The Technique of the Pluralistic State

Francis W. Coker

American Political Science Review, 1921, vol. 15, issue 2, 186-213

Abstract: What is the pluralistic theory of the state? Roughly speaking, we may identify the pluralistic theory as that theory which denies the logical validity and the practical and moral adequacy of the traditional doctrine of state sovereignty, or of the doctrines of sovereignty which have prevailed since the eras of Bodin and Hobbes, and have in a peculiar degree dominated political thought since the time of John Austin. Although the pluralist dogma does not take precisely the same form for all of its adherents, views held in common by them all are to be found in the chief criticisms which they offer against what they regard as the now prevailing notions of state authority and competence. The pluralists maintain that sovereignty is not, in any community, indivisible, and they deny that the state either is or ought to be sovereign in any absolute or unique sense. They cite many facts of recent political and social experience to discredit the belief that the state does persistently exercise sovereignty over other essential social groups; they argue that the tendency of social and industrial change today is in the direction of a progressive weakening and narrowing of state power; and they hold that the effect of a still further disintegration and decentralization of authority will be to improve the economic, moral and intellectual well-being of man and society.

Date: 1921
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