Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-r6qrq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T01:16:31.668Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Defense of Participatory Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Abstract

In order to defend participatory democracy in large-member voluntary organizations, Michels's challenge to traditional democratic theory must be answered. By arguing that the technical, sociological, and psychological processes of modern organizations invariably result in leaders dominating members, Michels questioned democratic theorists' assertions that participation is self-reinforcing and that participation produces popular control. Defending participatory democracy, then, involves showing how the problems of participation and popular control can be overcome in formally representative organizations. The answer proposed is that collective solidarity or community formed by those reacting to injustice and committed to egalitarian social relations provides the motivation for mass participation and the basis for popular control in modern union and party organizations.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 Benello, C. George and Roussopoulis, Dimitrios, eds., The Case for Participatory Democracy (New York: Grossman, 1971)Google Scholar; Cook, Terrance and Morgan, Patrick, Participatory Democracy (San Francisco: Canfield Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Mason, Ronald M., Participatory and Workplace Democracy: A Theoretical Development in Critique of Liberalism (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Benn, Tony, Arguments For Socialism (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1980)Google Scholar; Carnoy, Martin and Shearer, Derek, Economic Democracy (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1980)Google Scholar; Barber, Benjamin R., Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics For a New Age (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Green, Philip, Retrieving Democracy: In Search of Civic Equality (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allenheld, 1985).Google Scholar

2 Pateman, Carole, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 4243CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Ibid., chap. 2.

4 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Social Contract (London: J. M. Dent and Son, 1973).Google Scholar

5 Mill, John Stuart, Considerations on Representative Government, ed. Acton, H. B. (London: J. M. Dent and Son, 1977), chaps. 1–3.Google Scholar

6 Pateman, , Participation and Democratic Theory, p. 29.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., pp. 35–42; Cole, G. D. H., Social Theory (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1920), chap. 6Google Scholar

8 Michels, Robert, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (New York: The Free Press, 1961)Google Scholar. Restatements and assessments of Michels's theory include Lipset, S. M.'s introduction, in Political Parties; pp. 1539Google Scholar; Linz, J., “Robert Michels,” in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 10: pp. 265–72Google Scholar; Cassinelli, C. W., “The Law of Oligarchy”: American Political Science Review, 47 (1953), 773–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hand, G., “Robert Michels and the Study of Political Parties,” British Journal of Political Science, 1 (1971), 155–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; May, J. D., “Democracy, Organization, Michels,” American Political Science Review, 59 (1965), 417–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McKenzie, R. T., British Political Parlies (New York: Praeger, 1963)Google Scholar; Medding, Peter Y., “A Framework of Power in Political Parties,” Political Studies, 18 (1970), 117CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beetham, David, “From Socialism to Fascism: The Relation Between Theory and Practice in the Work of Robert Michels. I. From Marxist Revolutionary to Political Sociologist,” Political Studies, 25 (1977), 324CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Beetham, David, “Michels and His Critics,” Archives Europeanes de Sociologie, 22 (1981), 8199.Google Scholar

9 Michels, , Political Parties, p. 61.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., p. 50

11 See Greenberg, Edward S., “Industrial Self-Management and Political Attitudes,” American Political Science Review, 75 (1981), 2942.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Schumpeter, J., Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1950), pp. 278–83Google Scholar. Restatements of Schumpeter can be found in Lipset, S. M., “The Political Process in Trade Unions,” in his Political Man (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960)Google Scholar, chapter 12 and Sartori, Giovanni, “Anti-Elitism Revisited,” Government and Opposition, 13 (1978), 5880.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Lipset, S. M., Trow, M., and Coleman, J. S., Union Democracy: The Internal Politics of the International Typographical Union (New York: Free Press, 1956)Google Scholar; Edelstein, J. David, “An Organizational Theory of Union Democracy,” American Sociological Review, 32 (1976), 1939CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Edelstein, J. David and Warner, Malcolm, Comparative Union Democracy (New York: Halsted Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Martin, Roderick, “Union Democracy: An Explanatory Framework,” Sociology, 2 (1968), 205220CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Martin, Roderick, “The Effects of Recent Changes in Industrial Conflict on the Internal Politics of Trade Unions: Britain and Germany,” in Crouch, C. and Pizzorno, A., eds., The Resurgence of Class Conflict in Western Europe since 1968, vol. 2 (London: Macmillan, 1978), 110–22Google Scholar; Hemingway, John, Conflict and Democracy: Studies in Trade Union Government (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978)Google Scholar. Also see, Dahl, R. A., Who Governs? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961).Google Scholar

14 Lipset, S. M., “Introduction,” p. 3334.Google Scholar

15 Bachrach, Peter and Baratz, Morton S., “The Two Faces of Power,” American Political Science Review, 56 (1962), 947–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Dahrendorf, Ralf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959).Google Scholar

17 Lukes, Steven, Power: A Radical View (London: Macmillan, 1974), p. 34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Wrong, Dennis H., Power: Its Forms, Bases and Uses (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), p. 196.Google Scholar

