The Social Science Encyclopedia

Authors: Kuper & Kuper
Summary: This brief entry defines pluralism as a normative perspective in modern politics that emphasizes the importance for democracy and liberty of maintaining a plurality of relatively autonomous political and economic organizations. Unlike Marxists, political pluralists do not believe that significant political cleavages are primarily or necessarily related to class. According to them, a healthy democracy must have institutions through which divergent interests can articulate their views and compete for power. A system of competitive political parties is a hallmark of pluralist societies. A related approach is consociational democracy, in which national policy is arrived at through a consensus of elites drawn from the country's major cultural and ideological segments.