralist answer to this question is the rule of many. Although there are not many theories that support the rule of one but classical theories do support the existence of one ruling class or powerful elite. In short we can term it as the rule of the few (Connolly 2010). What is classical pluralism? The central theme of classical pluralism is the concept of unity in diversity proposed by Aristotle. It is also followed by early liberal’s competitive and representative democracy. This theory of liberal democracy in socially diverse countries flourished and evolved into what is called Polyarchy. Polyarchy form of pluralism is about effective rule of elected representatives through a process of free and competitive elections conducted in the supervision of the civil associations of civil liberties. Polyarchy is rooted in the heterogeneous pluralist social structure. The era of 1960’s and 70’s was the era of political and ideological tumultuous and the pluralist theory also responded by evolving into neo pluralist theory. In this theory attention was given to state initiatives. The pluralism of agency was extended to the state-based interest groups (Janosky 2005. The theory of classical pluralism is founded on two building blocks namely interest groups and power politics. It revolves around the idea that interest groups compete with each other to acquire power to further their own interests. The classical pluralist democracy also has equilibrium in place through self correcting balance of political powers. It believes that all the interest groups will have equal opportunities to influence public decision making process. Classical pluralist theory was more an idealistic vision rather than the actual situation although proponents of this theory claimed it to be realistic and based on empirical evidence. This was the first generation of plurali st. Second generation pluralist also called neopluralist were led by Robert Dahl and Charles Linblom. These second generation pluralist were more realistic and realized the inequalities in the theory which were not in favor of the less disadvantaged. Third generation pluralist restricted the identification and categorization of fixed groups with fixed interests (Behrouzi 2006). What are interest groups? There are two views about