New left-libertarian social movements invoke an ancient communitarian democratic theory against the contemporary practice of competitive elite democracy. Two explanations for this phenomenon are explored. First, in a cyclical model, challenges to representative democracy are viewed as recurring expressions of dissatisfaction with representative institutions. Second, in a structural differentiation model, the practices of left-libertarian movements trigger a pluralization of political decision modes in advanced capitalist democracies, even if such participatory innovations fall short of the direct democratic ideal expressed by movement activists. Although the cyclical model has some merit, on the whole, the structural differentiation model provides an analytically more powerful explanation of recent social movement activity.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
1. Of course, the intensity of deprivation, the resources of the mobilizing actors, the leaders' strategic skills, and the opponents' counterstrategies contribute to the extent of mobilization and the success or failure of such efforts.
2.
2. Frank L. Wilson points out that the strength of new social movements in not directly related to the incidence of corporatist interest intermediation. I would add that regimes with pronounced partocracy—Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands—also display strong movement mobilization. See Frank L. Wilson, “Neo-Corporatism and the Rise of New Social Movements,” in Challenging the Political Order, ed. Russell J. Dalton and Manfred Kuechler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 67-84.
3.
Claus Offe and Ulrich K. Preuss, “Democratic Institutions and Moral Resources,” in Political Theory Today, ed. David Held (Oxford: Polity Press, 1991), pp. 143-171.
4.
4. Kenneth J. Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values (New York: John Wiley, 1951). The central underlying idea of Arrow's paradox was, of course, provided by the Marquis de Condorcet over 150 years earlier.
5.
5. Nicholas R. Miller, “Pluralism and Social Choice,”American Political Science Review, 77(3):734-747 (1983).
6.
Kenneth J. Shepsle , “Studying Institutions: Some Lessons from the Rational Choice Approach,”Journal of Theoretical Politics, 1(2):131-147 (1989).
7.
and John Ferejohn, “Democracy and Social Choice,”Ethics, 97(1):11-22 (1986).
8.
8. For a lucid discussion of this central contradiction of democracy that democratic rules may not have been arrived at by and may not be based on democratic support but only enable democracy to function, see Stephen Holmes, “Precommitment and the Paradox of Democracy,” in Constitutionalism and Democracy, ed. John Elster and Rune Slagstad (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 195-240.
9.
9. Albert O. Hirschman, Shifting Involvements (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981).
10.
10. Ibid., p. 14.
11.
11. Ibid., p. 119.
12.
12. Sidney Tarrow, Democracy and Disorder: Protest and Politics in Italy, 1965-1975 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
13.
George S. Pettee , The Process of Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1938).
14.
14. Arend Lijphart, Democracies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984).
15.
and in a particularly inventive manner by John Burnheim, Is Democracy Possible? (Oxford: Polity Press, 1985).
16.
a systematic divergence between party leaders and party activists, particularly in formally organized mass parties, cannot be systematically proved. See Herbert Kitschelt, “The Internal Politics of Parties: The Law of Curvilinearity Revisited,”Political Studies, 37(3):400-421 (1989).
17.
Arend Lijphart and Marcus M. L. Crepaz, “Corporatism and Consensus Democracy in Eighteen Countries: Conceptual and Empirical Linkages,”British Journal of Political Science, 21(2):235-246 (1991).
18.
18. See, e.g., Przeworski, Capitalism and Social Democracy, chaps. 1-2, for his quasi-Leninist analysis of class formation as a political process that is consciously molded by political parties.
19.
19. See Herbert Kaufman, “Emerging Conflict in the Doctrines of Public Administration,”American Political Science Review, 50(4):1057-1073 (1956).
20.
20. This point was made in Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), chap. 9. He shows that two-party democracies permit party leaders to be rational and locate themselves near the median voter, whereas voters have no rational choice between different political positions—and hence cannot make leaders accountable to their preferences. In multi-party systems, voters can rationally choose parties close to their ideal position, but this rationality is undercut by the compromise policies that leaders must negotiate with other parties in order to join government coalitions.
21.
21. Much of the debate about constitutional reform in Britain in the early 1990s is inspired by the apparent success of the European continent's more organizational democracies, while direct participatory demands are only an undercurrent. Conversely, in the United States it appears to me that the critique of the dominant liberal democratic conception usually calls for more grass-roots responsiveness and participatory decentralization rather than more organized democracy, a preference apparently confined to corporate technocrats and a considerable number of political scientists.
22.
22. Especially partocracies such as Austria, Belgium, Italy, and most of the Scandinavian countries have witnessed left-libertarian challenges with a direct democratic inspiration, but also liberal democratic challenges from a New Right.
23.
idem , “New Social Movements and the Decline of Party Organization,” in Challenging the Political Order, ed. Dalton and Kuechler, pp. 179-208.
24.
24. The earliest representative of this position is Leon D. Epstein, Political Parties in Western Democracies (New York: Praeger, 1967). Such arguments overlook the multiple roles that mass party organizations play beyond the electoral process.
25.
25. I am drawing on interview materials collected in the mid-1980s.
26.
26. There is no democratic theory that corresponds to corporatist decision making because this type of decision making does not share the basic premise of democracy that all citizens should have equal weight in the decision process. On the political theory of corporatism, see Peter J. Williamson, Varieties of Corporatism: A Conceptual Discussion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
27.
27. It is no accident, therefore, that organized democracies have typically invested more in collective goods such as infrastructure and comprehensive social welfare institutions than liberal-competitive democracies, which have tended to provide more rents for special interests. My argument resembles Olson's claim that “encompassing” groups have a greater capacity to pursue collective goals than narrow interest groups do. See Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 47-53.
28.
28. Benevolent evaluations of the usefulness of popular referenda therefore defend this decision mode against a general critique by advocates of representative procedures, but they admit that the appropriateness of this approach varies across decision arenas. See Thomas E. Cronin, Direct Democracy: The Politics of Initiative, Referendum, and Recall (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), esp. chap. 8.
29.
29. See Russell Hardin, Collective Action (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), pp. 55-66.
30.
30. An interesting hybrid that may therefore be unstable is Greenpeace. This group has made the effort to build a lasting organization around primarily discrete and intermittent activities and causes.
31.
31. The Icelandic women's party is the exception.
32.
32. See Alberto Melucci, Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), esp. pp. 70-75.
33.
33. See the analysis of West German survey data in Dieter Fuchs, “The Normalization of the Unconventional: New Forms of Political Action and New Social Movements,” in Political Participation and Democracy in Poland and West Germany, ed. Gerd Meyer and Franciszek Ryszka (Warsaw: Wydawca, 1991), pp. 148-169.
34.
34. Johan P. Olsen, Organized Democracy: Political Institutions in a Welfare State: The Case of Norway (Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1983), esp. pp. 30-31.
35.
Another effort to grasp the structural differentiation of modern democracy has been made by Held, Models of Democracy, chap. 9.
36.
36. See Lijphart, Democracies, p. 214.
37.
37. Barber'sStrong Democracy represents one of the most recent efforts to revive an all-but-unrestrained call for direct democracy.
