Answer:
Over the years, political analysts have tended to split over how the American political system operates. This split involves three theoretical systems: pluralism, hyper-pluralism, and the power elite; the arguments of which have evolved into three branches of disagreement. The disagreements centre around which theory best describes what is going on in American politics.
Pluralism, the first branch in this debate, is well represented by French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville’s insights into the vitality of early American politics. Convinced that France was moving towards social equality similar to American democracy, de Tocqueville toured the United States in the 1830s to analyze democracy as a political potential. There, he was struck by how well developed the principle of association—a proto form of pluralism—was among average Americans. At the time, American politics was marked by a rich diversity of organized associations and interest groups vying with each other to see that their respective wishes were translated into government policy. (3) Pluralism is a theoretical approach that emphasizes how ordinary Americans are free to start or join any of these groups and that organized interests struggle with each other on a level playing field. In other words, no one set of interests is likely to dominate public policy—at least not for very long, because the many losers will temporarily put aside their differences to collaborate to influence policy. The pluralist argument is bolstered by the number and variety of interest groups and by the fact that interests in one category—business, for example—often struggle with each other and fail to put up a monolithic front vis labour or environmental groups.
The second theoretical approach, hyper-pluralism, argues that America was at some point characterized by pluralism, but over time it transformed into something less healthy: an out-of-control hyper-pluralist polity. This approach is voiced by political scientists who argue that hyper-pluralism suggests that the government has essentially been captured by the demands of interest groups. And rather than arbitrating the struggle between organized interests, the government tries to put into effect the wishes of them all to the detriment of the country. Political scientist Theodore Lowi called this pathological process interest-group liberalism, which is often used interchangeably with the hyper-pluralism label. (4) These theorists point to the contradictory nature of government policy—for example, spending money to subsidize fossil fuel extraction while at the same time passing regulations to limit carbon emissions—as evidence that there isn’t a competition going on as envisioned by pluralism. The hyper-pluralism system more closely resembles a free-for-all.
The third approach is called elite theory, which is the theoretical perspective used in this text. Elite theorists hold that the many-interests-on-a-level-playing-field vision of the pluralists and the interest-group-chaos scenario of the hyper-pluralists fail to accurately show what is going on: that a relatively small and wealthy class of individuals—the power elite—essentially gets its way. (5) According to this theory, the power elite are either the decision-makers or they so influence the decision-makers that the elites get their way most of the time. The elite theory highlights the power of organized business and military interests combined with society’s affluent strata and points to many government policies that lavish benefits onto them. Moreover, business interests create interlocking and overlapping connections that reinforce their position and allow them to control the political system—witness the exclusive and overlapping memberships of corporate boards, foundation boards, trustee positions for public and private universities, and corporate media ownership. The fact that elites have disproportionate power and seek to continue their dominance is not new. As political essayist Noam Chomsky wrote, “Right through American history, there’s been an ongoing clash between pressure for more freedom and democracy coming from below and efforts at elite control and domination coming from above.”