Neopluralism

Abstract

Neopluralism is one of a class of research findings or social science models-such as elitism, pluralism, and corporatism-that refer to the structure of power and policy making in some domain of public policy. Originating from Robert Dahl's pluralism model in Who Governs? (1961), neopluralism evolved in the study of American politics through discarding or modifying some of Dahl's ideas, while adding new concerns about agenda building, the logic of collective action, special-interest subgovernments, social movements, advocacy coalitions, and the theory of political processes. Neopluralism is normally a finding of complex action in policy systems, but neopluralism does not assume that complexity implies fairness of representation, nor does it assume interest group elimination of autonomous action by governmental agencies.