19 Connolly, William E., “On ‘Interests’ in Politics,” Politics and Society 2 (1972), 459–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 This point is evident in Gaventa, 's Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980), chap. 7.Google Scholar

21 Duncan, G. and Lukes, S., “The New Democracy,” Political Studies, 11 (1963), 156–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bachrach, Peter, The Theory of Democratic Elitism: A Critique (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967).Google Scholar

22 Macpherson, C. B., The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 108.Google Scholar

23 Tilly and Calhoun argue that historically community provides the bases for radical collective action. Tilly, Charles, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1978)Google Scholar; Calhoun, Craig J., The Question of Class Struggle: Social Foundations of Popular Radicalism During the Industrial Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).Google Scholar

24 Anderson, Perry, “The Limits and Possibilities of Trade Union Action,” reprinted in Trade Unions Under Capitalism, eds. Clarke, T. and Clements, L. (London: Fontana/Collins, 1977), p. 344.Google Scholar

25 While democracy as defined here may eventuate in increased competitiveness, my purpose is not merely to identify the conditions that foster competition; rather it is to illuminate the relations between leaders and followers that underlie such manifestations.

26 Marx, Karl, Capital, vol. 1 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1974).Google Scholar

27 Injustice defined in terms of nonreciprocal social relations may lead to protest in certain conditions and to quiescence in others. This is discussed in Moore, Barrington Jr., Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt (White Plains, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see, Gouldner, Alvin W., “The Norm of Reciprocity,” in his For Sociology: Renewal and Critique in Sociology Today (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 226–59.Google Scholar

28 “Substantive or ultimate values” refers to what Weber called substantive rationality, as against formal rationality. This involves the “application of certain criteria of ultimate ends…” to the evaluation of the outcome of economic activity. Weber, Max, Economy and Society, Roth, G. and Wittich, C., eds. (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), Vol. 1, p. 85Google Scholar. Also see, Rothschild-Whitt, Joyce, “The Collectivist Organization: An Alternative to Rational-Bureaucratic Models,” American Sociological Review, 44 (1979), 512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Habermas, Jürgen, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), pp. 812.Google Scholar

30 Mansbridge, Jane J., Beyond Adversary Democracy (New York: Basic Books, 1980), chaps. 1,2.Google Scholar

31 Olson, Mancur Jr., The Logic of Collective Action (New York: Schocken Books, 1968).Google Scholar

32 Brown, W., ed., The Changing Contours of British Industrial Relations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), chap. 5Google Scholar; Mann, M., “Industrial Relations in Advanced Capitalism and the Explosion of Consciousness,” in T. Clarke and L. Clements, eds. Trade Unions Under Capitalism, p. 298.Google Scholar

33 Hill, S., “Norms, Groups, and Power: The Sociology of Workplace Industrial Relations,” British Journal of Industrial Relations 12 (1974), 218–22.Google Scholar

34 Sayles, L., Behavior in Industrial Work Groups (New York: John Wiley, 1958), chap. 3.Google Scholar

35 Lupton, T., On the Shop Floor (Oxford: Pergamon, 1963), chap. 13.Google Scholar

36 Kalecki, M., “Political Aspects of Full Employment,” in Hunt, E. K. and Schwartz, J. G., eds., A Critique of Economic Theory (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), pp. 420–30Google Scholar. Also see, Flanders, Allan, Management and Unions: The Theory and Reform of Industrial Relations (London: Faber and Faber; 1970), pp. 111–12.Google Scholar

37 Clegg, H. A., Trade Unionism Under Collective Bargaining: A Theory Based on Comparisons of Six Countries (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1976).Google Scholar

38 Lipset, S. M., “Radicalism or Reformism: The Sources of Working-Class Politics,” American Political Science Review, 77 (1983), 118CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see, Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1968).Google Scholar

39 Runciman, W. G., Relative Deprivation and Social Justice: A Study of Attitudes to Social Equality in Twentieth Century England (London: Routledge, 1966).Google Scholar

40 Katznelson, Ira, City Trenches: Urban Politics and the Patterning of Class in the United States (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981).Google Scholar

41 Pennock, J. Roland, Democratic Political Theory (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 484–91.Google Scholar

42 Mill, J. S., Representative Government, chap. 6Google Scholar; Rousseau, , The Social Contract, Book III, chap. 15.Google Scholar

43 See Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Social Contract, passim.Google Scholar

44 Bendix, R., Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1960), pp. 418–20, 432.Google Scholar

45 Brown, William, “A Consideration of ‘Custom and Practice,’British Journal of Industrial Relations, 10 (1972), 4261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Easton defines support engendered by benefits and performance as “specific support.” See his “A Re-Assessment of the Concept of Political Support,” British Journal of Political Science, 5 (1975), 435–57.Google Scholar

47 Habermas, , Legitimation Crisis, especially pp. 6875.Google Scholar